All this week a special internet-only audio stream, WFMU Remixes the RNC 2004, will be providing some great material specific to the Republican National Convention. One feature particularly relevant to our interests is "The Interactive Dubya," a call-in show where callers can talk to the president - or rather, a clever simulacra of the president constructed from samples of his past speeches, arranged to very humorous effect.
The Orlando weekly brings us this great article about internet distribution of music. It features interviews with detrivore Vicki Bennett, Otis Fodder, and others familiar to the detrital world. It also briefly discusses the important idea of the gift economy.
Collage as Cultural Practice seeks to examine interventionist collage practices
in all media, with an emphasis on the social, political, and legal implications
of this method of appropriation. The conference, taking place March 24-26,
2005, at the University of Iowa, will interrogate the political and social
dimensions of collage as a practice that enables oppositional commentary across
the cultural spectrum: from the leftist collages of the Dadaists and the
Situationists to the unauthorized use of corporate trademarks, interventions by
queer activists, and the more recent flurry of Internet-distributed antiwar
video collage pieces that appropriate from the mainstream media in satirical
ways. We seek to bring together scholars of, and practitioners in, the media of
film and video, music, literature, visual arts and beyond^×putting together a
series of panels, performances and screenings, and an exhibition at the
University of Iowa Museum of Art on Interventionist Collage: From Dada to
Negativland. Confirmed speakers include: Patricia R. Zimmermann, Rosemary
Coombe, Carrie McLaren, Mark Hosler, Lloyd Dunn, Philo Farnsworth, Douglas
Kahn, and Xmena Cuevas. Possible session topics are: Collage and the Beat
Movement; Collage and Copyright; Found Footage Film and Video; Dada and
Surrealist Collage; Situationist and Fluxus Collages; Feminist Strategies of
Appropriation; Collage in the Digital Age; Collage: Remixing Cultures; Collage:
The Cultural Politics of Appropriation; Collage: From musique concrète to Hip
Hop; and Collage: Queer Interventions. Send 250-word proposals for papers to
Rudolf Kuenzli at rudolf-kuenzli@uiowa.edu or Kembrew McLeod at kembrew-
mcleod@uiowa.edu. Conference registration is free. Deadline: October 15, 2004.
Reason Magazine's Blog discusses the phenomenon of anonymous reviewing on Amazon.com and the use thereof as sort of a subversion of or strike against big media by the folk. They link to our definition of detournement as well.