WEBVTT

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 The American Pronunciation Guide Presents ''How to Pronounce American''

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 Members of the press, my fellow Americans,

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 on this Independence Day, 1975, the American spirit is uncertain.

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 Mass media monopolies control people by their control of information.

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 In our vast society it is virtually impossible to escape the influence of commercial advertising.

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 Now I ask you, my fellow Americans, haven't you ever wanted to put your foot through your television screen. pamphlets and watch the tapes read all the pamphlets and watch the tapes get all confused

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 mix up the dates

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 i've only been at media burn for a few, and I have seen an increase in decay and damage just over that time.

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 Like, these tapes are about done for the most part.

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 And there is a sort of urgency to transferring as many of those as possible while they're still at least readable.

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 while they're still at least readable. A VHS tape is much flimsier than the like large sized thick reel-to-reel tape that was used in the 1970s. And the actual strip is just not made to last.

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 And so really we are converging pretty rapidly in the next 10 or 20 years on the end of videotape as any kind of a storage device for information.

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 It's chemicals, they appear as like sticky sort of feeling. You can kind of feel it on this tape a little bit.

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 And that obviously inhibits its motion through the machine when you try to play it.

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 And so what you do then when you get a tape that is sufficiently sticky, you put it in here

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 and you basically cook it for about two days or sometimes more depending on how bad it

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 is.

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 Then you take it out and ideally it will have dried it out enough for you to get maybe one

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 or two runs through.

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 So that's what we do with this.

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 Typically, yeah. It's like I say, no, no.

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 You can also, it's got all the, you know, it's got all these temperature suggestions for, you know,

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 fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, nothing for videotape unfortunately. We have to sort of

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 improvise that on our own, but yeah. Yeah, usually go for like 120 degrees for two days or something like that

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 again depending on how bad it is

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 the kind of charm of video as a medium what distinguishes it from film on the whole

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 A medium, what distinguishes it from film on the whole, is that a subject doesn't need to be important to record it.

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 And you get a different kind of document, a different kind of history, and a different kind of engagement with the camera.

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 Because you can just hit record and the person doesn't need to justify burning tape because it doesn't really matter. You can throw it out or record over it or, you know, just never think about it again. Versus film, it's really expensive

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 to put film through a camera. You really have to think about every time you hit record. Whereas

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 so much of my favorite stuff in the media or an archive just comes from people turning on

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 the camera and like chatting with the kid on the street and turning on the camera at a protest

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 or just like turning it on and waiting for something to happen sometimes it doesn't we

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 have a lot of very boring tapes but sometimes sometimes, you know, just in the middle of that tape, somebody shows up and something happens by pure chance. And, you know, you don't get that unless you have that extremely casual approach to shooting that only videotape could bring you in the 70s, 80s, 90s.

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 Yeah, yeah, everything.

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 Hold the peppers, right?

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 Right.

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 What do you think of dictatorship of the proletariat?

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 I don't know.

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 I kind of think Marx said it all, you know?

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 Oh, yeah?

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 Hold the peppers?

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 Yeah.

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 Okay.

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 Yeah, you know, when Marx said socialism is the declaration of the permanence of the revolution, the classic leadership of the proletariat,

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 as the necessary transit point to the abolition of all the relations of production on which they rest,

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 the abolition of all social relations that correspond to these relations of production,

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 and the revolutionizing of all the ideas that result from these social relations.

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 Yeah, I really like that part about the revolutionizing of ideas.

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 Yeah, yeah, so do I. It's real good.

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 Our philosophy is to make everything available to everyone,

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 just to make all of our videos publicly findable.

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 Anybody can watch it for free.

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 videos publicly findable. Anybody can watch it for free. And that means that we're just sort of pushing this stuff out into the world and don't have any oversight over who is watching

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 the videos or what they're using them for. Act up, fight back, fight AIDS! Act up, fight back, fight AIDS!

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 Act up, fight back, fight AIDS!

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 Act up, fight back, fight AIDS!

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 Media Burn seems to have become a fairly useful archive for historians interested in activist movements related to AIDS.

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 Because in the 80s and 90s, so many of the video makers that we work with

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 were out recording protests and speaking to activists.

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 And so there's a lot of footage that we have of protests and activist events

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 that aren't fully documented anywhere else. And we're talking about

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 like big marches, but also benefit concerts that were held at like a small venue on Chicago's

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 North side and performance art about HIV AIDS and, you know, artists who were suffering from AIDS who were typically not the famous ones.

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 But these are documents that don't exist elsewhere.

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 I got involved in AIDS activism because I had a lot of friends die. What happened was

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 one of my best friends in the whole world came up with HIV positive

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 and I got educated real quick and by getting educated I got really angry and so I got involved

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 about two weeks later.

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 What's your name?

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 I'm Jessica.

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 Oh, well thank you.

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 What's your name?

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 I'm Shukanda.

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 Oh, thank you.

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 These are great.

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 Are you guys going through all the malls?

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 Yeah, we're trying. Pick up. Do you want some AIDS information and a free condom? Oh, thank you.

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 These are great.

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 Are you guys going through all the malls?

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 Yeah, we're trying to.

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 Great.

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 Good idea.

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 Do you want some AIDS information and a free condom?

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 No, not hardly.

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 Thank you.

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 Maybe next time.

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 Next year.

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 He's like going, yeah, but I don't want my dad to see me.

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 And we're passing out condoms.

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 Take one.

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 Take one, maybe it'll take five minutes out of your life.

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 It could save your life.

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 Take this.

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 You have to take a condom.

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 You have to take a condom.

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 You'll want one.

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 Well, if we have the information, I mean, wouldn't you read the abstinence?

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 We'll read it until you have all the information. And if you're going to abstain, then you won't need the condoms.

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 Free condoms. Take a couple. Take some information and go with it.

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 I'll do that.

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 You'll want to know how to use them.

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 There you go. There's safe sex information inside.

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 All right.

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 Jack, the security code, two.

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 Go ahead, Jack.

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 I need people down here in the mall, main entrance.

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 I have people passing out things without permission.

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 Our independence is in part ideological.

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 We are just able to do stuff that an official university-affiliated archive cannot. We don't have to run all of our decisions past

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 a series of deans and administrators. Now that we are established, it's easier to be

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 an independent archive than one subject to the whims of an administrator's funding decisions.

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 The state of higher education and just of funding in this country at this point

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 is such that it is bizarrely more durable to remain independent

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 than to make yourself subject to whatever deans and business people happen to be in charge of the university.

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 For photocopies, where do they come?

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 Come to Kinko's Copies, 3001 North Clark.

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 It was late and I needed a photocopy real bad.

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 I needed Kinko's Cop copies at 3001 North Clark.

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 It's obviously impossible to save everything, but unless you have a little bit of that compulsion, you don't make for a good archivist.

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 don't make for a good archivist. There are very few archivists who are fully complacent and satisfied with the number of items that have been preserved. Yeah, you need some

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 some of that irrational drive to do something like Media Burn.

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 Say, anything to drink?

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 No, that's it.

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 Okay.

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 80 cents for the dog.

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 30 cents.

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 Prize total.

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 110.

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 Okay.

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 Okay. And there's your change.

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 See you around.