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MEDIA AND THE ARCHIVE: Motions and Transformations

Through the Looking Lens

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2. Through the Looking Lens

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The Remixed Archive In Remix Theory, Eduardo Navas writes that "Remix affects culture in ways that go beyond the basic understanding of recombining material to create something different." In this unit, we explore how archives change, evolve, and are transformed by the affordances of technology in enabling (prod)users to reuse and recombine existing elements in order to make something new.

What happens when we reimagine and reinvent a work to build something radically different? If, as Navas suggests, remix can be used "a tool for autonomy," what transformative and subversive potentials does remix have? How does remix function as what Virginia Kuhn formulates as a "digital argument that is crucial to the functioning of a vital public sphere"? What does remixing the archive achieve, and what are the ethical limitations and boundaries of remix?

The "contrapuntal," as articulated by Edward Said in Culture and Imperialism, provides a productive lens through which we can think about how remix can rethink master narratives. Said takes the notion of the contrapuntal from music, where two or more distinct melodies form a polyphony; furthermore, the contrapuntal, or counterpoint, also refers to the backstitch in sewing techniques, where stitches overlap and are not consecutively sewn, but rather in a back and forth (non)sequence. The contrapuntal, like remix, has to do with bringing together oppositional perspectives and thinking through disparate experiences: it is as much a knitting together as it is a "tearing apart," as Michael O'Krent has suggested during a class discussion.

With remix's affinity with amateur making, we could perhaps think about how care goes hand in hand with remix. Heather Duncan's post, "The Destruction of Memory," calls attention to the intersections between archives, care, the haptic, and the affective through artist YoonJung Kim's works:
Here, we are again informed by Edward Said; in an essay on "Professionals and Amateurs," Said calls for an intellectual spirit of amateurism that he defines as "an activity that is fueled by care and affection," and one that calls for a contrapuntal--and perhaps collaborative--ethics:
the desire to be moved not by profit or reward but by love for an unquenchable interest in the larger picture, in making connections across lines and barriers.
Said's definition of amateurism--with its emphasis on care and love--is motivated by the origins of the word itself: amateur comes from the Latin amare, to love, and it is in this spirit that Said sets out to address the role of the intellectual and the ways in which the stifling pressures of professionalism could be countered by amateurism. Roland Barthes, in one of his vignettes in Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes, also discusses the amateur; he writes,
the Amateur renews his pleasure (amator: one who loves and loves again); he is anything but a hero (of creation or performance)...
The amateur, or the remixer, therefore, as someone who takes care in their craft.
Readings/Selections
Virginia Kuhn, "The Rhetoric of Remix," in Transformative Works and Cultures special issue on "Fan/Remix Video" (2012).

Kelly Logan, "Through the Looking Lens" (final project for a Media Arts + Practice class, "Remixing the Archive")

Remix video selections to be viewed in class.

Recommended: #TransformDH Video Showcase (2015)
The Power of Remixing an Archive Remixing media, from still images to moving ones, demonstrates the power of the editor. Through a series of creative choices, the artist tells the viewer what to see. Though specific interpretation will vary from person to person, the choices a content creator makes are all in service of guiding the viewer through an experience. There is intention behind the decisions of an artist. The ability to remix media reveals the power to subvert the content and completely altar the original message. Though the purposes may vary, remixing media is a clever way to alter the manner in which art is interpreted.

My understanding of remixing the archive is taking someone's else's work and adding something of your own to it in order to completely revolutionize the viewer's perception of it. This is a collage I found posted below, created by Eugenia Loli. It is composed of all found images, but she has taken them out of context to create something entirely new, something creative and magical and surreal that is most likely very far from the purpose of what the pieces of the original message served to convey. Though we may not know the origin or the context of the original images, we should not care what they were before. The point is that they now serve a new creative purpose: to provide the viewer a new stimulating work of art.

The art of remixing can also be used to turn the original piece of work completely on its head by changing the way it is arranged. Many people have posted film trailers to youtube where they completely altered the genre by changing the order of shots and the music a film is set to. Thus, editors have the power to influence how the general population perceives a series of shots because everything is set in a specific order for a specific reason. To rearrange that order can be quite simple, but it entirely changes the final product. Below are a few remixed trailers.

However, not all remixing is limited to digital or visual images. Though Kuhn's article focuses on the remixing of visuals, can't literature be remixed as well? Aren't turning Shakespeare plays into films, such as Clueless from Emma, and The 10 Things I Hate About You from The Taming of the Shrew completely new imaginings in that their settings and target audiences have completely been changed? Not to mention the way literary works can inspire other and new creations.

In the "Remixing the Archive" class I took, we studied how influential Lewis Carroll's Alice novels were to other content creators. From novels to illustrations to paintings to films to puzzles and to video games, so many things have manifested from Carroll's original stories. Are those creations not remixes as well? In the stop motion animation short film I created, I remixed Carroll's notion of sending Alice through a looking glass by sending a barbie doll through a camera lens back in time to a younger version of herself, drawing upon themes of Carroll's wistful obsession of preserving the youth of children through photography.

In the simplest terms, I understand a remix as taking something old and changing it just enough to make something new. It's about asking what one can do to make something one's own, to make people see something different that they may not have previously considered. There are numerous ways to do that and varying degrees to which it can be done, but anyone can be the one to do it. Sometimes, as with the trailers, you don't even need to change that much in order to turn something on its head. But context is everything, and controlling that context is what gives a person the power to remix art.
Language is power,
But perception is everything (Kuhn 5.2).