This week’s readings all revolved around the idea of originality in the context of art and technology’s tradition of copying. I would argue that it is really humanity’s tradition of copying, as everything that exists was built upon something prior, physically as well as biologically. I largely agree with Drew Christie’s Allergy to Originality short film and Kirby’s Embrace the Remix talk. Art has been built on imitation, copying, plagiarism, and stealing. Authors took from poets (Joyce’s Ulysses from Homer’s Odyssey), musicians from other musicians (Dylan from… everyone?). Repurposed, reconstructed, redrawn, remade, art is built upon a foundation and great works cannot ignore this foundation. Taking this idea further, Jonathan Lethem argues that copyright law is a block toward innovation and toward this tradition. As someone who has torrented music since middle school, I find it hard to not agree with his assertions in his article The Ecstasy of Influence. Art should be free for all to view and to take, and culture cannot be owned.
My only question is from the piece The Art of Molotov Man, written by Joy Garnett and Susan Meiselas. I want to agree with Garnett, and I think the fallout from the case is a great example of the Streisand Effect, which exhibits the futility in trying to take anything down on the internet. But Meiselas has a point when she discusses context.
Indeed, it seems to me that if history is working against context, then we must, as artists, work all the harder to reclaim that context. We owe this debt of specificity not just to one another but to our subjects, with whom we have an implicit contract.
I never did sue Joy in the end, nor did I collect any licensing fees. But I still feel strongly, as I watch Pablo Arauz’s context being stripped away-as I watch him being converted into the emblem of an abstract riot-that it would be a betrayal of him if I did not at least protest the diminishment of his act of defiance.
I think about the images that I would be upset to see used elsewhere, that are part of my identity: photos from September 11th, images of the Stonewall Riots. Are images of the Holocaust okay to be reused for art? I’m not sure. If we take the argument far enough, that everything is appropriated, does that mean cultural appropriation is a farce? Can a culture “own” a style of music, a certain headdress? How can these ideas be reconciled?