Jon Routson

Jon Routson (born 1969 in Washington, D.C.) is an American artist working in video, new media, and conceptual art.

Between 1999 and 2004, Routson made numerous recordings of contemporaneous Hollywood films using a handheld video camera inside a movie theater.

For instance, Routson's recording of The Passion of the Christ blocked the movie's subtitles behind the back of a theatre seat.

[5] While such recordings, known as camrips, are commonly uploaded on peer-to-peer file sharing sites, Routson's works were projected on the wall of art galleries.

One critic praises his Bootlegs, claiming the works give "urgency and pleasure to questions about art in the age of mechanical reproduction, long after the low-tech avant-garde had turned them into truisms.