User:Lbattich/Project proposal v2

Introduction (Abstract)

My practice-based research in concerned with the related notions of appropriation, influence and identity. Through my practice I seek to embody an act of compulsive appropriation as a manner of relating with art historical canons, particularly seminal works from the avant-garde and conceptual art. The project will present a wide collection of reworked and re-examined cultural and historical artefacts, more specifically texts and artworks that tackle questions relating to the history of art, to imitation and influence and to the practices of citation and quotation. While engaging with these artefacts I will inevitably devour them, change and transform them into something that, speculatively, becomes part of my own personal history, where my identity becomes a character in the work: A Partial History of Lucas Battich.

Description of project

This project involves a collection of books, papers, artworks and a variety of ephemera, assembled together and presented into a larger mixed-media installation. The collection is made by adopting existing historical artefacts and texts, and altering all proper names they contain, by replacing them with my own name. Furthermore, the collection contains reworkings and reiterations of key artworks in the narrative of Western art. Thus the collection is presented both as a bizarre reliquary and a speculative partial history of Lucas Battich. Among items in the collection there are:

Among items in the collection there are:

• A small reinterpreted collection of books and texts in which all proper names referring to persons have been replaced with my name. The resulting modified texts are made available in the form of Xeroxed facsimiles. The sources will include influential art historical works from, among others, Ernst Gombrich, Rosalind Krauss, T.J. Clark, Thierry de Duve; and various artists’ writings, critical reviews.
• Reinterpreted manifestoes from different avant-garde movements.
• Video and algorithm-based works: The installation will contain screenings of altered existing films, new video works and computer reworkings in which proper names as well as internal elements from the original films are altered. [This will include appropriations of films by John Baldessari….]

Themes

Compulsive reappropriation is here interpreted as a primary strategy to experience and relate with the world. Among the proliferation of information, or rather the urge to constantly consume cultural creations and information, I find that in order to engage meaningfuly with a cultural piece – literature, art, etc – I must somehow reclaim it, copy it, detour it and traverse it. This project is about the act of copying as a way to engage with the world.

One could assert that the drive to reappropriate and pastiche a work is a manner to digest such work, as in a cannibalistic drive. As a manner of relating to the world, this kind of appropriation is not just out to subvert and critique what it devours. For all its violence, it is also a manner of honouring others, by making them part of one's own.

This manner of experiencing historical objects and figures, what is appropriated are the historical identities in previous works. In this sense my work will create a character out of my own artistic persona, performing different identities and trading masks.

Relation to larger context

Whereas appropriative methods had a subversive force during periods of the twentieth century (exemplified with the Situationist practice of détournement, but also to some extent present in the works of Picture Generation artists), today this critical element has been lost within the cultural shift to an information and networked culture prompted by new technologies. On the contemporary practices of image-making, from high art to commercial products to social media expressions, the quotation and repurposing of existing material is so pervasive, as facilitated (and prescribed) by digital media, in a manner that is driven more by nostalgic approaches and intentions of homage, than by a critical subversion of original material.

In light of this background. my practice is concerned to address this shift: from critical appropriation to nostalgic reprisal, particularly within historical narratives. My own strategy to tackle this key question is performative, in the sense that my work will attempt to enact the very notions that it aims to critique.

Relation to previous practice

My artistic strategy usually involved the production of process-led works in different artistic mediums. In broad terms, the main areas addressed through my artistic investigation have been our engagement with artistic history and aesthetic experience as affected by the digital technologies we take for granted today. This interest is manifest in practices of quotation, re-appropriation and citation of past cultural works, mainly taken from the institutional canon of Western art.

The practices of what is now called conceptual writing has influenced my artistic development since 2011, although I arrived to these issues not from practitioners such as Kenneth Goldsmith, but from considering the history of conceptual art, and particularly the instruction-based works of Yoko Ono, and the language works of Joseph Kosuth, John Baldessari and others, as well as the Oulipo literary movement.

For example, the publication series 'Retrograde Chapbooks' present existing texts from the history of modernism and the avant-garde, where all sentences have been re-arranged in the inverse order. The immediate meaning and readability of each sentence is maintained, but the overall sense is displaced within the text as a whole.

'Retrograde Chapbooks', for instance, proposes a literal “going-back” movement to the power of early avant-garde manifestoes. The intention here is neither to criticise the original texts, nor to question their authorship, but rather to present a concept or desire by means of a metaphor. The resulting altered manifestoes are presented as metaphors for a nostalgic desire.

In my works, I aim to retain a tension between aesthetic quality and conceptual criticality. For this reason, I should emphasise that my works are not conceived as militant critique on the issues investigated (being the institutional and canonical status of certain art historical narratives, etc), a criticism that would strive to reach conclusions. Rather, my critical strategy is mostly pursued by trying to enact the very notions that my works aim to critique. My works are conceived as specific interventions to highlight tensions, complexities and dilemmas in a particular cultural issue, in the hope of engaging the audience into further dialogue.

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