Fair Use is a performance project I started in 2005 with two fellow avant-garde electronic performers: Matthew Ostrowski and Zach Layton. The project is essentially a film screening (often a double- or triple-feature) that shows cinema not as we see it in a movie theater but as we remember it later. The performance, therefore, remixes cinema as an act of memory, allowing a two-hour film to be presented in a matter of tens of minutes, as most of it flies by in a blur, with only a few key moments lingering. The performance divides the musical labor according to the stem mixes of film sound, with snippets of film dialog generated by me, “Foley” and other sound effects treated, stretched, and performed by Ostrowski, and the musical score remixed and performed by Layton. The film is played at a nominal speed of ten times its normal pacing, with key moments paused, scrubbed, and revisited, with visual effects layered on top that add to the metaphor of remixing time and memory.

During a typical live performance, Fair Use will present Hollywood classics such as The Wizard of Oz and Casablanca, animated films such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, action movies such as Top Gun, and science fiction classics such as Blade Runner and 2001: A Space Odyssey. The title of the project is a comment on the copyright provision that allows for this type of derivative work.

transmediale artist page