I was shocked when I tried to articulate this to someone who had posted the film and asked them to remove it for a few months, and I actually told them that after that they could put it back up and they were just completely unwilling to compromise - you'd think I was Rupert Murdoch or something.
Astra TaylorThere's this divergence out there between the very small and the very large with the middle disappearing. There is something paradoxical going on where there is this access and we can seek out things on the fringes, but that doesn't describe the overall reality, because the big are bigger than ever.
Astra TaylorArt and culture are nonetheless vital, essential even, to what it means to be human, yet digital abundance has diminished our sense of their worth.
Astra TaylorWhat we need to do is take that inchoate sense that something isn't right and give it a structural component and the sense that things can be another way.
Astra TaylorI'm interested in the way the whole cultural landscape can shift over time. Okay, this will seem like a silly example, but look at the whole discourse around "selling out," a concept people say is irrelevant because there's no more distinction between mainstream and underground, inside and outside (which I don't really believe, but that's another issue).
Astra Taylor