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In an age when Jon Stewart frequently tops lists of most-trusted
newscasters, the films of Michael Moore become a dominant topic of
political campaign analysis, and activists adopt ironic, fake
personas to attract attention the satiric register has attained
renewed and urgent prominence in political discourse. Amber Day
focuses on the parodist news show, the satiric documentary, and
ironic activism to examine the techniques of performance across
media, highlighting their shared objective of bypassing standard
media outlets and the highly choreographed nature of current
political debate."
At first glance, contemporary popular culture, filled with bleak
images of the future, seems to have given up on the possibility of
positive collective change. Below the surface, however, alternative
culture is rife with artist-led projects, activist movements, and
subcultural communities of interest that seek to spark the
collective imagination and to encourage hunger for alternatives.
More playfully self-conscious than past utopian movements, today's
are often whimsical or ironic, but are still entirely earnest.
Artists invite us to re-author city maps, or archive individual
ideas for the future, while maker collectives urge us to rethink
our relationship to consumer goods. All seem to have grown out of a
similar do-it-yourself ethos and alternative culture. One of the
central conflicts informing these case studies is that while it
remains immensely difficult to envision anything outside of the
current system of consumer capitalism, there is nevertheless a
powerful desire to take it apart in piecemeal ways. We see the
longing for new social and political narratives, new forms of
communion and sociability, and new imaginings of the possible,
longings that are currently unmet by mainstream culture, but that
are taking expression in myriad ways at the local level. Taken as a
whole, this collection examines what our grand ideals and playful
daydreams tell us about ourselves.
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