Rebirth of a Nation

I was thinking about Manovich’s discussion of remixing in “Models of Authorship in New Media,” when I remembered a really interesting example that I encountered in one of my classes last semester. DJ Spooky (aka Paul D. Miller) is a writer and DJ who recently created a project called “Rebirth of a Nation”. This piece is basically a remix of the technically brilliant yet horribly racist film “Birth of a Nation”. DJ Spooky remixes both the images and the sound, providing his own soundtrack. He says that, “By remixing the film along the lines of dj culture, I hoped to create a counter-narrative, one where the story implodes on itself, one where new stories arise out the ashes of that explosion.” To me, this approach seemed very much in line with Manovich’s view of remix. DJ Spooky aims to engage with the film in deeper, more deliberate manner than is implied by a term like “appropriation”. As Manovich says, "'remixing' is a better term because it suggests a systematic re-working of a source, the meaning which 'appropriation' does not have."

“Birth of a Nation” seems like a text that’s particularly ripe for remixing, precisely because of the conflicts between its technological achievements and its blatantly racist content. Though I haven’t seen all of “Rebirth of a Nation,” I think that the remixing of “Birth of a Nation” by a black artist has the potential to be very powerful. I see it as a good example of the potential of remixing.

Manovich also talks about how remixing may not as prevalent in other mediums besides music because of copyright issues. I would be curious to see what DJ Spooky’s experience was with copyrights in producing this project.

You can read more about “Rebirth of a Nation,” as well as watch a clip and listen to some of the music here: http://djspooky.com/art.html