ABSTRACT
The second impeachment trial of Donald J. Trump opened with a harrowing 13-minute video of the January 6 breach of the Capitol building screened in the very same building the events unfolded. This chaotic collage, arranged in chronological order, featured shaky, handheld video cross-cut with news coverage of Trump’s rally, C-SPAN footage of the House and Senate floors, and sober intertitles. The screening set the tone for a trial that centered video as evidence, pointing to how the circulation, accumulation, and assemblage of digital video from surveillant gazes both participatory and institutional have become primary agents of both policing and politics in the 21st century. Just below the impeachment montage’s drama as short film and richness as evidence, however, lay a host of contradictions and conundrums about how digital media, visual culture, and the built environment intersected during the Trump era. This essay is an attempt to tease out some of these underlying questions by exploring the theme of density along three readings of the insurrection’s digital footage: as performative utterance of the crowd, as material evidence, and as assemblage.
