Writings.

Political Remix Videos: Project Report from the Field

Summary

Political Remix Videos(PRVs) exemplify the broader sociopolitical, legal and cultural implications of Free Culture. While creators are consumers, they are also active participants discussing, critiquing and changing the way we understand media texts, politics and popular culture. PRVs redefine and recontextualize proprietary content in an effort to build upon collective cultural knowledge, but their creators are also on the front lines of the battle between new media technologies and impeding copyright laws. My findings reflect the experiences of artists who navigate these murky waters to continually demonstrate the importance of remix as a vital art form.

Challenges emerging from my research include:

1. The continued lack of consistency in determining what
   a Fair Use of copyrighted content is, resulting in
   sporadic YouTube removals and unwarranted DMCA
   notices.
2. The absence of women’s contribution to the history of
   remix as we know it today. Women have been making
   critiques of popular culture before supplementing the
   media with one’s own ideas was acceptable. They
   should be recognized for doing so.
3. The strict boundaries and concept of copyright law. It
   reinforces a fetishism of originality, where the only
   avenues for creativity confine the potential for creators
   to build upon existing culture.

Remixing: Deconstructing Identity, Gaining Subjectivity

An essay accompanying the remix Racial Equality $29.95.

Summary
Identities of gender and race can be positive when they are not constructed as a stable identity, but are open to resignification and recontextualization. Remixing allows for a fluid concept of identity because it encourages the placement of images within a moving historical context and grants subjectivity back to producers who are able to still utilize gender and racial identities as a position from which to remix. While this deconstruction of images and identities and the appropriation of other elements in the creation of new work is nothing new in the art/activism world, remixing simultaneously allows producers to deconstruct cultural images of identity while granting them subjectivity through the resignification of the practices, discourses, and institutions that perpetuate the binary on which oppression is based.

I’m happy to provide any piece in it’s entirety; email me at elisa.kreisinger at gmail dot com.