Cutting Across Media: Appropriation Art, Interventionist Collage, and Copyright Law - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0822348225 ISBN 13: 9780822348221

Publisher: Duke University Press Books, 2011

Synopsis

The contributors to Cutting Across Media focus on collage and appropriation art, exploring the legal ramifications of such practices in an age when private companies can own culture using copyright and trademark law. Examining the intersections of the popular and the avant-garde, each essay is implicitly or explicitly concerned with the politics of appropriation art and other forms of collage that intervene in popular media discourses. Cutting Across Media features some important, eye-popping archival pieces, along with new essays by leading academics, critics, essayists, and artists. It scrutinizes and in some instances illustrates forms of collage and appropriation art such as audio mash-ups, remixed news broadcasts, literary collage, visual collage, and plagiarism-as-art, as well as culture jamming, pranks, and billboard alteration. Among the contributors to the collection are the novelist and essayist Jonathan Lethem, the poet and cultural critic Joshua Clover, the filmmaker Craig Baldwin, the hip-hop historian Jeff Chang, the 'zine-maker and sound collage artist Lloyd Dunn, and Negativland, the infamous collective that was sued in 1992 for sampling U2 in a satirical sound collage. Contributors: Craig Baldwin; David Banash; Marcus Boon; Jeff Chang; Joshua Clover; Lorraine Morales Cox; Lloyd Dunn; Pierre Joris; Douglas Kahn; Rudolf Kuenzli; Rob Latham; Jonathan Lethem; Carrie McLaren; Kembrew McLeod; Negativland; Philo T. Farnsworth; Davis Schneiderman; Siva Vaidhyanathan; Gabor Valyi; Eva Hemmungs Wirten

About this title

Review:

“Spanning media from visual art to popular music, literature to culture jamming, this series of essays challenges the litigious environment in which copyright is used as a blunt weapon to prevent reinvention of existing works and the transformative process of reuse to inform the creative cycle of ideas. . . . Advanced undergraduates through faculty in art, art history, media studies, film, literature and music will appreciate the interdisciplinary treatment of collage.” - Cara List, ARLIS/NA Reviews

“I believe this is an important book, specifically because the issues discussed affect much of our future artistic creations; as mentioned this has profound social and cultural ramifications. As such, this book should be at minimum included as a recommended text in a variety of applicable tertiary education courses. The stakes are too high to ignore the erosion of artistic freedom brought about by ignorant and greed driven application of copyright law.” - Rob Harle, Leonardo

“Where the most prominent works on the subject tend to dwell on digital’s infinite capacity to reproduce and share itself freely and its current kowtowing to corporate rights management, this book begins by situating appropriation art and collage in the earlier recesses of the twentieth century with Walter Benjamin, the Surrealists, and Dada. Along the way, it touches upon zine culture, audiotape collage, street art, and new wave science fiction; it critiques the international outflows of copyright-subject culture and then it critiques the debate itself.” - Allie Curry, Rain Taxi

“Communication is much like a work of art—it is a process of copying, repeating and varying what we hear. There is no originator or owner of that which shapes our very being, and Cutting Across Media demonstrates how placing restrictions on creative commentary can stifle our cultural development.”—Vicki Bennett, aka People Like Us

“Reflecting both McLeod’s spirited cultural critique and Kuenzli’s interdisciplinary approach to the arts, Cutting Across Media explores diverse forms of collage and appropriation in music, painting, publishing, spoken broadcasts, poetry, and narrative. In this collage of essays, readers are challenged to rethink notions of intellectual property and to consider the complex political and cultural issues that accompany collage and appropriation aesthetics.” Author: Christine Masters Jach Source: American Book Review

“What separates this volume from other contemporary works around sampling and intellectual property law is that research in this area rarely attempts to
marry aesthetic and political concerns so overtly. . . . [A]n edited collection that successfully manages to explore the political and artistic imperatives that inform the practice of collage and appropriation.” Author: James Meese Source: Media International Australia

“I believe this is an important book, specifically because the issues discussed affect much of our future artistic creations; as mentioned this has profound social and cultural ramifications. As such, this book should be at minimum included as a recommended text in a variety of applicable tertiary education courses. The stakes are too high to ignore the erosion of artistic freedom brought about by ignorant and greed driven application of copyright law.” Author: Rob Harle Source: Leonardo

“Spanning media from visual art to popular music, literature to culture jamming, this series of essays challenges the litigious environment in which copyright is used as a blunt weapon to prevent reinvention of existing works and the transformative process of reuse to inform the creative cycle of ideas. . . . Advanced undergraduates through faculty in art, art history, media studies, film, literature and music will appreciate the interdisciplinary treatment of collage.” Author: Cara List Source: ARLIS/NA Reviews

“Where the most prominent works on the subject tend to dwell on digital’s infinite capacity to reproduce and share itself freely and its current kowtowing to corporate rights management, this book begins by situating appropriation art and collage in the earlier recesses of the twentieth century with Walter Benjamin, the Surrealists, and Dada. Along the way, it touches upon zine culture, audiotape collage, street art, and new wave science fiction; it critiques the international outflows of copyright-subject culture and then it critiques the debate itself.” Author: Allie Curry Source: Rain Taxi

From the Author:

Kembrew McLeod is Associate Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Iowa. He is the author of Freedom of Expression®: Resistance and Repression in the Age of Intellectual Property and Owning Culture: Authorship, Ownership, and Intellectual Property Law, and co-creator of the documentary film Copyright Criminals. McLeod and Peter DiCola are the authors of Creative License: The Law and Culture of Digital Sampling, also published by Duke University Press.

Rudolf Kuenzli is Professor of Comparative Literature and English at the University of Iowa, where he is the Director of the International Dada Archive.

About this edition

• Publisher: Duke University Press Books
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0822348225
• ISBN 13: 9780822348221
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 376
• Editor: McLeod Kembrew, Kuenzli Rudolf