User:Lbattich/(Im)Possible Project Proposals
Overview of interests / areas of research
- The appropriative impulse: questions in appropriative art other than authorial critique.
- Contemporary nostalgia (facilitated by the rise of what sociologist Manuel Castells has termed the information society, and the mileu generated by digitalization and network culture, which have had a major impact on the approach to strategies of artistic appropriation.)
- Contemporary practices of appropriation in relation to cultural nostalgia
- Colour: approached to digital colour, and the tension between digital language and real sensations...
- The role of proper names in art
Project Proposal I: Appropriation
The question of appropriation in art and of plagarism is usually framed through a discourse on authorship. In this project, however, my aim will be to explore the manner in which appropriation can operate as a symptom of cultural nostalgia. My investigation thus is not concerned directly with the question of "who is the author", and similar questions on copyright. These discourse are usually centred on the subject, (the author), even if subjecthood and indentity is blurred and brought into critique. My investigation is not concerned so much with the individual producer, but with the cultural undercurrents that motivate practices of appropriation.
The first part o the project would be to provide a historical background, considering various practices of appropriation art. The study would concentrate from the 1960s onwards, where practices of appropriation was developed as a particular artistic strategy of its own. This strategy peaked in the late 1980s, in the works of artists such as Sherry Levine and other associated with the 'Picture Generation.'
With the hindsight of historical distance, my approach to this practices is not concerned so much with the physical proprieties of appropriated artwork (the fact that appropriative works “look alike” the original material), but rather with the shift from the sensory qualities of a work of art to the conceptual register, and the specific agenda behind each artwork. The project is informed by the position that in appropriative art of the 20th century, the modern notion of authorship was challenged, but not subverted.
This critical reading of the history of appropriation art in the second half of the 20th century provides a platform to consider contemporary practices of appropriation. The main part of the research project are centred in this area.
In the majority of research and practice in appropriation art, the emphasis is still laid on questions of authorship or representation (and increasingly on issues of copyright and legal question on copies and plagiarism). How can we conceptualize contemporary practices of appropriation under a framework other than such authorial discourse?
Most studies on appropriation as art rely on a theory of representation. The research project would concentrate on contemporary practices of appropriation in relation to cultural nostalgia.
The conceptual framework would also be developed in conjunction with case studies. These would include, among other potential cases, the analysis of certain trends in what has been called 'conceptual writing', and more precisely 'uncreative writing' – with Kenneth Goldsmith being the central spokesperson of this practice – and certainly its most famous practitioner.
Whereas during the 1980s appropriation aimed to a critique of conventional notions of authorship and other modernist dogmas, contemporary practices of appropriation can take a variety of forms, some less critical than others. Thus many projects involving appropriation take the shape of homages, or are motivated by a nostalgic impulse to connect to modernism, rather than a critical impulse. My practice would propose to address this shift: from critical appropriation to nostalgic reprisal.