Generating Civil Society by David Meme
Generating Civil Society is a stopmotion animation that explores the meaning and form of commons based peer-production (See the work of Yocahi Benkler) through the use of intertextuality and interdiscursivity in the production of a music video. Throughout the film, numerous references and visual citations are made (such as to the ‘commons’ in Hardt & Negri’s groundbreaking book Empire) to explore how through the reuse of culture we can develop new and innovative visual works. The storyline, characters and narrative were shaped through reference to a question of pure mindless consumption (represented by the yellow monster) against that of engaging with, and reflecting on previous cultural resources, ideas and concepts together with the importance of a non-instrumental creative moment in art and music. The recursive relationship with the title Generating Civil Society is developed through the importance of culture and cultural history to the project of generating and sustaining a strong civil society through which helps citizens to engage fully in their lives and society (See for example Lawrence Lessig’s work). Copyright culture is clearly a threat to democratic self-expression and unrestrained creativity and the importance of a commons, a reservoir of culture that we can all draw upon, is key to future creativity.
The film was recorded over three days in a small studio space in the University of Sussex (UK) using a digital camera and a laptop and Framemaker, the final piece was assembled and post-produced using Final Cut Pro. The final edit took a day and the resultant work was uploaded to archive.org with a Creative Commons Attribution-Share-alike license
http://www.archive.org/details/Ward-GenCivilSociety
