Building a Critical Culture with Political Remix Video

October 19th, 2008

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.

Ars Electronica 08 Catalog

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.