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[ecrea] Remixes, ethics and pirates: new reviews in Culture Machine
Mon Jun 22 12:08:57 GMT 2009
CULTURE MACHINE <http://www.culturemachine.net>
is pleased to announce the publication of the following new reviews:
* RiP: A Remix Manifesto (2009) documentary
directed by Brett Gaylor. Reviewed by Laura J. Murray.
Brett Gaylor?s documentary on the friction
between copyright law and remix music is highly
engaging to look at and listen to. The ?talking
heads? that appear in the film will be familiar
to copyright watchers (Lawrence Lessig, Cory
Doctorow), and many examples have been exposed
quite a bit too (Disney?s Steamboat Willy,
Negativland, Gilberto Gil). But Gaylor also
presents some less-known material: for example,
he has great interviews with Dan O?Neill of the
Mouse Liberation Front, a beguiling copyright
resistance movement from 1971, and clearly a
model for Gaylor of how to speak truth to power
with style and pleasure. (Spoiler: you get to
see Minnie and Mickey doing something in bed
Disney never let us in on.) With snippets of
visuals from popular culture collaged with
interview footage, and a central focus on the
Pittsburgh DJ Girltalk, Gaylor?s film embodies
the punchy, sampling aesthetic it champions.
* The Ethics of Writing: Authorship and Legacy
in Plato and Nietzsche (2008) by Séan Burke. Reviewed by Maebh Long.
The prologue to Seán Burke?s The Death and
Return of the Author concludes with the remark
that ?the concept of the author is never more
alive than when pronounced dead?. Continuing his
focus on the author, it is the origins of this
thoroughly resuscitated revenant that Burke
turns his attentions to in The Ethics of
Writing: Authorship and Legacy in Plato and
Nietzsche. As in his earlier publication, this
text combines the same uneasy relationship to
post-structuralism and deconstruction with
rigorous research and a careful, scholarly
approach. It therefore raises the following
question: does writing against deconstruction
from within a deconstructive vocabulary and
style constitute a performative paradox or an
absolute enactment of, and agreement with, deconstruction?
TO READ THE FULL REVIEWS:
1. Go to <http://www.culturemachine.net>
2. Click on the ?Reviews? heading right under the journal?s banner.
3. Click on the ?PDF? sign next to the review you are interested in.
* Bonus project: Culture Machine in Search of Pirates
The current ?Pirate Philosophy? issue of Culture
Machine engages with the philosophy of internet
piracy, as well as the emergence of social
movements and even political parties focused
around piracy, such as the Piratpartiet in
Sweden, which recently won two seats in the
European Parliament. But this issue of Culture
Machine also contains a number of contributions
which engage with the philosophy of piracy by
experimenting with the creation of what might be
interpreted as actual ?pirate? texts.
To encourage further experimentation of this
kind, Gary Hall?s 12,000 word article, ?Pirate
Philosophy Version 1.0: Open Access, Open
Editing, Free Content, Free/Libre/Open Media?,
which initially formed the opening essay to this
issue, has now been placed on a torrent search
engine and directory, while the original has
been deleted from the Culture Machine site.
Already at the launch of this issue Hall
announced his intention to destroy his original
file as soon as someone downloaded this
torrented file and opened it. ?Pirate Philosophy
Version 2.0 was indeed downloaded via a torrent
on 25.05.2009, so the original was destroyed the
same day. What this means is that there is now
no longer an ?original? or ?master? copy of this
text in the conventional sense. Instead, it
exists only to the extent it is part of a
?pirate? peer-to-peer network? and that it is
?pirated?. All copies of the ?Pirate Philosophy?
article are now ?pirate? copies. The aim behind
this project is to explore the effect of
internet piracy on our ideas of authorship, the
proper name, the signature, attribution,
publication, citation, fair use, copyright,
intellectual property and content creation, both
philosophically and practically.
To download ?Pirate Philosophy Version 2.0?,
search the Mininova torrent directory for
?Pirate Philosophy p2p ver2.0?, or just go
directly to <http://www.mininova.org/tor/2620411>.
--
Dr Joanna Zylinska
Department of Media and Communications
Goldsmiths, University of London
My website: http://www.joannazylinska.net
Reviews Editor for Culture Machine: http://www.culturemachine.net
* New book: Bioethics in the Age of New Media *
http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=11759
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Nico Carpentier (Phd)
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Vrije Universiteit Brussel - Free University of Brussels
Centre for Studies on Media and Culture (CeMeSO)
Pleinlaan 2 - B-1050 Brussels - Belgium
T: ++ 32 (0)2-629.18.56
F: ++ 32 (0)2-629.36.84
Office: 5B.401a
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European Communication Research and Education Association
Web: http://www.ecrea.eu
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E-mail: (Nico.Carpentier /at/ vub.ac.be)
Web: http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~ncarpent/
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