Craig Baldwin

Collage film form
Recontextualization of found imagery – Reappropriating
Copy-Art, Mail Art, ‘Zines, Altered Billboards
Beyond the fringe of the traditional fine-arts curriculum
Liquidate the formal distinctions between
“popular” and “fine” art
“public” and “private” imagery
“political” and “aesthetic” categories
through a proliferation of discursive modes
Black-Comic Social Critique
Graphic Montage
Rhythm
Acceleration
Mobilization and Manipulation and Manic Play
With Old and New Meanings
as “Found” footage
Re-Contextualized
With Newly-Produced
Sound and Imagery
Documentary Testimony
Collateral Text
Polymorphous Collage-Essay Form
Create an
Audio-Visual Language
Phraseology
Same
Abstract,
Metaphoric,
Punning
Qualities as Spoken Language
Clusters of Signifiers in Provisional Constructs
Cobbled Together
Flotsam and Jetsam
of Film Culture

Independent Filmmaker
Programmer
Media Archaeologist

Pirating Footage from Both the
Mass Media and “Found” Marginalia
Subverts Conventional Documentary Form
With
Satiric Commentary
Wildly Energized Montage
Parodying the Sordid History of US Imperialism
Through
Cinematic Language of Science Fiction
Playing with
Issues of Intellectual Property
By
“Jamming” the Corporate Owners of Copyright
Crossing of
Experimental
Audio-Visual
Strategies With
Trenchant Cultural Critique
Yields
Hilariously Provocative
Body of Work
Tribulation 99: Alien Anomalies Under America
(1991) 16mm film, color/sound, 48 mins.
A pseudo pseudo-documentary, obsessively organized into 99 paranoid rants, parlaying every imaginable scrap of "found" footage, re-filmed TV, and industrial sound into a revisionist history of alien intervention in Latin America. A melange of satire, political fantasy, and black comedy, the film takes on crack-pot paranoid theories, environmental deconstruction, and CIA intervention -- and more -- all in one shot.

Tribulation 99:
Unspooled a satiric psycho-political rant on
Millenarianism,
Environmental Apocalypse,
CIA Covert Action
In Latin America
With Flying-Saucer Simulations
The Hypnotic Music
of
Yma Sumac

Foreshadowing Conspiriologist
Johnathan Vankin
Description of the 90s
“Decade of Conspiracy”
Lampooning Paranoid Conspiracy Theories
CIA “Black Ops” Campaigns
Environmental Devastation
Blends
Satire With
Fantasy
Revisionist History
With
Moral Outrage

Sonic Outlaws
(1995) 16mm film, color/sound, 80 mins.
Sonic Outlaws is an energized discourse on contemporary controversies concerning copyright infringement, "fair use," and culture-jamming. Stemming from an investigation into the infamous Negativland-U2 suit, this dense montage of interview, music, and stock footage spirals out into the similarly inspired activities of John Oswald, the Tape-beatles, the Emergency Broadcast Network, the Barbie Liberation Organization, the Situationists, and a multitude of others now working with "found" sound. Practices of phone-pranking, billboard alteration, media-hoaxing, and the digitalization of intellectual property, seen in light of the law in a period of rapid artistic and technological change, foreground emerging tensions between imagination, authorship, autonomy, and the marketplace.
Baldwin's project itself morphs from a compilation doc into a veritable collage, likewise problematizing relations between "cover versions," homage, pastiche, parody, and criticism. All the while it suggests methods of creative resistance -- and perhaps the hope of an "electronic folk culture" -- in the midst of an all-consuming electronic environment under increasing corporate control. Note: Also check out the Sonic Outlaws web site!
Sonic Outlaws:
Experimental documentary on Fair Use
“Culture-Jamming”
Electronic Folk Culture
Exploring the
Legal,
Political,
Artistic
Implications
of the
Audio-Collage
Of
Negativland,
John Oswald,
Tape-Beatles

Contentious Copyright Issues
Surrounding
Negativeland/U2 Law-Suit
Examining
“Culture Jamming”
Rebels
“Tape-Beatles”
“Barbie Liberation Foundation”
Irony of U2 Hiring
“Emergency Broadcast Network”
to Work on “Zoo TV” Tour (‘91-’93)

Anarchist/Fuzzy Logic
Perspective
Culture Jammers
Send Out Mixed Signals
to the Media
Cause Disturbance
in a System
without Check

Overwhelming Mass-Media
Influence over the Arts
Legal Provisions @ Copyright
@ Cultural Property
@ Authorship
Cannot Keep Up with
Revolutions in
Technology
Art-Making
Aesthetic
Cultural
Ethical
Contradictions

http://www.hi-beam.net/mkr/cb/cb-bio.html
http://www.alpertawards.com/archive/winner97/baldwin.html
http://www.disinfo.com/archive/pages/dossier/id303/pg1/
http://www.timesup.org/Harbours/baldwin.html