Abstract
We are videographic theorists and practitioners that deal, among other things, with digital archives. One of us focuses on born-analog artifacts (re)discovered in the online landscape; the other obsesses over disappearing gimmicks from the early days of the Internet.
Although we have a background in media theory and experience with archival practice, every time we start creating a video essay, we find ourselves feeling like beginners. Not only do we still not know what digital matter can do (to paraphrase Baruch Spinoza), but the media objects we choose are always incomplete, marginal, forgotten, or altogether weird.
This is why we have decided to join forces on a video essay that would stop us from beating ourselves up over insufficient knowledge and mastery and embrace the things that seem to hold us back – the inaccessibility of our research objects, malfunctions, blind alleys, shortages, and so forth. The essay we are currently developing comments upon and makes fun of the research and creative process that went into our previous investigations of obscure artifacts in the online landscape, such as digitized early Czech films, archaic precursors of desktop documentaries, idiosyncratic wipes, early GIFs, DVD menus, or Tumblr aesthetic.
Our goal is to show that such an improvisational, trial-and-error approach can lead to an articulation of a specific research method to approach weird digital objects – an approach that is academic yet aware of its limits and takes playfulness deadly seriously. Let us thus proclaim our work-in-progress as an exercise in self-reflexive videographic amateurism.