REMIX, Appropriation and Culture Jamming - A Great American Pastime

First off, Diddy did not invent the remix. Now that that's clear - we can move on with our lives.

- “Plagiarism is necessary… progress implies it” - Comte de Lautremont

- “It is obviously in the realm of cinema that detournement can attain its greatest efficacy… Most films only merit being cut up to compose other works” - Guy Debord

- Teddy Adorno thought of montage as inherently political and that it is art’s attempt to “confess its impotence through the late capitalist totality and inaugurate its abolition”

- Umberto Eco dreamt of “groups of communications guerrillas who could restore a critical dimension to passive reception” of mass media.

I made a remix project for a videography class [shoutout to Katya Gorker]. I really enjoyed the topic of making a remix project but one that is a self-portrait. It forces us to think of images and media that reflect our identity. I began to realize that what I'm really looking for are those images that shape my identity. C.H. Cooley says, 'I am not who I think I am, I'm not who you think I am, I am who I think you think I am'. Identity is largely constructed from interactions with others but also the effect of media images. So I tried coping with me anger and sensitivity with them, by reclaiming these images as my own. Compiled from clips taken from youtube. Oh, and it's called Sandnigger. It's dedicated to the redneck man who kicked the crap out of me when I was 11 for being Brown.

I also found this clip online that discusses remix media through remixing itself. It refers to a lot of important appropriation projects such as those of Criag Baldwin, Lewis Cohen and Stephen Marshall.

As for the definition on Culture Jamming, let's hear it from the man who coined the term - Mark Dery.

"Culture jamming," a term I have popularized by articles in The New York Times and Adbusters, might best be defined as media hacking, information warfare, terror-art, and guerrilla semiotics, all in one. Billboard bandits, pirate TV and radio broadcasters, media hoaxers, and other vernacular media wrenchers who intrude on the intruders, investing ads, newscasts, and other media artifacts with subversive meanings are all culture jammers.

If you wanna read this rest of this seminal essay peep that at his site.

- Jay Mohan