Abstract

Post-Appropriation

Chris Clarke

The expansion of the resources available to the contemporary artist through the range and immediacy of the internet has instituted a shift in practice. Whereas the use of extant material by so-called appropriation artists (Sherrie Levine, Haim Steinbach) has generally made explicit reference to their provenance, the vast online database of imagery and information, and the unlikelihood of verifying an absolute origin to this material, has generated artwork that blatantly plagiarizes, that borrows without asking or acknowledging, and that refuses to even distinguish between the original and the appropriated.

This lecture will look at this tendency in the work of several artists, including Sean Snyder�s photographs and edited films obtained through the internet and press agencies; Bjarne Melgaard, whose controversial (and possibly illegal) subject matter is drawn from death metal / S&M websites; and Rainer Ganahl, who reproduces web pages as paintings. These works re-contextualize the �real� material of online reportage and documentation as aesthetic, �fictional� representations, thus drawing attention to the unverifiable nature of the internet. As Virilio has noted, an excess of information is always accompanied by misinformation.

The presentation will demonstrate this principle through the use of active search engines to illustrate this thesis in real time. For example, the analysis of Ganahl�s paintings will bring up online material on the spot (by typing �Ganahl painting� into google or yahoo at that point in the lecture). This approach not only incorporates the speed and range of internet-based research into the actual presentation but recognizes the aura of suspicion and fallibility that accompanies such material.