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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
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E-mail: (Nico.Carpentier /at/ vub.ac.be)
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