Cutting Across Media

...the book brings together a broad range of contributors, from highfalutin academics to cutting-edge (no pun intended) street-level remixers, who reflect on a plethora of creative practices in all manner of media and genres." - Vince Carducci, PopMatters.com "Communication is much like a work of art--it is a process of copying, repeating, and varying what we hear. There is no originator or owner of that which shapes our very being, and Cutting Across Media demonstrates how placing restrictions on creative commentary can stifle our cultural development." - Vicki Bennett, aka People Like Us "The collection vacillates between well-demonstrated and novel critical positions. Where the most prominent works on the subject tend to dwell on digital's infinite capacity to reproduce and share itself freely and its current kowtowing to corporate rights management, this book begins by situating appropriation art and collage in the earlier recesses of the twentieth century with Walter Benjamin, the Surrealists, and Dada. Along the way, it touches upon zine culture, audiotape collage, street art, and new wave science fiction; it critiques the international outflows of copyright-subject culture and then it critiques the debate itself... Cutting Across Media is notable in the insight it provides into hip-hop and rap's participation in appropriation art and collage culture." - Allie Curry, Rain Taxi "Prioritising usage over rights lies, ironically, at the heart of capitalism itself- which adds to the current contradictions of perceived digital freedom. McLeod and Kuenzli are more than aware of this, adding that those lamenting the expansion of intellectual property often "sound like Libertarian cowboys'. On the whole, and to its credit, this volume gives voice to both sides. Participations range from, to name just a few, Craig Baldwin's catalogue of 'billboard liberation' activities to McLeods's essays on the KLF (remember the K foundation? Burning GBP1m and giving Rachel Whiteread the 'Worst Artist Award' at her receipt of the Turner Prize and other anarcho-pop manifestations) to David Schneiderman on the cut-ups of William Burroughs and DJ Danger Mouse's Grey Album." - David Ryan, Art Monthly, May 2012