Elisa Kreisinger (born 1986), known as Pop Culture Pirate, is a Brooklyn-based video artist and educator.[1][2]
Early life
Kreisinger was born in New Jersey. In 2008, she received a B.A. in Communications & Women's Studies from Simmons College in Boston.
Career
New media art
Kreisinger started to explore the idea of feminist remix of media as an undergraduate at Simmons College, with a focus on remixing the feminist narrative as it relates to identity.[3][4] She interned at Cambridge Community TV, where she had access to equipment and video training.[5]
Kreisinger's videos remix Mad Men into feminists and The Real Housewives into lesbians. Her Mad Men trailers on Vimeo have had more viewership than the original series' YouTube trailers.[6]
Kreisinger's work explores feminist and queer-friendly perspectives through remix and mashup of mainstream media texts. The Queer Carrie Project recuts entire seasons of Sex and the City into short, 1-3 minute webisodes that portray its characters as lesbians. Most of Kreisinger's work uses the language and style of existing TV shows or Hollywood editing as a way to, as she describes it, "talk back" to pop culture.[7]
From 2012 to 2014, Kreisinger worked at Eileen Fisher in Communications. From December 2014 to July 2015, Kreisinger was Creative Director at Upworthy.
Since July 2015, Kreisinger is an Executive Producer at Refinery29.
Kreisinger's work engages with concepts of copyright laws and fair use.[11] Despite operating on legal terms of fair use for parodic, educational and transformative purposes, Kreisinger's work is often erroneously flagged for copyright violation on video sharing sites such as YouTube.[3]
Kreisinger is a vocal advocate for fair use, digital literacy and critical uses of pop culture and gender representation within mainstream media. She has presented at industry and academic conferences such as Open Video Conference, Mobility Shifts Conference, among others.[12][13]
^U.S. Copyright Office, Library of Congress (19 November 2011). "Appendix D (29): Interview with Elisa Kreisinger"(PDF). In the matter of Exemption to Prohibition on Circumvention of Copyright Protection Systems for Access Control Technologies Under 17 U.S.C. 1201 Docket No. 2014-07 Comments of Electronic Frontier Foundation and Organization for Transformative Works. pp. 56–57.
U.S. Copyright Office, Library of Congress (19 November 2011). "Appendix D (29): Interview with Elisa Kreisinger"(PDF). In the matter of Exemption to Prohibition on Circumvention of Copyright Protection Systems for Access Control Technologies Under 17 U.S.C. 1201 Docket No. 2014-07 Comments of Electronic Frontier Foundation and Organization for Transformative Works. pp. 56–57.