Mottel on Appropriation

‘Mottel on Appropriation’

My interest in appropriation is inspired by the Situationist Lettrist International; of “détournement; diversion, distortion, misappropriation, theft, subversion. In its simplest form, this meant the recombination of disparate preexisting esthetic elements" - (Greil Marcus 'The Cowboy Philosopher' Artforum, March 1986). The Situationist approach is not interested in the exact reproduction of new object from old object

In essay one, Larsen states 'Benjamin describes the process by which modern technological reproduction strips these institutions and their iconic artworks of their aesthetic authority.' Benjamin is referring to classical art forms, and in the 20th century, Dadaism, Surrealism, Futurism and later Situationism employ Benjamin's idea of appropriation.

In essay two, the author states that Benjamin thinks the loss of the 'aura' is a good thing. This could mean that Warhol's reproduction of the Coca-Cola image represents the loss of the aura. The aura is defined as art work which is not reproduced, and with film/photography art becomes mass-production. Yet in modern times, corporate imagery thrives on the appropriation by artists to make the original commercial work valid to a wider audience that may not be affected by advertising.

In my own work, I have taken band names explicitly from mainstream sources. In 2003/04 I was in a band called ‘The Beatles.’ When people asked us why we were called ‘The Beatles’ we simply said we were just ‘different Beatles.’ The Beatles played experimental improvised music. If we had covered The Beatles of the 1960’s, that would not have been interesting or an important use of appropriative art’s aesthetics. Also in 2003, my long time performance duo ‘Talibam!’ started. Talibam! Appealed to us because it was a headline in the New York Post, October 8, 2001 edition of the newspaper. That headline struck me as so distasteful that I remembered it two years later when we were devising a band name. Neither of us were satisfied by what we termed ‘hipster linguistics’ of band names, where the sole intention of the name is to ‘connotate cool,’ so we picked a name that was provocative & appropriative of an ideology of militaristic adventurism of foreign policy we were explicitly opposed to.  

As 2017 will be one hundred years after Duchamp’s Fountain, the need to challenge the premise of appropriation is necessary. If an artist is only appropriating mass media objects/celebrity image/consumer goods without any transformation, all it does in the end is act as another form of advertising for the original product. Meta as a concept is mainstream with the ‘documentary’ style live action theater of 1960’s fluxist happenings appropriated as cinema style for sitcom tv (the office, park’s and recreation, etc) & corporations may welcome appropriation because it just signifies the original product’s power.

An artist who appropriates without any recombination does not change the power relationship or original context, and instead amplifies the original ‘billboard/object/ideology.’ Perhaps, in a historical purview, appropriation in this form (Duchamp’s Fountain) was valid as it signified mass media & mass production as the end of individualized society and artists could take directly from this new world as a commentary on the lack of individuation that  society faced in the early 20th century. In 2016, appropriation must have a political or social commentary on the subject that is being appropriated, if not it is just an exact replica of the original, which is not art, just xerox.