Hito Steyerl

     Steyerl's view on piracy is hard to determine.  On one hand, she seems to have a negative opinion of it, calling poor quality youtube videos of an old film a "pile of stuff," while she reveres non pirated yet equally poor quality films.  On the other hand, she says that piracy makes it possible for these films to be circulated efficiently despite not being popular in the overall society.  It seems like she doesn't have an opinion either way, and is just stating what she thinks is fact.  She uses a whole section of her article to talk about how privatization of media production destroyed the art film's presence in the mainstream entertainment culture, but goes on to say that circulation plays into some sort of commercial agenda. It's incredibly confusing to understand her.  It's clear that this article was for people who have some sort of vested interest in this kind of art and who understand the politics and history of art films, not for someone who's looking for a starting point to learn about it.
     One part that I thought was interesting was that she calls it an "art of the people."  She thought that by copying or distributing poor image media, people are also contributing to their production, as the digital copying will likely degrade the image further.  It makes sense after seeing her quote.  It's almost like the audience unintentionally becomes part of a performance piece by unknowingly altering the media when they copy it.  At one point, she talks about intentionally creating poor quality pieces, and I don't really know what the point of that is.  Steyerl says that it pushes against the fetishization of the not poor image, but why? What does a painting of pixelated missiles have to do with a dislike of clear images and modern technology?  I would assume that this kind of art falls under the blanket of conceptual art, and is more about the artist's intent than it is about the actual image.  I like that she describes some of it as the afterlife of an older piece, and that the poor quality copy is the only version of that piece in existence.  Based on the title of the article, I thought she was going to argue that the poor image, in general, was superior to clearer images, but, even though many of her points were to me convoluted, I now see that she was instead saying that the poor image is the only way some pieces can exist and still be appreciated.