Enlightenment, the Remix: Transparency as a DJ's Trick of Seeing Everyone From Nowhere

Abstract

In 2009, scholars and journalists hailed YouTube remix artist Kutiman's 8‐video musical opus Thru‐YOU as an icon of democratic cultural production. This article builds from a close reading of those videos—and survey of press coverage and relevant scholarly literature—to ask why people attributed agency to the remixed rather than the remixer when fragments were appropriated from essentially private citizens rather than celebrities. Those fragments are analyzed through a new tripartite framework for understanding the commons as a “goldmine,” “pot of dirt,” and “cutting room floor.” The concept of “transparency” allows reconception of remix neither as “bottom–up” cultural force nor as embodying the postmodern quality of being multiperspectival, but rather as subjugating individuals within the singular nonperspective of scientism.

Copy Rights: The Politics of Copying and Creativity

“…This argument does not just apply as a contrast to the business-based account of rights, it also applies for those like Lawrence Lessig and others who wish to minimise the role of copyright. As Ethan Plaut (2016: 306; see also, Sibley, 2015: 53) points out, the Lessig approach overlooks ‘what of the self – not only labor, but also elements of one’s identity – inheres in cultural products’. It is not a relationship of ownership.…”