| "medialifters" | Trumpet sound & vision performance by Franco Angeloni | the national gallery of art, bangkok | ®2004 |
performed live by Mr. Mod Poonpinyo - Freely interpreted from: "Shoplifters of the world unite". (Morrisey/Marr the smiths ©1987)
The following is an online excerpt based on the references upon which the lyrics of this song were supposedly developed: Clause 28 was a Margaret Thatcher invention during the late eighties to stop the "promotion" a.o. of "alternative lifestyles". This meant that such things as plays, books and other media or arts related things were not allowed to promote alternative lifestyles and or unusual behavior. For example libraries could be prosecuted for holding books which specifically promoted such things.
There is a passage in this song that may well refer to how a public-relevant news like the Clause 28 would have easily been overlooked on Channel 4 by the covering of another one about a future war in this channel’s news.(…)

About "medialifters": This short staged performance has only but a few basic yet fundamental issues that aims to pin-point and, that may concern directly or indirectly our present life as well as that of those whom are next to come. By freely re-interpreting and re-arranging the original tune, (and doing so by way of using an instrument that very little lends itself to this purpose...), I am simply ‘exploiting’ the potentials of "abstract thinking” and, the liberty of "forming an odd, yet possibly new, relation" between apparently unrelated items. A gift that nature so generously has given us and that allows us to use if we decided to operate an intervention on or trigger a new interpretation from existing material. While commonly known for being sophisticated individuals, - causing one third of shops' losses(………), - and unlike kleptomaniacs who are seen as bearing mental disorders, shoplifters are driven and motivated by real needs or monetary gains. Their actions are usually well-planned in advance and their behavior is often seen as the result of a sense of powerlessness towards a society that shows great wealth while not giving access to it. By altering the first part of this word, turning it into ‘medialifters’, all I am doing is to create a new relation between ‘items’ that would hardly make sense if a new one was not given to them by using the freedom of invention. The world of Media and how this has been developing its structure and policy(……) in recent decades, is at the core of this minimal work. By using the term of "Media", I wish to include all of those instruments of the old and new information technology that have been shaping(often manipulating) our public and private life during the last 50 years. The medialifters, in this respect, is an invention of my own. And it is no others than a term that I have made-up for addressing specific 'figures' in the public (often political) life and that inhabit both western as well as eastern societies. The medialifters, unlike the shoplifters, are individuals who, despite their already well established financial(often political) power, are still being captured by irresistible impulses to gain a higher status on the social level and grab - often by way of illegal practices - and keep more than they actually need.(.....). In this case however, we are talking of ‘specific possessions’ or, specific items, that is, the "tools of / for information”. Those technical means that were originally invented to serve public ends, needs and expectations. Be it of general or of more specific interests. The position of Media and New Communication & information technology in present history, its independence and the maintenance of its ‘public service’, the importance of keeping a space for a truly unsupervised free flow of information, (read also: oppose the recent process of public Media privatization), - a position that could be very easily endangered were we not to keep an eye open on the capricious performing acts of the medialifters -, are the issues that I am willing to raise with this light-hearted performance.(...).

The staging of this + 4 minutes lasting minimal work is a combination of trumpet sound and plain text. While the first may be seen as a parody of an anthem to the Media magnates, the latter is an image, is a statement, is a poem, is a half-counterfeiting, is an invention, is a fake and finally is plainly a light, one that when turned off leaves behind but nothing, perhaps the traces of an attempt to invent a way to reflect upon and possibly oppose the greed of ‘accumulating’ and ‘centralizing’ power around Media and communication technology by these new psychological figures, the "medialifters”. (to be continued....)