By: Roxanne Bogucka

I recently spent a morning on the phone with Craig Baldwin, leading exponent of culture jamming and media piracy. Baldwin teaches university courses on media recycling and directed the films SONIC OUTLAWS, TRIBULATION 99, and most recently, SPECTRES OF THE SPECTRUM. He was a presenter at the CinemaTexas International Short Film + Video Festival in Austin, Texas.

RB: Great. Okay, well I was kind of hoping to catch up with you recently at CinemaTexas but I didn't get a chance. There was so much going on and I got pretty tired, but it sounds like now you are doing a lot of traveling. How many festivals do you attend each year?

CB: Well, you know I made a film in the last year so there is a lot of touring right after you finish production and you can go several years without touring, so I could not generalize this year, it was a really busy year for me.

RB: Because of SPECTRES OF THE SPECTRUM?

CB: Well, basically filmed the first year of release and there is a lot of cities, but you know (laughs) I don't keep a calendar. By the way, it's not all festivals. A lot of it is school stuff or something to do with a museum. On that particular tour right there I was artist in residence at the Walker Arts Center, so I was at the Walker three times over the course of the year. So every time I went to the midwest or San Francisco I would kind of add on and it wasn't just necessarily, in the case of Austin, yeah that was a festival but just Shreveport where I went the next day, by the way, I was at MicroCinema. At Madison it was the University Film Society, and Winnipeg, that was a festival. Here I am at the University of Maryland—Baltimore County, which is kind of a … art department, today and Maryland Institute of Contemporary Art. You know, Winston Salem, Raleigh, Columbia, South Carolina, and there, it's not all festivals but you know, let's say at least 20 festivals, that's for sure, but generally added on, kind of orbiting around the festival event will be a school or gallery gigs.

RB: Okay.

CB: But you know, it's hard to generalize, it just depends on what the scale of the picture is, what the size of your picture is, you know, if it is a small work, short work, probably it wouldn't warrant a lot of air travel.

RB: Had you been to CinemaTexas before?

CB: I never had been.

RB: I know your film had been at South by Southwest.

CB: Yes, SONIC OUTLAWS, which I made in '95. played three shows at South by Southwest and then when I came out with this one, SPECTRES, it only played one time. I was not sure why and I left it up to the bookers and then, so it sold out. I can't remember the name of the theater but, I guess the people there felt there was still an audience for it in Austin. Plus there was the sidebar issue, but that was really the primary reason I was there, not so much just a rerun of the SOS but really to be the emcee and make the presentation as part of the Parallax.

RB: And I noticed, I was at the Press Play to Agitate Salon at CinemaTexas, which was a wonderful experience. I wish we had time to see the pieces in their entirety. I noticed most of the pieces we saw were pretty decidedly from the left politically. Are there culture jammers or media prankers on the right?

CB: (laughs)

RB: Or are they the ones we see every day?

CB: Yeah, basically, that's a good question, no one has ever asked me that question. You know, and it never, never even occurred to me. I suppose there are…you know, it's mostly the right is already in control of the media, you know in a way, so they don't really have to try to disturb it. You know, I can't really think of any particular instance. It would be good to cite that if you really want to do an authoritative history, but the answer is I don't know.

RB: Okay. I was thinking about some of the shorts we saw, especially some of Igor Vamos' stuff or Jennifer Lau's work on billboard alterations or Jesse Drew's "Manifestoon" which was wonderful.

CB: He went to UT [the University of Texas at Austin] by the way.

RB: Yeah, these things, it seems to be can't really reach a wide audience through the usual conduit. When these filmmakers are creating these works, who do they see as their audiences? Do you know, I mean, have you all had these types of conversations?

CB: Okay, that's a pretty good question, but first of all I really can't speak for all the artists, of course I am a culture jammer myself, quote unquote, so I feel like I'm sort of calling them there. I get a feel for the general sense of the community such as it is and I would say people don't necessary have a strategy. ®TMARK is a little more well planned and designed in terms of their distribution strategy but for the most part people do it out of passion or anger or rage or you know, and then they say wherever it will play, so be it, "it's all good" kind of thing. All those films have been distributed very widely by the way.

RB: Oh really.

CB: Sure they have, but I don't know what you mean by—kind of like, people don't necessary want to get them on television, it actually stays within the subculture or art culture which is of course, vast, not probably as big as the television audience, no. But I don't think they have, let's put it this way, I don't they have any expectations that it would get on television if that's what you mean. But, you know, there is plenty of other outlets, and in the case of Jesse's pieces which are distributed by Video Databank, which is probably the largest distributor of video art, in the United States and probably has a European distributor as well. That has been on television by the way, on Free Speech TV. Now in the case of Igor Vamos' work… he did that and that was part of my movie SONIC OUTLAWS, that certainly reached, oh, tens of millions through this strategy of amplification that I might have touched on in my presentation, of doing an event and then covering the event through video news releases and then sending out to news organizations and then let them report it and kind of use them as a springboard to mass audiences, see what I mean?

RB: Yeah.

CB: So just using media like a brush, like another tool in an artist's palette. So I would say all of those films I showed have been you know, pretty, pretty successful in terms of popular reception though, that would not necessarily be a criteria for me. I am also interested in radical actions that, you know, appeal to small groups. I am totally into small groups. Again, now you're talking about my point of view. …the audience doesn't lead, you know, I have this tradition coming from art that a lot has to do with personal expression. So it's not necessary everything has to be a priori design in market research, in order to release a piece that has to reach a certain number of people. It's the other way around.

RB: I wasn't thinking of that so much, as I was thinking these are wonderful pieces, how can they get to be seen and I know that after the Press Played to Agitate salon, I was talking with several people and they were saying, gosh, these films are great but I can't imagine how I could ever find this type of material outside of the festival circuit, especially some of the films that depict unlawful acts or films that are using footage without permission, you know, it seems in order to avoid or evade legal difficulties, people could not distribute them as widely. So a lot of people are saying, "Wow, I wonder how you can find this stuff because it seems like it is got some sort of unlawful aspects to it." And so maybe people have communities of trust within which they circulate their works, and I'm not in the community.

CB: That is a good word. Communities of trust. I use the word alternative space or subculture, and that, or the Micro Cinema circuit, which is all vast, even festivals themselves. More than just the culture jamming stuff, which distributing short films, don't you know is a problem, because, you know, there is a series of individual makers, it might be ten makers on a show. So the package of short films is a big hassle to put together, you know what I mean, and so they have been succeeding lately by the way. One, in festivals and two, like on planes now you'll see short films, and three, some theaters are actually putting them prior to the feature, and four, with the internet now. And I can't remember the names of these little start up companies that do play short films to keep people busy at their jobs basically. You know what I mean, when they're bored. So the short film has come back in a big way. But as far as moving it around, it's still a problem because, don't you see, it's not all just one package, you have to get this from, you know, Time Warner or for that matter Video Databank you have to contact each of those individual persons, some of them are anonymous like in the case of ®TMARK. So the point is someone could actually put them together as a compilation and that probably will happen, like a CD basically, you know, like a soundtrack, you know what I mean? Like different artists on an omnibus, kind of platform and that could happen and it would happen if someone basically put out a label, you know would step forward and do it but again because of the legal complications they probably wouldn't. Another way this is done, is in the academy and you are seeing culture jamming classes emerge by the way, which of course, some people are not happy about. It's okay with me. I'm an academic myself. I mean I teach, let's put it that way. So I'm glad to see classes offered within communications departments, so well, on media democracy or whatever it's called you know, creative interventions, you know and a lot of campuses are coming around that way. But it's not like there's you know, people can just open up a catalog to culture jamming and order. There is a magazine in Vancouver that I think I might have mentioned Ad Busters which kind of has a list of books and there is probably a few videos on it, but again, that is a home video kind of thing. So, the point is that yeah, some of this stuff is kind of through this informal, I guess you could say, collegial kind of community of trust, because I know those people personally and there is a network. What can I say, and a lot of it is within the 'zine world and a lot of it is in the punk rock world and so on. But I couldn't necessary expect someone who is new to it, coming in from out of the country or something like that to necessary infiltrate and get in and know these people. It would take a while. You would have to know one person. A lot of people communicate by email kind of thing. You know what I mean, that's one way of doing it. But, so…there is an informal network but it's true there is no structural thing and I kind of doubt if there ever will because some of these people are so interested in being outlaws, you know what I mean? And they don't want some kind of institution. They represent themselves, which is kind of the whole problem with the anarchists' movement in the U.S., it's all splintered. So I don't know, it's a great question and when people did ask me that, not only in Austin but also basically after, in fact I'm presenting in about an hour at the Maryland Institute of Contemporary Art. That's why I'm coming into these festivals and colleges, because I did the work to contact these people and put the show together. I have a different version of it by the way, I might have 30 tapes in my suitcase. So I can pitch it toward the communications departments or pitch it towards art departments, you know, in terms of art history or collage or something like that I can pitch it toward political science departments or pitch it toward the subculture, in an alternative space or something like that. So I can organize it our show and focus on this issue or that issue, that, like I say, I did the work to do that but I'm not patting myself on the back. I think other people will be doing it. … A lot of people are very, very interested, like I say, in what do you call it, this mass, numbers, kind of thing, so, I think distribution might be more or less a problem. … really I must say the people who are the most savvy about that are ®TMARK, they definitely made a major impact, in fact they are in Time Magazine, like I say, about a month ago with the G.W. Bush campaign thing, I don't know if you heard about that or not.

RB: No, no I hadn't.

CB: … basically what they did, is instead of George W. Bush, they set up their little alternative web site which is G.W. Bush, so people of course would go there by accident. And then it looks, it's a perfect example of culture jamming, what I was talking about, Trojan Horse and mimicry. It looks exactly like a professional web site. It doesn't even try to be arty, it just tries to be corporate and commercial and when you go there, it's all Bush's lies and contradictions and his whole cocaine use, it's all there on that web page and that really provoked his campaign—

RB: This is the one they wanted to get closed down?

CB: Yeah, sure, that's one, well they do that all the time. It's just a strategy in the information age, like I say, politics by other means rather than petitions or so on, it's just using media platforms to conduct a war of symbols, at that level, so anyway… the campaign manager said, "Well maybe there should be some restrictions on free speech after all," which was basically not really a very good thing to so. And so basically, I think they call it Politics of Embarrassment. It's just to pester them, like this David and Goliath thing… draw the big guys off base until they say something that's wrong and they embarrass themselves and then they're exposed. And he had to take that back you know, and he was just completely grilled of course, in the press when he said that, so it was like a little tiny small group of people could just harass someone to cause them to lose balance and misspeak. And you know, they wanted ®TMARK to actually register as a political action group because they had done this. So anyway, they made a big ripple, just like I say, a bunch of hackers basically. So anyway as far as the videotape, the single channel stuff goes, I would say it's more or less available through the fine-art video, of video art world which is not huge that's for sure. But SONIC OUTLAWS, the film, probably actually crossed over more successful being a feature, so that has been played basically in every city that has a rep house.

RB: Did SONIC OUTLAWS, I'm kind of jumping ahead, I was going to ask you later about SONIC OUTLAWS, but since you mentioned that—it's success—it is apparently the film that you know, however you feel about it, the film that you are most known for. Did it change your life as a filmmaker?

CB: Actually TRIBULATION 99 is the film that generally people cite as the high of my own career, but I would really rather not talk about that, it's too egoistic. But, the film did not, I can't say it did, I'm still as miserable as ever (laughs). No, I say the film succeeded, I'm glad that they did but I'm still doing what I was always doing which is making movies and teaching school and then when you make a movie you tour after it, and it's fine if the film is received because you get another gig and so on and you continue to make another print or issue more videotapes and so on. But it's just, what can I say, it's just a circulation of energy to keep the movie going, it didn't substantially or qualitatively change my life, I'm still living in the same place, just a funky little studio (laughs).

RB: Okay, and teaching school you're at the University of San Francisco?

CB: No, well, no, I'm at San Francisco State University, by the way, a different school.

RB: We have to get that right, sorry about that. Jumping back a little bit, after seeing the Press Play to Agitate salon, I was chatting with some people and people were sort of comparing some of the things we saw to what you might think of as a bit more mainstream in the sense that it's on TV, type of social commentary like that you get from Michael Moore and wondering whether you might consider Michael Moore's work to be in this type of culture jamming tradition? Or do you think he's doing some other work you would categorize otherwise, or—?

CB: I think it's a good question, it actually comes up sometimes. Here's the way I feel about it, again… first of all I won't speak for all culture jammers and I won't even define it as a movement. A lot of people, you know are like I say, anonymous and they want to retain that, and they consider themselves outlaws completely but… I'm a little older than some of those people and I'm not saying more mature but I'm maybe more pragmatic and I really think I would always call for an inclusive definition, you know what I mean. What I can say is a united front and so it's not like, "Well these guys, Michael Moore, he's just whatever..." You know I mean, he's trying to get on TV or whatever. He's facing the mainstream, facing the wrong way. I don't believe that at all. I believe... any kind of action is critical, so I don't have a hard and fast definition of what culture jamming—this is inside the line or outside the line—I think that's purist and ridiculous. So the answer to your question is yes, I think what he does is brilliant and great and I applaud it and I embrace it and it's fine and what he does is you know cutesy or whatever, that's cool with me. And he doesn't necessarily break the law, well that's okay, you don't have to be a big bad outlaw. There is a lot of braggadocio and you know, at some level of it, we have to do something that's transgressive. I'm more interested in stuff that's transgressive, that's for sure personally but I wouldn't exclude the other stuff so I see it, I guess my answer is, I see it as a spectrum (laughs). You know I see it as you can define yourself anywhere you want along that line of action. You can go ahead and just do things which are legal you know, and you know read your Ad Busters and keep up with your media literacy classes or Paper Tiger TV is another great example of someone who is you know, just trying to reach people through education and not direct action, they do direct action too. Michael Moore does direct action. So I love his stuff, I think it's great and it's very, very successful. I just think there's different tactics, that's the best way to put it. There's different tactics that are called for at different occasions and as far as a major sort of presentation to a very large group of people, and taking this very critical perspective, and a certain amount of attitude, I think Michael Moore is exemplary. I think he's fantastic. So I'm not interested in saying whether he is inside or outside the so-called culture jammer movement, I think we need all the allies we can get. Even like his TV stuff is fine, even the goofy stuff. "Saturday Night Live," a lot of people go, "Well, that's so lame, it's so derivative, it's so weak," but I think any little bit is fine. The danger is when it does become totally recuperated within the mass media and just serves as a kind of entertainment, you know and they're constantly trying to keep up with you, in fact advertisers will admit—there's an anecdote, like Hire's root beer or whatever, some advertising agency called Negativland the other day and said, "Will you do the music for our commercial?" So very quickly this stuff becomes depoliticized. You know so it's drained of any real content and just becomes a gesture of style, like graffiti in a way. So, like I say, you have to be wary about this kind of, like I say possibility of complete evisceration and draining of all possible meaning because the mass media will try to recuperate it. Billboards put up now with graffiti already on it, don't you see. It's some kind of built-in street cred, you know, "this is authentic kind of thing." So I think they're very hip to culture jamming, the advertising industry, and they're kind of trying to catch up, and they're snapping at our heels. But I'm not so purist and so one-up kind of thing that I have to be in front of Michael Moore, that's all wrong, I think he's just my idol, as a matter of fact.

RB: Great. I'm going to set aside a little bit here, one of the things I read in the bio in the CinemaTexas, wonderful program booklet was billing you as a media archeologist and said you had, on occasion gone dumpster diving at editing houses and film labs to find footage. Is that something you still do? You're fairly prominent. Are there "Wanted: Craig Baldwin" posters up or something?

CB: That's not against the law, diving in dumpsters, by the way.

RB: Well, I wasn't thinking so much as against the law as against the wishes of some of the companies and I was wondered if they had gone to more lengths to protect their footage?

CB: No, they don't care. No, it's not like that. There's so much dough in the film business don't you know, they're not worried about this. It's like this idea, like this pest, they wouldn't' even bother to stamp me out, it's not a problem to them. Schools and libraries want to get rid of this stuff. Films are heavy, are in the way, they're bulky, you know, and they will give, institutions like that will often times give it away. Sometimes they will say, you can take this stuff but you can't cut it up or can't reuse it or I don't want to see this in your own films, they'll say that but I just turn around and do it (laughs). But anyway the point is, they're so much, don't you see, energy and turnover and money and power in the film business, they're not looking down around their ankles, you know what I mean? They just throw the stuff out and they don't think twice about it, they have to go back to work and they work furiously, by the way, and so we are too at night, know what I mean, in the back alley, that's the way it is, and we're all too busy in our own projects. I don't necessary think they consider me a threat, some guy diving in their dumpster, I mean, it's beneath their radar, they couldn't be worried about it. So there you go, you know, you don't have to go far to find dead media, like I say, it's in the gutter, you don't even have to go to a dumpster, just go outside. The computer I use I literally found in my basement, both the modem, the computer, the key board, and the monitor, four different components were all put together from basically within 100 feet of my house by finding stuff in the dumpster or the gutter or the sidewalk or my basement and just hooked up and that's, that's not just an anecdote, that kind of sums it up.

RB: You're now artist in residence or is your residency about to come to an end at the Walker Art Center?

CB: Yeah, that was it, that was the third time, you wouldn't know, see I was just coming in from that, but that was a huge thing, in fact that speaks to all the issues that have come up during this interview. One, because even now major art institutes are interested in this idea of… cultural activism as a kind of art practice. And also the fact [that] one of the things I did was, during my residency during the summer by the way, was lead like a two-week workshop for teens in the Minneapolis area on film editing. Which was all done with thrown-away films. So it wasn't so much political, it was… empowering young people with the ability to, whatever, express themselves there is certainly the kind of politics of that but not a local or topical kind of politics. It was just basically kind of a skills acquisition thing, where kids could learn with film that was thrown away, you know, by local schools and so on. And so that is for me, was like an initiative in, like I say, recycling and attention to old media platforms, in this case 16 mm and encouraging people to be creative and using their own way and subvert it and turn it to new ends, you know. Like I say, it didn't reenter the pop culture of the mainstream in the way that like I say that carries a subversive message, it was more for play, which is great. That's what revolution is all about, you know, just to open up a world of creative expression and you know, whatever, just open up the senses and blah, blah, blah. You know I taught art in high school, it was right on all accounts and so, we could put these people together in this media arts center and just have a blast with this film for two weeks and then mount it in this huge show. And the show was this soap factory, again getting art out of the institutional environment and four white walls and the locker which is, (laughs) a huge museum as you may know and put it in this funky old factory. Another example of recycling of basically urban resources, where like I say, when the Industrial Age is over and we have these huge factories sitting around, most people you know dot-coms in San Francisco move into them, and Minneapolis doesn't have it yet, so we'll turn it over and like I say a re-purposing of this old, old beautiful factory that was used to produce soap, by the way, and to create a huge event in it. And for that matter hang beautiful works of art but actually have people come to be interactive with it and play on these film installations and there were 25 of them. And the whole focus happened to be, again, dead media, again turning film into, re-animate it, you know what I mean and taking old, old technique, because it looks way cooler you know and leads to sculptural and textures and is pleasing to the senses you know the gears and all that, and you can intervene with it. Just like with scratching—you can cut up records, which you really can't do with CD in a way. So with film you have so many more possibilities of creative intervention. Well as it turns out, this is a long answer to your question, but this last installation I did, this last two-week residency … coincided with the NAMAC conference. I don't know if you know what is, but actually there're some people in NAMAC at CinemaTexas. It's the National Association of Media Arts and Culture, of which you know, I've kind of been a member for a long time because I represent a gallery in San Francisco called AK Gallery and the Walker of course is a huge member of that. So they were hosting it. So all the national delegates, I'm talking about the people who were sitting on the grant boards, you know. The Namac Conference was youth media, you know what I mean and teen media, blah, blah, blah we just completely pulled a coup because the whole conference came over, out of their professional, you know, yuppie hotel, all sterile, and they came down really into the art world basically where the people, where the hairy artists lived, you know, in this huge warehouse. I live in a little storefront myself, and the whole thing was just completely filled like a labyrinth, like a maze, with these 25 installations and the centerpiece was this tent, the teens had made out of packing blankets. And you enter into it and they were showing their films you know and there were couches and pillows thrown all around and then for the films that were silent we had gotten during the course of that two-week residency—I kind of framed the whole thing as a scavenger hunt, you know what I mean, like being creative having a good eye and finding stuff you can use gravely and we would go to second-hand store and get like a Sears turntable for 99 cents and a bunch of old records for basically free and they were just basically scratching and mixing and playing records on this 99-cent plastic turntable to their films, man, it was—

RB: Kind of like film jazz, you know, because the performance is never really going to be the same each time.

CB: Yeah. Yeah, it was. Yeah, it wasn't so much to watch a film and it certainly wasn't narrative but it had to do with opening up space where personal, whatever, expression and play, so anyway, that was the last time of the three times I was there. The first time happened to be a conference about, you know, again the challenge of media and media arts in transition or something like that, and everybody of course was so go-go gonzo digital, which you actually get a lot of Texas, by the way, with all the stuff there and certainly San Francisco and Silicon Valley. And like I say, I was mainly the one guy who was like the, you know, this angry Luddite, on these panels that were actually raised the question that maybe a complete emergence of the new conversion media wasn't always so good and maybe there was possibly the threat of some kind of assimilation and loss of autonomy. Anyway that's the theme of all my films.

RB: Craig Baldwin, thank you very much for your time…

CB: You're welcome.