Further Notes on RemixAmerica

RemixAmerica as platform. Though open source, much of the content is provided. The founders of RemixAmerica clearly have a left-of-center agenda. Does the medium itself bias toward a liberal demographic? Is there self-selection?

Remix as Demonstration: How effective is this as a platform? Clearly the agenda is to reconfigure one way media – There aren’t just producers and spectators, everybody is a producer (in theory). Either through talk back or remixing, participation is encouraged at every turn.

Short Comings: Maintains assumption about sources. Maintains hierarchy of media distribution; Primary sources/ secondary sources / popularity=distribution. Ultimately the remixes themselves blend together – like too many jumpcuts. The become gibberish, indistinguishable from one another: Re-mush.

We’re supposed to derive consensus from this – as if democracy were discernible in the vociferous nature of it. But does consensus emerge? Can it be gauged? No – the “Multitude” is “Diffuse, formless.” (see Michael Hirsch, "The Space of Community: Between Culture and Politics" p. 293) This is aestheticized protest. Contained. Neat. Digestible.

ALTERNATIVES:

The seat of its proposed power is in the suspension of hierarchy. (In anarchy?) What is the urban equivalent? “City – dense spatial body made from tensions, contradictions, and conflicts” (Hirsch, 295). Locus for conflict. How to stage? Suspend hierarchy. Suspend class. Suspend demographic. Produce! Display! Agenda: Sepratrices to be erased by program: Spectator/Spectacle Sidewalk/Street Pedestrian/Performer Production/Consumption Riff on festival marketplace. Like Seaport to South . . . but not a mall.