detourn this concept: The Godzilla News Network

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True Lies

... Remix and reappropriate the videos at http://gnn.tv/videos/ in a way that truly makes them disruptive. Shake them loose from their didacticism, their preachiness, their morality, their context, their sense, until they are turned in on themselves and glimpses of the spectacle are revealed. In other words, detourn them. Put your remixes on the web at a site called "The Godzilla News Network." Use reamweaver ( http://www.reamweaver.com )to appropriate the design of the GNN site and recontextualize it as you have the videos. Titling is crucial.

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Hints:

1. Remix in footage from "Gorrilaz" videos ( http://www.gorillaz.com ) , because, you know, gorilla - guerilla.

2. Remix in footage of "King Kong vs. Godzilla," because Godzilla rhymes with guerilla and gorilla, and King Kong is an ape. Also, the monsters will be crushing the whole city, tearing it up. Focus more on the collateral damage than on either King Kong or Godzilla. It's not about the liberals vs. the conservatives, it's not about the democrats/republicans vs. Noam Chomsky, it's not even about your new Godzilla News Network vs. their old Guerilla News Network. It's about the ashes from whence a phoenix may rise and begin its spiralling slouch toward Bethlehem.

3. Move in the opposite spirit. To detourn a "hi-impact brand," you need a slow impact pace. Leave in 5-minute-long periods of silence and blankness (a la Debord's "Hurlements en faveur de Sade"). Eschew hip-hop. Incorporate doo-wop. I'm partial to the Platter's "Only You," but "Earth Angel" is perfectly acceptable.

4. Don't fall into the easy dis Bush trap. Draw your horns on the head of Warhol soup cans; paint your pitchfork into the hands of Ozzie Nelson. Bush is the quintessential iconic bogey, luring millions of potentially disruptive heads into an almost involuntary, hypnotic, knee-jerk vilification of himself. He is the polarizing agent that coaxes "radical artists" into the spectacle. We become that upon which we gaze. To oppose Bush above all else is not to oppose the spectacle. It is to participate in the spectacle at a most ramped-up, self-deluded level. (If even now you feel disdain rising up in you and an irresistable desire to write a scathingly indignant response to this post, it's probably too late for you.) He who has ears, let him hear.

5. If your piece reads like a didactic critique of the GNN, you've failed. If your piece reads like a holiday in the leopard cage (replete with a ransom note from Leopold of Austria), your compass begins to point Northwest. ...

Originally posted on Rhizome.org Raw by curt cloninger