Remix Video: From Geese to Axe Murderers

For anybody who was interested (and now even for those who weren't! bwhahaha!), I thought it might be worth my briefly touching upon what I was thinking when I came up with my messed up music video accompaniment to Matt's remix of Kristine and Maddalene's remix of Bon Iver's "Skinny Love" (phew!).

First off, if I freaked anybody, I wholeheartedly apologize. I did work in some disturbing images, but I did so for a purpose. As I said, without having heard the song I collected a whole bunch of footage, which I only edited into a video accompaniment after listening to Matt's "Skinny Love" remix, so I filmed all that stuff without realizing what it was going to turn into. Nonetheless, my own guiding artistic intent (or 'referent') for what I filmed was largely reactionary towards widespread criticisms of remix practices.

While I know a lot of artists (see Matt's "To Glee or not to Glee" debate) might be somewhat resistant of other people remixing or appropriating their texts, which I am sympathetic to, I did find the hostility and fury generated by a lot of people towards having their works rejigged to be a bit alarming. It struck me that more dialogue between producers and consumers of media works seems the only viable reconciliation of the two perspectives, and it similarly struck me that this would hardly be too difficult to achieve.

Nonetheless, it was in light of the ferocity generated by this debate, as well as the lack of conclusive moral stances on it that inspired me to film the footage I had. Many of the striking images I acquired (Christian Bale with an axe, for one - *warning: violence, and 80s music!*) seemed to me to somehow echo sentiments of this debate over remix - 'hacking up' or 'chopping up' the texts beyond recognition for one, or the amoral 'violence' found to be associated with it. I framed my video through all the footage of the boy and his authoritative teacher (from The 400 Blows) as a commentary of how anyone growing up in today's culture could become incriminated in such debates, and all of a sudden find themselves being branded a monstrous criminal just for "copying". I got a lot of footage of nature and driving for the sake of alluding to the 'naturalism' (or lack thereof) of remix as a practice, as well as suggesting some kind of 'journey' from my child figure - but is he trying to escape remix as a practice, or run towards it, thereby embracing it? This, I thought, should be left up to the viewer to decide.

I know everyone only saw it the once (I've never tired uploading a video to youtube, but I might try to if I can get my creaky old computer working), but did anyone else have any thoughts and perspectives on the video I did? I'd love to hear them, if so!

Congratulations again to everyone for their roster of incredibly impressive and intelligent remix projects!