Rebekah Modrak Publishes Essay about Marbled Beef and Consumer Culture
Stamps Professor Rebekah Modrak was recently published in “Forking Paths in New Media Art Practices: Investigating Remix,” a special issue for Media‑N, a peer-reviewed, open-access journal dedicated to critical dialogue on new media art. This special issue of Media‑N on contemporary approaches to remix was inspired by Jorge Luis Borges’s short story, “The Garden of Forking Paths,” a recurring point of reference in the development of media culture. Borges’s narrative exploration of remix was a means of reflecting on the possibility of multiple simultaneous realities with no clear beginning or end. His imaginings offered a literary and philosophical model for creative uses of emerging technology throughout the twentieth century.
Modrak’s essay, “My Work is Yours to Do What I Want” relies on remix to tell the story of Peter Buchanan-Smith and Peter Smith-Buchanan. In this truthful story that often reads as fiction, a cast of characters, including wagyu beef, Professor Skiller’s forgotten payment, and the law firm of Ellenoff Grossman & Schole LLP, are entwined in acts of manipulation, machismo, and disturbances of consumer culture.