Sonic Outlaws

A frenzied, award-wining collage depicting the people who create musical collages. The group Negativland name their single "U2", after which they face years of lawsuits from the record label publishing songs by the band of the same name. Composer John Oswald plays around with recordings by other people, and Barbie starts speaking like an American soldier. A work which finds itself on the crossroads between superb entertainment and media activism, the film and its protagonists pose pressing questions: when is it possible to use other people´s work as the basis for a different kind of music, one´s own? Why is it not possible to regard the products of show business which engulf public space as public property? Where are the boundaries of "progressive art", governed by giant record companies? Does the process of recycling music exist? Director Craig Baldwin presents the theme in the only way possible: he gradually changes his film into a burlesque collage which itself doesn´t pay much attention to the authorisation of its sources. A film which is considered an essential landmark in contemporary art.