Zooming in with C.Q. Lucius

This is mostly a newsletter about circumventing the capital-a algorithm, but even I must acknowledge that a backwards clock is right four times a day. Google knows I’m a sicko for Chicago videos. Add in some advocacy for our city’s undersung beach-town side and yes, I am going to click your thumbnail. That’s how I became a fan of musician and video diarist C.Q. Lucius. Those are screenshots of handheld video Lucius took two summers ago, recorded on a secondhand camcorder with blown-out highlights, munged through YouTube compression to play back at 480p. It’s pretty far from the kind of 8k 120fps stuff associated with celebrity creators. Of those options, as you might guess, I am more interested in the former. Lucius uses low-fidelity tools in a way that allows her to record moments from her life, or direct-to-camera confessionals, with a degree of intimacy that is mediated by digital grain. I am fascinated by that kind of thing—the use of a tool’s inherent qualities to adjust…