I have an essay in a new book from Duke UP, Cutting Across Media: Appropriation Art, Interventionist Collage and Copyright Law, edited by intellectual property theorist and prankster Kembrew McLeod and dada scholar Rudi Kuenzli. The essay, “Digital Mana: On the Infinite Proliferation of Mutant Copies in Contemporary Culture” is a pretty freewheeling spin through the work of Philip K. Dick and the late great graffiti sage Rammellzee, amongst others … taking the position that countercultures in the late twentieth century are very much concerned with the concept of infinity and how human beings can access it through various practices and counter-mathematics. I apply some of Alain Badiou’s work on the politics of how we think about infinity to some examples that probably Badiou would not be interested in … but generally, I think Badiou is right that our ability to imagine and enact social transformation is related to our understanding of number, and that which is beyond number. “Version like rain!” Generally speaking, it’s a great collection, with work by Siva Vaidhyanathan, Joshua Clover, Douglas Kahn, Craig Baldwin, Jeff Chang, Jonathan Lethem and many others ….
Cutting Across Media: Appropriation Art, Interventionist Collage and Copyright Law
June 21, 2011 by marcusboon
Filed Under: Essays Tagged With: Alain Badiou, Copying Culture, Craig Baldwin, Cutting Across Media, Digital Mana: On the Infinite Proliferation of Mutant Copies in Contemporary Culture, Douglas Kahn, Jeff Chang, Jonathan Lethem, Joshua Clover, Kembrew McLeod, Philip K. Dick, Rammellzee, Rudi Kuenzli, Siva Vaidhyanathan