Cutting Across Media

In this collection of essays, leading academics, critics, and artists historicize collage and appropriation tactics that cut across diverse media and genres. They take up issues of appropriation in the popular and the avant-garde, in altered billboards and the work of the renowned painter Chris Ofili, in hip-hop and the compositions of Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály, and in audio mash-ups, remixed news broadcasts, pranks, culture jamming, and many other cultural forms. The borrowing practices they consider often run afoul of intellectual property regimes, and many of the contributors address the effects of copyright and trademark law on creativity. Among the contributors are the novelist and essayist Jonathan Lethem, the poet and cultural critic Joshua Clover, the filmmaker Craig Baldwin, the hip-hop historian Jeff Chang, the 'zine-maker and sound collage artist Lloyd Dunn, and Negativland, the infamous collective that was sued in 1992 for sampling U2 in a satirical sound collage. Cutting Across Media is both a serious examination of collage and appropriation practices and a celebration of their transformative political and cultural possibilities.

Kembrew McLeod is Associate Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Iowa. He is the author of Freedom of Expression®: Resistance and Repression in the Age of Intellectual Property and Owning Culture: Authorship, Ownership, and Intellectual Property Law, and co-creator of the documentary film Copyright Criminals.

Rudolf Kuenzli is Professor of Comparative Literature and English at the University of Iowa, where he is the Director of the International Dada Archive. He is the editor of the journal Dada/Surrealism.

Contributors
Craig Baldwin
David Banash
Marcus Boon
Jeff Chang
Joshua Clover
Lorraine Morales Cox
Lloyd Dunn
Pierre Joris
Douglas Kahn
Rudolf Kuenzli
Rob Latham
Jonathan Lethem
Carrie McLaren
Kembrew McLeod
Negativland
Philo T. Farnsworth
Davis Schneiderman
Siva Vaidhyanathan
Gábor Vályi
Eva Hemmungs Wirtén