Tuttle proceeds to tour Anthony and the camera crew around the company’s facilities, discussing the ethos behind their office space, technology, product demonstrations, and mission with considerable enthusiasm and a distinct flare for making altruistic claims about the tools that enable police brutality to sound vaguely credible, or at least momentarily bemusing. But before leading viewers inside, Anthony asks Tuttle to repeat his entrance and adjust his choreography, an edit which prompts the viewer to ask: is everything scripted, who writes the script, and who’s perspective does the script reflect? Or as Keaver Brenai, the narrator in All Light, Everywhere, recites “when an image speaks what does it say, who gets to speak for it, and who does it speak for?” This question recurs throughout the film, blown open so wide that one begins to wonder if images, no less our senses, can ever be trusted. This figure is Steve Tuttle, the company’s spokesperson, who gains entrance to the facility by placing his palm on a biometric scanner. Sliding doors open to reveal a circular anti-chamber from whose depths a figure emerges, welcoming viewers to Axon Enterprises. As the maxim goes, “seeing is believing,” though watching Anthony’s documentary prompts one to suspect that while we are thoroughly conditioned to agree that this is true, seeing is a far cry from knowing. Since the brain seamlessly compensates for this perceptual loophole, humanity has firmly maintained the belief that senses (especially sight) are the most reliable means of acquiring knowledge about the external world. Courtesy of MEMORY.Īll Light, Everywhere begins by explaining that a blindspot exists at the juncture where the optic nerve connects the eye to the brain, one which is never perceived by the see-er. Still from Theo Anthony’s All Light, Everywhere, 2021. A mind-bending foray into the shared histories (and vocabularies) of photographic and revolver technologies, the purported accountability of body cameras, and the spurious claim that surveillance makes us safe, Anthony’s documentary cycles through no less than five distinct narratives and, via their commingling, prompts viewers to observe connections underpinning topics as diverse as criminology, photography, eugenics, astronomy, surveillance technology, police accountability, and the right to privacy. The manipulative power of framing, and the blindspots-physical, optical, and political-that structure perception, take center stage in Theo Anthony’s most recent film, All Light, Everywhere (2021), which premiered at Sundance Film Festival earlier this year and was released in theaters across the United States in early June. This week’s returning writer, Hannah Sage Kay, recently received her Masters degree from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, where her research focused on the intersection of art and politics with regard to media manipulation, misinformation, and the construction of fictionalized (or alternate) histories.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |