So You Think You Can Be President?
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So You Think You Can Be President is a new reality television show where candidates compete for American votes!
Presidential hopefuls must present their positions on major issues in front of a live studio audience then face hard-hitting critiques from our panel of judges. Viewers at home will delight in the spectacle as candidates are challenged in ways never before seen in mainstream media.
In this week’s episode, only two weeks before the election, Senator Obama and Senator McCain have their feet held to the fire over shockingly similar positions on energy and foreign policy.
Who will be this season’s champion and take home the grand prize? You’ll have to watch and decide for yourself, then participate in the show by casting a vote* for your favorite performer on November 4th!
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*Some restrictions may apply. In certain areas these include, but are not limited to, faulty electronic voting systems, racist voter laws and/or voter roll purges. See your local polling place for details.
APPROPRIATED SOURCE MATERIAL:
So You Think You Can Dance - Season 3 & 4
2008 US Presidential Debates 1, 2 & 3 - PBS, BBC, PBS
Road to the White House - MSNBC
“The Politics of Dancing” by Re-Flex
FAIR USE NOTICE:
This video is a satirical transformative work and constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law.
PRODUCTION INFO:
It is an example of a Political Remix Video and was created by re-cutting and re-framing fragments of pop culture media to construct a new re-imagined narrative.
OTHER VIDEO FORMATS:
Watch in 16:9 widescreen on blip.tv or on imeem. You can also download the higher-res quicktime. Help spread the word and keep the remix online by re-uploading to your favorite video sharing sites!
EXTRA INFO:
Howard Zinn on Obama - video interview
Noam Chomsky on Obama - video interview
MORE RESOURCES:
Rainforest Action Network - ran.org
Power Vote - powervote.org
Iraq Veterans Against the War - ivaw.org
War Resisters League - warresisters.org
Energy Action Coalition - energyactioncoalition.org
Student Environmental Action Coalition - seac.org
Energy Justice Network - energyjustice.net
Building a Critical Culture with Political Remix Video
An essay I wrote about Political Remix Video for the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria. Published in the Ars Electronica 2008 Catalog in both English and German. I would also like give love and respect to bell hooks and her writing for being an inspiration to my work on these topics.
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Building a Critical Culture with Political Remix Video
by Jonathan McIntosh - June 6, 2008
In March of 2003, I found myself glued to the television watching in horror and disbelief as American bombs rained down on the people of Iraq. Like many people living in the United States, I was deeply disturbed by our mainstream media’s cheerleading for war and their childlike fascination with military weaponry. As each broadcast seemed more and more void of humanity or concern for Iraqi lives, I was compelled to grab my video camera, hook it up to the screen and begin recording the carnage. Especially unsettling for me was the surreal juxtaposition of happy-go-lucky TV commercials for major brands scattered in-between news reports of an ancient civilization being laid waste in real time before my eyes. It was that absurdity coupled with my sense of outrage at the sheer injustice being perpetrated, which informed my first Political Remix Video (PRV) works. [1]
I loaded the newly captured digital video into my computer and began to remix, still not sure what would emerge. The result was a collection of biting, yet humorous, re-cut and re-framed TV ads fusing commercials with news footage. Once completed, I made the decision to disseminate these newly transformed works free to the public via my website and later through popular online video sharing tools. I was particularly drawn to the online distributing method because of the populism inherent in the medium. Online video offered a direct conduit to and from the general population. I wanted my remixes to reach a larger and diverse audience, which would be impossible had I chosen galleries, festivals or other more traditional means of video art delivery.
Video from Talk at Ars Electronica 2008
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Here is the video of my talk on Political Remix Video at Ars Electronica 2008 in Linz Austria for the New Cultural Economy Symposium. The title of the presentation is “Building a Critical Culture with Political Remix Video” and there is a youtube playlist on my user page including all the videos I present in case you want to favorite, comment on or share them.
I try to showcase Political Remix Videos that, I think, transcend the standard topics of government, elections or policy and instead highlight issues of racism, injustice, environment and mainstream media. I felt is was important to present and discuss works that focus on issues relevant to marginalized and oppressed communities inside the United States - specifically videos by Jackie Reem Salloum, The Black Lantern and Theodore Lyons.
I would also like to note that at the beginning of my talk I neglected to include a shout-out to the African American hip-hop communities that perfected and popularized remix as a art form and helped infuse it into our culture over the past several decades. An important point that, I think, should be included in any discussion of remix culture. Oh and in the talk I mispronounce Aaron Valdez’s name, apologies for that Aaron.
You can watch my talk above or via the video stream coming directly from the Ars website in wmp format.
For a good round-up of the rest Ars Electonica 2008 check out the report for Rhizome by Jonah Brucker-Cohen who I met while in Linz.
Political Remix Videos at FSCONS in Sweden
Looks like some of my Political Remix Videos will be featured this month at the Free Society Conference in Gothenburg, Sweden. The event is a collaboration between the Free Software Foundation Europe, Creative Commons Sweden and Wikimedia Sweden. I am told that at the conference my work will be shown (along with other video works) as an example of why sampling and remixing culture is valuable to society and social discourse and therefore should not be subject to legal prosecution.
