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Spectres of the Spectrum
Script, production, direction: Craig Baldwin
USA, 1999, 16mm, 91 min
The year is 2007. Life in the desert
outside Las Vegas is desolate. Uncontrolled technology is destroying
the universe. Radio, TV, radars, x-rays, microwaves and tens of
other plagues are corrupting our collective consciousness. A supranational
Big Brother called NEO (New Electromagnetic Order) is preparing
for the final solution, “The Pulse” that will wipe out
all life from Earth. Physicists Yogi (father) and BooBoo (daughter)
are humanity’s only hope. They discover that an episode of
a 1957 Science in Action TV series may contain a coded
message that could be used to prevent the destruction. BooBoo
uses the time machine she’s invented to travel through the
20th century. During the trip, she gets an overdose of greed,
decadence, military speculation and political power games of multinational
corporations.
Trying to describe the plot of Craig
Baldwin’s latest movie is like trying to photograph lightning.
Spectres of the Spectrum is like a massive surge of paranoid
evidence from the past century. In this chaotic fairytale world
Edison, Tesla, Georges Méliès, Aleister Crowley,
RCA, Microsoft, the destruction of the Titanic etc. form, almost
self-evidently, a manic tangle of conspiracy. Baldwin’s feverish
storytelling uninhibitedly combines the oddest media-archaeological
pieces: horror movies, educational programmes, corporate presentation
films, news, cartoons, quiz shows...
As a conspiracy theory, the satire of
Spectres of the Spectrum is extremely funny, and genuinely political,
too. The result of three years’ work, the film is an unparalleled
found-footage combination of formal experimentation, leftist activism
and top entertainment. Baldwin’s vision is clear. He is not
trying to hide his repulsion for supranational monopolies, globalisation
and the “free information society”.
To those with wide musical tastes the
soundtrack alone is a real treasure trove, with artists like Atari
Teenage Riot, Walter Carlos, DJ Spooky, Dick Hyman, Illusion of
Safety, Joe Meek, Merzbow, Nurse With Wound, Pauline Oliveiros,
Korla Pandit, Stereolab, Morton Subotnick, The Ventures, Zoviet
France...MT
Sonic Outlaws
Direction: Craig Baldwin
USA, 1995, 87 min, 16 mm
Sonic Outlaws is a rowdy crash course
in 80's and 90's American counterculture. In starring roles, plagiarism
and the copywrong movement linked with copyrights owned by large
corporations; supported by anti-branding actions, billboard sabotage
and the illicit sampling of entertainers and politicians etc.,
all in the name of fun and anti-authoritarian gain. In the past
couple of years these strategies, with roots in artistic sub-cultures,
have been embraced by “real” politics in the form of
activism, as Naomi Klein writes in her book No Logo. Craig
Baldwin’s collage document retraces the activists’ Culture
Jamming back to Dada, the situationists’ criticism of the
'society of the spectacle' and 80's U.S. networking sub-cultures.
At the same time Sonic Outlaws is an
audiovisual fireworks display of underground Americana, breathtaking
and colourful; real trash culture modified for new purposes. A
large part of its material has been pilfered, without permission,
from B-movies and cable TV shows, which underlines the concept
of the folklore of the electronic age, reiterated by many of the
“sonic outlaws” interrogated in the film. According
to them, tradition-based folk art cannot emerge in the present
world because all significant images and sounds are strictly protected
by copyright laws, and thus can’t be used as parts of new
works. The most fervent even call this a new kind of censorship.
The wealth of material in Sonic Outlaws
is held together - in true American style - by a court case. In
1991, the San Francisco group Negativland sampled U2 without permission
and mixed their music with foul-mouthed comments about the band,
uttered by an American radio celebrity and taped without his knowledge.
The resulting record, called U2, was released by Negativland who
were immediately sued by U2's record company. The record company
defended the copyright of its financially heaviest stars even
though the “supergroup” claimed they didn’t want
to sue anybody. The following year when U2 started their massive
Zoo TV stadium tour, there was an even stranger twist to the story
that reveals a lot about the subtle mechanisms of today’s
capitalism. U2 hired another American underground group, Emergency
Broadcast Network, to stage a trendy copywrong show with huge
video monitors showing TV broadcasts from different countries
- no permissions asked - and “spectacle critical” slogans
projected onto a screen.
From the Finnish point of view, the satire
of Negativland, John Oswald, Tape Beatles & co is at its funniest
when it mocks major rock stars and the global cult surrounding
them. A good example is the scene depicting a Hellenic deity resembling
a Soviet war memorial, with one of the audio activists declaring:
“It’s a GOOD THING that artifically blown up, hollow
cult heroes are criticized and made laughable. The hype surrounding
them is an insult to every thinking human being.” AN
Read an interview
with Craig Baldwin by Alvin Lu.
Thursday 8.11.2001 - Kiasma Theatre
18:00 - Screening of Spectres of the
Spectrum
Sunday 11.11.2001 - Kiasma Theatre
14:00 - Screening of Sonic Outlaws
20:00 - Screening of Spectres
of the Spectrum
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