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imomusHalfway through Call and Response, the artists' thinktank I'm attending at MUDAM Luxembourg, I'm not sure what I feel about the whole issue of artists' appropriation of popular culture. Candice Breitz gave an interesting talk at the beginning in which she said that all artists draw on the work of other artists, but that this use of existing work is authorized in some cases (usually when the artist involved can pay for legal clearance), unauthorized in others. The poor artists who can't pay for their quotes, samples and steals, said Candice, become "unauthors".
Candice then threw the stage of the MUDAM auditorium over to a succession of "unauthors", who mostly took the opportunity to talk us through their work via PowerPoint and YouTube presentations. First there was Matthieu Laurette, who showed amusing clips of his appearances on French game shows -- TV appearances as media art. Then Guillaume Paris gave a rather desultory glimpse of what looked like very interesting work: he's made a sort of museum of products, and made them speak to each other (in a decayed state which Paris sees as a sort of redeeming de-reification) using the voices of the models who posed for their packaging.
After that, Cory Arcangel played us some very loud Bruce Springsteen live videos off YouTube, playing live glockenspiel along with the tracks. He's recorded a glockenspiel-heavy version of the Born to Run album and put it up on p2p networks all over the world without any warning that it might be anything other than The Boss' original album.
After a while the Plato's Caveness of the presentations got to me, and I skipped the last couple of Saturday sessions, going instead on a glorious walk through some of Luxembourg's dramatic urban ravines, filled with weirs, waterside walks, high bridges and crumbling castles (it reminded me of Edinburgh's Dean Village area).
I suppose my take on the appropriation theme is that I agree wholeheartedly that art should be able to cannibalize other art to its heart's content -- a key point in my Folktronia / Folktronic project was the idea that there's a parallel between the pre- and post-copyright eras, between oral folk culture and the neo-folk art of digital appropriation. And I loved the Steve Harvey deconstruction of Bowie's reading of "My Death" which launched the conference. Yet I find myself unsatisfied by art which comes from the margins yet fetishizes the commercial mainstream. I find myself, right now, looking to art to come up with mysterious, austere, disorienting new forms of beauty (it's the theme of my new piece on the New York Times site) and I feel like commercial TV and pop music and supermarket shelves are not the place to find this new beauty. Artists who squander their valuable marginality on tapping into the undoubted power of the mainstream are shirking the search: unauthors of a different kind.
Candice then threw the stage of the MUDAM auditorium over to a succession of "unauthors", who mostly took the opportunity to talk us through their work via PowerPoint and YouTube presentations. First there was Matthieu Laurette, who showed amusing clips of his appearances on French game shows -- TV appearances as media art. Then Guillaume Paris gave a rather desultory glimpse of what looked like very interesting work: he's made a sort of museum of products, and made them speak to each other (in a decayed state which Paris sees as a sort of redeeming de-reification) using the voices of the models who posed for their packaging.
After that, Cory Arcangel played us some very loud Bruce Springsteen live videos off YouTube, playing live glockenspiel along with the tracks. He's recorded a glockenspiel-heavy version of the Born to Run album and put it up on p2p networks all over the world without any warning that it might be anything other than The Boss' original album.
After a while the Plato's Caveness of the presentations got to me, and I skipped the last couple of Saturday sessions, going instead on a glorious walk through some of Luxembourg's dramatic urban ravines, filled with weirs, waterside walks, high bridges and crumbling castles (it reminded me of Edinburgh's Dean Village area).
I suppose my take on the appropriation theme is that I agree wholeheartedly that art should be able to cannibalize other art to its heart's content -- a key point in my Folktronia / Folktronic project was the idea that there's a parallel between the pre- and post-copyright eras, between oral folk culture and the neo-folk art of digital appropriation. And I loved the Steve Harvey deconstruction of Bowie's reading of "My Death" which launched the conference. Yet I find myself unsatisfied by art which comes from the margins yet fetishizes the commercial mainstream. I find myself, right now, looking to art to come up with mysterious, austere, disorienting new forms of beauty (it's the theme of my new piece on the New York Times site) and I feel like commercial TV and pop music and supermarket shelves are not the place to find this new beauty. Artists who squander their valuable marginality on tapping into the undoubted power of the mainstream are shirking the search: unauthors of a different kind.
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(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-27 12:46 am (UTC)I read your NYTimes piece. But I have to say, little more than 3 months ago, you said to Lord Whimsy regarding his success:
"It does occur to me that you've been able to realize your dreams so thoroughly because those dreams were not, to begin with, anything that would terrify Hollywood. If your book had endorsed a less populist style (and I can hear you spluttering with indignation at the word, but still, to me this is populist), would the film rights have been sold?"
It does occur to me that I'm reading an article written by Momus published by the NY Times, with a Louis Vuitton advertisement to the right of it.
You also say of David Bowie:
"if David Bowie had only made avant pop albums like "Lodger", he probably wouldn't have enough money now to commission the Atelier Bow Wow house"
So, now that you're employed by the largest metropolitan newspaper in the United States to talk about design... does that mean that perhaps your musings on design aren't as avant garde as you like to think they are?
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-27 05:29 am (UTC)It's interesting that eco-guilt doesn't pose a problem, but that contemporary art coverage does. I nearly got kicked off Wired, very early on, for writing about art biennials. Pieces attacking cell phones, run alongside cell phone ads, were fine. There's something about art -- I guess it just isn't considered "general interest" or consumer-friendly.
But anyway, don't assume that "the mainstream" endorses this kind of article. Like I say, it's a struggle to get them into print. Generally, people don't give much of a damn about "the search for new forms of beauty". It fits with consumer culture less well than overt critique of consumer culture. And this relates to today's theme. Art that reappropriates consumerism is doomed to chug along in its wake, when it should be out ahead.
there's a third dimension
Date: 2008-04-27 05:50 pm (UTC)Endless regurgitation is a bore to be sure, but the idea that there's an "ahead" anymore seems quaint. It smacks of nostalgia for a modernist avant garde that no longer exists.
Forget "out ahead"--just go with "out". Out. Around. Between. Marginal is more interesting than radical. Stop looking over your shoulder so much. Anything now intended to be "radical" or "out ahead" is guilty of calculated brand positioning. It's jockeying to be "the next big thing". It's playing into the same linear mentality as the pandering, populist pap you've repeatedly suggested (http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/commentary/imomus/2007/05/imomus_0508) I peddle.