The Concept of the Remix

The sorts of collage art that we in the Generation X made at school involved cutting up magazine pictures and gluing them in bizarre configurations on a piece of paper. Sometimes they were just random, but sometimes we tried to make a statement, like when we were supposed to make collages about "what it means to be an American," as I had to do multiple times in Social Studies Class. The collage shares a lot in common with the concept of the remix. The remix allows one to put different pieces in different places to different effects as well as to different affects, while retaining some fractured continuity with the past. Remixing the past is the only way that we can intervene in what already has been. Nostalgia is a desire to repeat a past that never was out of hatred for and fear of difference. The remix is a desire to reinterpret that past to renew the present as a presentation of difference. Sample-based music was the heart and soul of Generation X's love of pastiche, and its desire to rearrange the past to make the world new.

Trying Too Hard