Our favorite political pranksters The Yes Men have spoofed the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland with an official looking imaginary website. As part of the project they have also created these fantastic re-dubbed video interviews with global economic, government and corporate leaders where each appear to speak in brutally honest ways about real problems and solutions. The remix video of Archer Daniels Midland Company (ADM) CEO Patricia Woertz apparently did not sit well with the agro-business giant because they quickly filed a takedown notice to have it removed from Youtube. Luckily for us the video is still live on vimeo.
ADM CEO Patricia Woertz (1:10)
http://www.vimeo.com/9011666
Klaus Schwab (1:03)
http://www.vimeo.com/9008921
Queen Elizabeth II of England (0:52)
http://www.vimeo.com/9008826
Former U.S. President Bill Clinton (0:53)
http://www.vimeo.com/9008981
See more re-dubbed videos on the Yes Men’s parallel WEF site.
Category: news segment
Topic Tags: capitalism, corporations, economics, environment, government, identity correction
Posted by Elisa o n February 1st, 2010
In early January, Jonathan and I were invited to speak on a panel at World’s Fair Use Day in Washington, DC to provide the perspective of artists who use copyrighted material in their work. Our panel followed Congressman Mike Doyle’s (D-Penn) keynote address on defending Fair Use against ongoing attacks from corporate media interests. It was also a great opportunity to chat with our friends, Mark Hosler from Negativeland and Dan Walsh from Garfield Minus Garfield.
It was the very end of a long day when we were pleasantly reminded of these two remixes brought to our attention by cultural critic Mark Dery, who coined and popularized the term Culture Jamming:
Scary Mary, created by MovieMker, remixes Mary Poppins into a horror film. It is not overtly political but it is a fun example of how additive text and a new soundtrack can turn the carefully crafted Disney-fied world on it’s head.
It’s Raining Men is a simple yet articulate comment on the prevalence of men (and scantly clad ones at that) in the movie 300. Suburbala paired the film’s footage with the famous song by the same name, queering the gaze of the Trogans and satirizing their hyper-masculinity to reveal the homoerotic subtext of the movie.
For more on the one-day conference hosted by Public Knowledge, check out the web-cast from the First Annual World’s Fair Use Day.
Category: About Remixing
Topic Tags: fair use, government, negativland
Posted by Elisa o n August 28th, 2009
This remix by freeyourpixels is a short yet eloquent critique of the US Marines “Red Stripe” online ad campaign. The remix uses still images and TV commercial clips for source materials and implements additive text and precise match-on-action editing techniques to unite them. The red stripe transitions the viewer from one clip to next and was created using After Effects. It’s a brilliant, yet simple, visual motif which echos the brutal imperialist history of the US Marines. The Scarlet Stripe, said to commemorate the bloodshed by US Marine officers during the 1846 Battle of Chapultepec in Mexico, is more often referred to as the Blood Stripe.
Category: tv commercial
Topic Tags: capitalism, corporations, government, iraq, marines, military, terrorism, violence, war
Dictators and authoritarian leaders including Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Pinochet and Jean-Marie Le Pen lip sync to the 1966 hit song Born Free sung by Matt Monro. Remixed by Swedish filmmaker and musician Johan Söderberg as part of the Read My Lips video series created for ATMO Films between 2001 and 2004.
Category: music video
Topic Tags: government, military, violence
In this remix posted by Matthew Belinkie on overthinkingit.com, we see what the Joker thinks of the US government’s economic bailout plan. The gangsters in the blockbuster Batman film The Dark Knight are re-casts as taxpayers watching President Bush’s September 2008 speech urging Americans to support the first $700 billion bailout for major financial corporations on Wall Street. The Joker than explain that the plan will not work and to call him if we want to get serious about the crisis. The video hints at the widespread public anger at the massive transfer of wealth from Main Street to Wall Street.
Category: short film
Topic Tags: economics, government
“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face. Forever.”
The above George Orwell quote accompanies this vid by Lila Futuransky which deals with cinematic depictions of oppression and resistance. She weaves together appropriated footage from three sci-fi films set in a near future London; 28 Days Later, Children of Men and V for Vendetta. These are remixes over the song Rabbit in Your Headlights by the band Unkle. The result is a re-constructed vision of a fear-driven future and also a vision of the resistance. She particularly challenges the ways in which gender, race and sexuality play out in those futures.
Lila has carefully re-contextualized many of the characters in these films including erasing the male V character (along with his torturing of Evey “for her own good”) and removes the character of Theo as the white male savor of Kee in shots from Children of Men. The vid also pieces together an inspiring montage of resistance which inserts images of queer relationships in between the shots of street protests and sabotage. For much more detail on the concepts behind the creating of this vid check out lila’s web page for it.
Category: vidding
Topic Tags: activism, gender, government, hollywood, military, race, sexuality, vidding, war
Posted by Elisa o n February 13th, 2009
I created this remix to highlight the commodification of race in the 2009 inauguration. The efforts to commemorate our first black President through the buying and selling of Obama products actually erased a history of radical struggle, turning black identity into another resource appropriated by the mainstream to produce capital.
Created solely from television footage collected on Inauguration Day 2009, this remix examines the illusion that racial equality can be bought, sold and “held on to”. While talk of inter-racial harmony permeated mainstream news networks, the reality of race relations remains an issue of white privilege, something that consumerism and commodification cannot solve. Through the commodification of blackness, whites are able to purchase race relations and the false image of solidarity rather than take into account and acknowledge their own white privilege.
See my previous remixes as well as essays and articles here.
You can watch the remix on Youtube here
Please enable Javascript and Flash to view this Blip.tv video.
Category: short film
Topic Tags: consumerism, elections, government, identity correction, obama, presidency, race, television