My Work is Yours to Do What I Want

Abstract

My Work is Yours to Do What I Want narrates the trajectory of two companies, one of them actual (Best Made Co.), and the second (Re Made Co.), an artwork posing as a company that uses remix to strategically confuse, conflate, and disrupt consumer culture. Re Made appears to be an online company founded by the fictitious character Peter Smith-Buchanan, and selling $350 hand-painted plungers. The entire event of Re Made offers an alternate universe—both digital and real—for Best Made Company, which was founded by (the real) Peter Buchanan-Smith, and specializes in $350 artisanal axes. Like a cloned twin or digital virus, Re Made and Buchanan-Smith mimic Best Made and Smith-Buchanan. If Best Made posts a decapitated pig’s head with an axe in its mouth on social media, Re Made’s BBQ pig gnashes a plunger on Instagram. When a New York Times feature refers to the Best Made axe as “manly,” a divergent NYTimes article heralds the masculine plunger. Peter Buchanan-Smith declares the axe to be “embedded in men’s DNA,” and Smith-Buchanan proclaims the plunger an extension of men’s bodies. The real Peter Buchanan-Smith emails Re Made’s CEO Peter Smith-Buchanan insisting he stop this plunder of reality. Acting as Smith-Buchanan’s intern, I (the female creator of the artwork) reply. Best Made’s lawyers send Re Made’s lawyers a 32-page cease-and-desist documenting the paths converging too closely for their liking. Just as the artwork Re Made uses remix via a media-based platform to intentionally confuse “original” content and appropriated material, My Work is Yours to Do What I Want playfully narrates the impulses and parasitic manipulations