http://h2obeta.law.harvard.edu/59714

ideas in the mix : on bricolage
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On Bricolage
Assembling Culture with Whatever Comes to Hand
by Anne-Marie Boisvert, translated by Timothy Barnard

It is significant that we speak about a remix “culture”, for it is much more than a mere musical movement. Naturally it includes cultural products – in other words, the “works” themselves. But it is also and especially the events in which these “products”(ie, music and/or video works) find themselves not so much presented as truly (re)created and remixed each time. The remix depends, above all, on the way the artist interacts with his or her machinery; on the “samples” chosen and the way they are related; and on the relationship between the work (which is always a work in progress) and the audience.

An Art of Bricolage
Art, generally speaking, expresses its era at the same time as it reveals that era to itself. Of course, I am not going to uphold a mechanical view here (such as the classic position of a variety of Marxism, for which the “base” determines the “superstructure”). But, assuredly, art is not created in isolation (in which case it would be irrelevant). It is therefore not surprising to find numerous examples of similar concerns, and ways of expression, emerging in the artistic practices of modernity (and of “post-modernity”). Many historical factors can be employed to explain such similarities: The rise of capitalism, industrial society, and their counterparts (individualism, the blossoming of science and urban life, and the increasing irrelevance of hierarchies, traditions, religious beliefs, and classical artistic canons that followed); the rise of the sort of mass culture and mass production typical of consumer society; and the growth of the “global village”.

As Umberto Eco remarks, “[A]rt forms are epistemological metaphors, like a creative (structuring) resolution of a diffuse theoretical consciousness, linked moreover less to a specific theory than to a general conviction.”¹ Thus art, as Claude Lévi-Strauss points out, “lies half-way between scientific knowledge and mythical or magical thought”.² For Lévi-Strauss, the human mind operated according to two modes of knowledge: that of the savage mind and the scientific mind. These are represented by the bricoleur and the engineer, respectively. The scientific mind is thus a functional mind, attempting to explain reality in quantitative terms. Its goal is efficiency. The savage mind, on the other hand, is a “science of the concrete” which attempts to “fit together”, to grasp the world as a network of relations and correspondences:

The “bricoleur” is adept at performing a large number of diverse tasks; but, unlike the engineer, he does not subordinate each of them to the availability of raw materials and tools conceived and procured for the purpose of the project. His universe of instruments is closed and the rules of his game are always to make do with ‘whatever is at hand’, that is to say with a set of tools and materials which is always finite and is also heterogeneous because what it contains bears no relation to the current project, or indeed to any particular project, but is the contingent result of all the occasions there have been to renew or enrich the stock or to maintain it with the remains of previous constructions or destructions.³

The engineer thus attempts to explain the world at the same time as dominating it, while the bricoleur seeks to inhabit it, to invest it in order to give it meaning. The former is thus engaged in “creating events (changing the world) by means of structures” in Levi-Strauss’ words (indicating the engineer’s “hypotheses and theories”), while the latter is engaged in “creating structures by means of events”.⁴ In this sense, the bricoleur seeks above all (more or less consciously) to preserve the qualitative complexity of the world by transposing this complexity onto structures of components with diverse and subtle relationships. This complexity is sacrificed by the scientific mind in favour of intelligibility.⁵ The bricoleur thus displays concern for recuperation, and thereby responds to a profound need: that of creating meaning through reassembly, by (re)organising and weaving meaningful relationships among apparently heterogeneous objects.

Art is closer to bricolage when (as is the case in the modern and contemporary era) works of art are conceived not so much as the reproduction of a model by applying a tried-and-true technique (as in classical Western art for example), but rather as products of a creative process wherein emphasis is placed on the execution itself (“communication with the materials”) and/or the intended purpose (“communication with the user”).⁶

A Little Reminder
Remix culture was not born in art galleries. It emerged out of the club milieu; out of “houses”; out of the work of DJs and hip hop MCs.⁷ It is in actuality one of the most recent developments in popular culture. For one of the most important features of modernity is to have made possible the blossoming of a culture which is neither “traditional ” (that is, typical of an ethnicity or a region) nor “erudite” (made by and for an elite), but whose new and spontaneous manifestations spring up “from below”. Most often, this culture is the fruit of urbanization. But, above all, it is the product of hybridization, and of the appropriation and (re)invention of expressive means (both the oldest devices, such as musical instruments, and the newest, such as electronic equipment, cameras, and the like) by sub-groups which are usually marginalized and/or proletarianized. (For example, Afro-Americans, youth, and so on.) These new means of expression usually start out “underground” before being co-opted by mass culture (another major phenomenon of modernity), as well as more “elitist” cultures – only to go on developing, mutating, and giving birth to new forms underground, over and over again.

The End of History
Francis Fukuyama, in a book that caused quite a stir in the 1990s, proclaimed the “end of history”.⁸ Of course, he used this expression above all for its shock value. Like Marx before him, Fukuyama borrowed this apocalyptic expression from Hegel in order to hail the fall of the Berlin Wall and outline its consequences: the end of the dialectical opposition between the great theses of communism and capitalism. Also, the victory of the latter, and of democratic values, which would now be free (at least in theory) to spread around the entire world.

This is not the place to discuss the merits of this thesis (which has prvoked numerous commentaries and criticisms). Rather, I would simply like to emphasize its symbolic value from a cultural point of view. For it is significant that the 1990s, and now the beginnings of the 21st century, have been characterized by what has been called the “death of ideology”; and, on the level of culture, by remix phenomena. In other words, by a culture of recycling, quoting, borrowing, collage, montage, mixing, and recontextualizing. From this perspective, remix culture in a narrow sense (the world of raves, of techno music, MCs, DJs, and VJs) can be seen as a kind of exacerbation, a mise en abime, of remix culture in the broad sense (ie, the world in w
hich we presently live).

Indeed, the meaning of history and the ideal of progress appear to have given way to a culture that is not so much projected in time as stretched out across space. Technology and the economy spread out and cast their web in global networks: we don’t speak about revolution, or even evolution, but rather of globalization, the Web and the Net. Cultural relativism and individualism appear as obligatory counterparts to this encroachment, this reduction of the world to a tide of particulars (merchandise, slogans, information). This state of affairs can have positive consequences, of course, such as greater levels of tolerance and democracy. But it can also have negative consequences, such as nihilism (if everything has value, then nothing has value).

Ultimately, advanced societies break up into subcultures, like so many tribes, each with its own reference points, interests, values, lifestyles and languages.

Remix Culture
Today we have the impression of living not in the here-and-now of a particular historical period, but in a world that is both instantaneous and cumulative, in which all things (consumer goods and cultural products included) accumulate and crumple up endlessly. Everything ends up as odds and ends and debris to be glued back together, and thus begin anew. Those generations of people born since the 1950s have been literally steeped in mass culture; it has washed over them through the mediation of increasingly numerous and omnipresent machines. Such objects have become an integral part of every moment of our daily lives. A litany of devices would include transmitting equipment like radios, transistors, televisions, stereos, walkmen, and computers. Also, recording equipment (tape recorders, video recorders) which, beginning in the 1970s, have accustomed people to capturing and manipulating images and sounds for their own purposes. And, finally, communications equipment (again including computers, whose communicative power has been multiplied by the Internet), which can be used for artistic intervention and creation. All of these devices grow increasingly portable and transportable.

“It’s just hard not to listen to TV,” groans Bart Simpson, “it’s spent so much more time raising us than you have.” We live today in a “rerun” and “remake” culture in which everything is simultaneously visible and audible, and where information is “continuous”. It is presently possible to bring together, superimpose, and crumple together images from a 1950s TV show, a 1970s commercial, a 1960s song, and (this has happened) an “erudite” cultural work. This state of affairs can give rise to disarray, of course. But it can also engender greater sophistication and distanciation. These are manifest in parody and irony, and also in nostalgia. Certainly, zapping and surfing (and, why not, twirling the radio dial) are modes of interaction which can promote a shortened attention span. But they are also household tools for selecting, cutting up, editing, and manipulating the tide of images and sounds. Everyone can make their choices and become a bricoleur. And from here it is only a short step to creating a “culture” in which appropriating (and “subverting”) all of these products and means of production becomes an aesthetic, ethical, and political choice.

This is the context in which remix culture appeared: a culture that embraces recycling and gleaning; and one whose originality lies in having transformed pre-recorded works and transmitting devices like turntables (the “traditional” tool of the DJ) into means of artistic creation. Here, the means of reproduction takes precedence and are used for production.⁹ In this way, the very concept of the “original work” is effaced and loses its meaning.

Remix culture is a culture of quoting, and of the remake. But it is also a culture of intervention and reinvention whose goal is entertainment but also communion and liberation. The artist at the controls wittingly yields to chance (in the form of “glitches”, among other things), and to the means at hand in his or her creative process – because, while the result matters, it matters less than the process, the performance, and the event. Remix culture borrows its sensorial saturation from post-industrial society, but reproduces this saturation in an aesthetic context that channels it. Remix “artworks” remain “open”, bringing some sense to the world’s cacophony (at least for a moment). Yet this is achieved via ephemeral bricolages and assemblages, which are always subject to transformation, and always susceptible to being reorganized in a new way.

Anne-Marie Boisvert completed graduate studies in French studies and analytic philosophy of language at Université de Montréal. In October 2001 she became editor-in-chief of the Centre international d’art contemporain de Montréal’s Electronic Magazine (http://www.ciac.ca/magazine).

Notes :
1. Umberto Eco, L’Oeuvre ouverte (Paris: Seuil, 1965 [1962]). For a more detailed discussion of this idea, see the entire chapter section from which this quote is taken, entitled “L’informel comme métaphore épistemologique”.

2. Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Savage Mind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966 [1960]).

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid.

5. On this topic, see Lévi-Strauss’s discussion of the complexity of the vocabulary of various indigenous peoples, as opposed to the relative poverty of scientific classification in: ibid.

6. Ibid.

7. For a detailed history of the birth and development of techno music, and the world of raves in its historical, musicological, political, and utopian aspects, see: Steve Mizrach, Is There Music in the House? An Ethnological Investigation of Techno/Rave (http://www.fiu.edu/~mizrachs/housemus.html)

8. Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992). The arrival of the year 2000 also, of course, has symbolic value.

9. Janne Vanhanen, “Loving the Ghost in the Machine: Aesthetics of Interruption” (2001), in: CTHEORY (http://www.ctheory.net/text_file.asp?pick=312)

Shirky (2008),

“By making it easier for groups to self-assemble and for individuals to contribute to group effort without requiring formal management (and its attendant overhead), these tools have radically altered the old limits on the size, sophistication, and scope of unsupervised effort (the limits that created the institutional dilemma in the first place)” (p. 21).

Shirky (2008),

“ One way to think about the change in the ability of groups to form and act is to use an analogy with the spread of disease. The classic model for the spread of disease looks at three variables – likelihood of infection, likelihood of contact between any two people, and overall size of population. If any of those variables increases, the overall spread of the disease increases as well” (p. 159).

Shirky (2008),

“Motivation, energy, and talent for action are all present in those sorts of groups – what was not present, until recently, was the ability to coordinate easily. Seen in that light, social tools don’t create collective action – they merely remove the obstacles to it… Revolution doesn’t happen when society adopts new technologies – it happens when society adopts new behaviors” (pp. 159-160).

http://www.shirky.com/

http://www.herecomeseverybody.org/

http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/mediaberkman/?s=shirky

Shiky, C. (2008). Here comes everybody: The power of organizations without organizations. London, England: Penguin Books, Limited.

Nakamura (2008),

“It is widely accepted notion that media interactivity is power. If this is true, then scholars and institutions wishing to create an equal and fair society have an interest in measuring types and degrees of digital interactivity as it is distributed among different social groups. We must create nuanced terms and concepts for evaluating participation to assess the impact of cultural power differentials on the ability of people of color, youth, senior citizens, and others to deploy their identities on the Internet.

Rather than focusing on the question of Internet access, a clumsy binary model of participation that ignores crucial questions about kinds of access, more recent scholarship has considered the impact of factors like skill level with search engines, as well as duration, speed, and location of internet access, on which kinds of access to information users can have. However, empirical studies have not tended to survey users about their production, if any, of Internet content.

As Greek Lovink notes, “read-only members” of virtual communities possess a different status in relation to that community than do those who post online. They more resemble television users in an infinitely channeled multimedia university than they do the idealized active, mobile, expressive subject posted in early research on online community.” (pp. 176-177)

Nakamura (2008),

“It is imperative that we devise rigorous methodologies to help us understand what constitutes meaningful participation online, participation that opens and broadens the kinds of discourse the kinds of discourse that can be articulated there. It is not enough merely to be “there”: the image of the online “lurker” invokes the passivity and ghostliness of those who watch from the sidelines of online life” (p. 201).

Nakamura, L. (2008). Digitizing race: Visual cultures of the internet. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.

http://homes.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html

A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace

by John Perry Barlow

Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.

We have no elected government, nor are we likely to have one, so I address you with no greater authority than that with which liberty itself always speaks. I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us. You have no moral right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear.

Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. You have neither solicited nor received ours. We did not invite you. You do not know us, nor do you know our world. Cyberspace does not lie within your borders. Do not think that you can build it, as though it were a public construction project. You cannot. It is an act of nature and it grows itself through our collective actions.

You have not engaged in our great and gathering conversation, nor did you create the wealth of our marketplaces. You do not know our culture, our ethics, or the unwritten codes that already provide our society more order than could be obtained by any of your impositions.

You claim there are problems among us that you need to solve. You use this claim as an excuse to invade our precincts. Many of these problems don’t exist. Where there are real conflicts, where there are wrongs, we will identify them and address them by our means. We are forming our own Social Contract . This governance will arise according to the conditions of our world, not yours. Our world is different.

Cyberspace consists of transactions, relationships, and thought itself, arrayed like a standing wave in the web of our communications. Ours is a world that is both everywhere and nowhere, but it is not where bodies live.

We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth.

We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.

Your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and context do not apply to us. They are all based on matter, and there is no matter here.

Our identities have no bodies, so, unlike you, we cannot obtain order by physical coercion. We believe that from ethics, enlightened self-interest, and the commonweal, our governance will emerge . Our identities may be distributed across many of your jurisdictions. The only law that all our constituent cultures would generally recognize is the Golden Rule. We hope we will be able to build our particular solutions on that basis. But we cannot accept the solutions you are attempting to impose.

In the United States, you have today created a law, the Telecommunications Reform Act, which repudiates your own Constitution and insults the dreams of Jefferson, Washington, Mill, Madison, DeToqueville, and Brandeis. These dreams must now be born anew in us.

You are terrified of your own children, since they are natives in a world where you will always be immigrants. Because you fear them, you entrust your bureaucracies with the parental responsibilities you are too cowardly to confront yourselves. In our world, all the sentiments and expressions of humanity, from the debasing to the angelic, are parts of a seamless whole, the global conversation of bits. We cannot separate the air that chokes from the air upon which wings beat.

In China, Germany, France, Russia, Singapore, Italy and the United States, you are trying to ward off the virus of liberty by erecting guard posts at the frontiers of Cyberspace. These may keep out the contagion for a small time, but they will not work in a world that will soon be blanketed in bit-bearing media.

Your increasingly obsolete information industries would perpetuate themselves by proposing laws, in America and elsewhere, that claim to own speech itself throughout the world. These laws would declare ideas to be another industrial product, no more noble than pig iron. In our world, whatever the human mind may create can be reproduced and distributed infinitely at no cost. The global conveyance of thought no longer requires your factories to accomplish.

These increasingly hostile and colonial measures place us in the same position as those previous lovers of freedom and self-determination who had to reject the authorities of distant, uninformed powers. We must declare our virtual selves immune to your sovereignty, even as we continue to consent to your rule over our bodies. We will spread ourselves across the Planet so that no one can arrest our thoughts.

We will create a civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace. May it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before.

Davos, Switzerland

February 8, 1996

How do we reconfigure these in our own anti-oppressive research?

genocide of knowledge

• What is your entry point?
• What do you want to achieve through this project? (remember this is a work in progress)
• What is your personal agenda? How are you personally connected to this project? What is your desires, motivation, etc.?
• What is your social location in terms of the project – how does that impact what you will find and not find? How am I located in it?
• How does your project address or advance a social justice agenda? What conceptualization of social justice are you operating from in terms of doing this project? How do I conceptualize social justice?
• Integrating the question of intersectionality in analysis — this will help formulate.