POLITICAL REMIX _______________________________ Networked Publics Conference Annenberg Center for Communication April 28-29, 2006 http://netpublics.annenberg.edu curated by: Steve Anderson, Merlyna Lim, Marc Tuters

Americans, so the argument goes, are largely disaffected from their political system, numbed by multi-million dollar election campaigns, bewildered by statistics and ultimately apathetic and ineffectual when it comes to direct political action. At the same time, recent years have witnessed the rise of a participatory culture that is enabled and promoted by computer networks, remix tactics and growing resistance to the war in Iraq. As media consumers increasingly acquire the tools and skills necessary to act as producers and distributors of their own work, an expanded range of voices has begun to contribute to a widely disseminated sphere of networked political discourse. The Political Remix program highlights a variety of these productions, each of which defies some aspect of the conventional wisdom regarding the fundamentally apolitical nature of postmodern culture. At stake in this investigation is an emergent understanding of the ways media practitioners are enacting new forms of networked community and political discourse that is specific to a participatory, recombinant, DIY authoring mode.

	Bushwacked 2 http://downloads.warprecords.com/bushwhacked2.mov (00:04:07) David Smab Reading between the lines of George W. Bush’s State of the Union speech in 2002, David Smab’s elegantly edited video reveals the true intentions behind the President’s political platitudes and generalizations.
	George Bush Don't Like Black People http://www.guerrillanews.com/videos/viewer.php?id=40&n=1 (00:03:51) Franklin Lopez (video) and The Legendary K.O. (music). Franklin Lopez’s video enigmatically mimics the form of a silent-era film, complete with title cards and convulsive black-and-white images of the devastation that followed Hurricane Katrina, all set to the tune of The Legendary KO remix of Kanye West's Golddigger.
	Bush for Peace http://www.bushforpeace.us/bushforpeace.mov (00:01:56) Jen Simmons and Sarah Christman Jen Simmons and Sarah Christman’s Bush for Peace offers a wistful look at what a presidential speech might look like if America had actually become the kinder, gentler nation it once proclaimed itself to be.
	Imagine This http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7meAXUguTQo (00:04:38) John Callaghan (video) and Wax Audio (music) Although the first Gulf war was supposed to have erased our collective memory of the “Vietnam syndrome,” parallels between Vietnam and the current war in Iraq are growing increasingly difficult to deny. This video mashup by John Callaghan makes its point with sobering clarity, combining an audio track from WaxAudio, John Lennon’s Imagine, speeches by George W. Bush, and horrific images from Iraq.
	What Barry Says http://www.knife-party.net/movs/barry.mov (00:02:40) Simon Robson Simon Robson’s animated graphics accompany this incisive political rant written and recorded by Barry McNamara, exposing the Bush Administration’s Project for a New American Century.
	Closer: The Fall of Baghdad http://www.gnn.tv/videos/viewer.php?id=18&n=1 (00:06:00) Stephen Marshall Eschewing the humorous tone of many remix videos, Stephen Marshall’s Closer: The Fall of Baghdad highlights the astronomical costs – both moral and economic – of the war in Iraq, ingeniously modifying the now ubiquitous news crawl to draw stark contrasts between the first and second Gulf Wars.
	Keeping America Scared http://joi.ito.com/movies/gopconstrm.mov (00:02:23) Volker Weber In a technique made popular by a great number of political remixes, Weber has filtered out every rabble-rousing phrase from a GOP convention, leaving us with a cavalcade of republican luminaries repeating their bullet-proof talking points, over-and-over, as if presenting an alibi or perhaps some magical incantation.
	Zendanie Siasi http://www.democracyforiran.de/zendani256k.wmv (00:04:11) Imam Foroutan By juxtaposing an Iranian popular music and some unseen political video sequences, in Zendanie Siasi (Political Prison) Iman Foroutan finds a versatile way to publicly reveal a narrative of the suppression by the current regime in Iran.
	French Democracy http://files.machinima.com/films/media/Conventional_Media/TheFrenchDemocracy.mov (00:13:09) Alex Chan French Democracy was created within the highly restricted environment of Lion Head Studio's "The Movies" machinima engine. Re-purposing sets intended to stage a variety of Hollywood movies genres, Chan brings us a story of the institutionalized racism that boiled over into the French racial riots of 2004.
	Hummer H2 http://www.capedmaskedandarmed.com/video/hummertruth.mov (00:00:31) Jonathan McIntosh Through adding only subtitles, McIntosh has completely transformed a triumphal Hummer ad into a powerful comment on SUV's culpability in problem of environmental degradation. His technique here is reminiscent of the Situationist practice of detournement, in which the artists altered elements of popular culture to expose their hidden meanings, often radically opposed to the original.
	Army of One http://www.capedmaskedandarmed.com/video/army2.mov (00:00:22) Jonathan McIntosh It has been a decade since the video game industry surpassed the army in developing life-like military training simulations. Here, McIntosh reworks an ad by the US Army's for the gamer generation, envisioning the Army of One as couch potato with a fly swatter, sweltering in the heat and surrounded by rotting corpses.
	Kodak Max http://www.capedmaskedandarmed.com/video/kodak.mov (00:00:30) Jonathan McIntosh McIntosh's reworking of a Kodak campaign replaces the snapshots by carefree trio of vacation makers with gory photo-journalistic images of the Iraq war. In addition to reminding us of the camera's historic military origins, the piece brings to mind the punk rock montage art of Winston Smith, which contrasts scenes of post-war domesticity with the horrors of the post-Atomic age.