Abstract

Political remix video (PRV) appropriates media familiar to the general public: film, TV, news broadcasts, sometimes even still photography. The video editor exploits this familiarity to critical effect. When one sees, for example, George W. Bush or Barack Obama in a political remix, they no longer espouse the platitudes and clichés of US foreign policy, the state of the US economy, or other official governmental positions. The new video work recalibrates its sources in order to repudiate the ideologies embedded within them, positing what the artist holds to be a corrective lens to the postures initially propagated by mainstream media, Hollywood, and other powerful institutions.