October 16-22, 2003

mixpicks

Creative Rights Conference Workshops

by Keegan O'Connor

Sexism, racism, heterosexism, classism, imperialism: It's hard to deny that the mainstream media in America perpetuates all of these isms by its bias in favor of the majority. For example, a normal advertisement might show provocatively posed and scantily clad women with expensive accessories lusting after tall, dark and handsome men wearing Abercrombie & Fitch. Meanwhile, they omit non-white, non-straight, non-American, non-moneyed people unless it serves them to appear diverse.

If you consider yourself a media activist, or any sort of activist for that matter, you may have already heard of the Creative Rights Conference. Half of it has already taken place, but a key portion of this conference lies in the workshops taking place this weekend on the creation of illegal art. Inja Coates, a member of Media Tank, the group that organized this weekend's events, believes illegal art to be art considered to be on the legal fringes of copyright law. It follows, then, that these workshops are designed to get more people thinking about ways to use the media's own body of work against them.

Manipulating an advertisement with Photoshop, slapping a This Is Offensive To Women sticker on a sexist billboard, or posting your own version of Abercrombie's website online, are just a few possibilities of the types of media resistance ideas that will be floating around this weekend.

Creative Rights Conference Workshops, Tactical Photoshop, Sat., Oct. 18, 2 p.m., and Culture Jamming, Zines or FlashPoint, Sun., Oct. 19, 3 p.m., $10-$12 per session, William Way Community Center, 1315 Spruce St., 215-563-1100.