The 2012 World Economic Forum began yesterday (January 25th) in Davos, Switzerland and even though these Yes Men remixes were created in 2010, they still provide a fantastic (and dissident) variation on the forum’s new theme: The Great Transformation: Shaping New Models.
By simply re-dubbing video interviews with global economic, government and corporate leaders, the Yes Men create a more honest economic leader, foreshadowing the dissent amongst protesters who continue to Occupy the Swiss Alpine resort of Davos.
This year’s forum encourages leaders to “return to their core purpose of defining what the future should look like, aligning stakeholders around that vision…” , and the lip dubs give world leaders a chance to answer that call openly, admitting their not-so-friendly visions.
The remix of Archer Daniels Midland Company (ADM) CEO Patricia Woertz didn’t sit well; they successfully filed a takedown notice to have it removed from YouTube. The video, along with other lip dubs (Prince Harry and Nicholas Sarkozy, etc) remain live on Vimeo.
What I love about these is that they are so simple: just a minor tweak can make a copyrighted text Fair Use. The creators quoted the copyrighted material to create a new meaning through juxtaposition which is totally Fair Use as Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video makes clear. By re-dubbing and re-editing the audio, the creators change the meaning of all three pieces of copyrighted material, addressing a very different audience than their intended original.
So simple and yet so effective.
