Pockets Full of Ashtray Burdens was inspired by the novel Blood, Guts, and High School by Kathy Acker. Through a literary collage method Acker tells the story of Janey a girl who had an incestuous relationship with her father, joined a gang, and ends up living as a Persian sex slave. Her cut and paste method provides a ‘plagiaristic’ context that allows the readers to access her semi-pseudo autobiography through the story of others. Through this installation I have begun to tell bits and pieces of my own story. The architectural form is a taken from several sources, one being the backyard Jaycee Lee Dungard was held captive in from the age of 11 to 29. While the camper shell top you see in the installation references a scene from a pornographic film featuring a redneck family. The textures of the wood and junk items you see lying around reference structures and dilapidated buildings I have observed on a recent ‘dirty town tour’ I took over spring break through the state of Wyoming. The pink lights you see creeping in encapsulate the idea of escapism. Where her mind and imagination might have went in order to cope through the situation she was stuck in.
In the beginning WE created our own script. And with my tongue I dispatch rearrangements of our words, our thoughts, our theory, and our symbols.
Haven’t you read this scripture: The LORD gave me two vinyl records inscribed by the finger of God. On them were all the commandments the LORD proclaimed to you on the mountain out of the fire, on the day of the assembly.
Assembly? Assemblage?
Right? Right.
Nicodemus brought me a mixture or past, present, and future. Told me a tale of a day, a day forgotten by preconceived notions of my and mine.
He proclaimed, “You will be a restless wanderer on the earth. Art is your guide to a new terrain. A terrain where creation itself will be liberated from its bondage; for this creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of a law, the will of a man.”
“Take this mixture, forget the laws forget the decrees. Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and flow into to it. You will find your soul; you will find your story. The fragments of the past and present create a new future, a new scenario, and new conversation. Creativity rests in how you recontextualize the previous expression of others, right? Right.“
“While the detournement of preexisting artworks is a currently employed tool, artists use it not to "devalorize" the work of art but to utilize it. In the same way that Surrealists used Dadaist techniques to a constructive end, art today manipulates Situationist methods without targeting the complete abolition of art.”
As artist are we not continuously creating conversations with the world around us? Have artist not done this for decades? I am visually drawn to this type of work, I think the public is drawn to it because of its familiarity. It creates a conversation that people can relate to. I guess I am having trouble understanding the conflict that comes up with this type of work? It feels like this is something that has gone on since the beginning of time. While I am drawn to the use of pop culture I do feel like some of this work becomes similar to a one-liner. It grabs my attention for a moment, I think about it, maybe I chuckle but after that I am done. On the other hand some of the work stays with me, for example Billionaires for Bush. A group that went to pro-bush rallies dressed up in elite clothing and protested for the war in an ironic way (check out the image).
Andrew posed a question in his response in his blog “are we living in a cut ‘n paste society in which we are condemned to recycling of ideas, or has this always been the case?” I believe this has always been the case. What is different about this work recently is the access of information. Back in the day information was slower but now we can get it faster, better, and stronger. Perhaps its easier to recognize when artist pull from the society around us but does that make it any different from what artist have done in the past?
Appropriation: Adopt, borrow, recycle, or sample. Mix it up and make it your own.
Plagiarism: The unauthorized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one’s own original work.
When I think about the notion of an ‘open source’ culture I am intrigued and think to myself ‘why not’? Yet part of me feels the need to question this or at least pretend that I should be questioning this. Perhaps its my pride or some ‘higher moral ground’ I feel I should at least try to be a part of. Then I think about my generation candy kids dancing twelve hours straight, loving the DJ, smiling at my friends because he mixed in some Jackson Five and they know my cheesy love for Motown and old school funk. The DJ rocked it, I would never dance like that to Motown but I did that night. Similar to a DJ, I steal images all the time from history, magazines, books, television, and the Internet. I use them in drawings, collages, and studies for installations. While I do take them I also twist and bend them, making them my own.
But what if someone did that to me? What if someone took one of my drawings and used it in a collage? On one hand I feel great that my drawing sparked new ideas for someone else, on the other hand I am a little protective of my work. Would my pride get in the way if they were to make something better than the original? Insulted if they made something awful. When I think about protecting the artist labor I contradict myself in numerous ways. Its hard to imagine someone having a pure original idea, you would have to live in a cave completely isolated your entire life. How can you not be affected by what is around you and what others are doing? But when you take an idea or image you got to make it your own otherwise it’s just another regurgitation of the past. Think about a band covering a song, it’s so lame when it’s a cheap reproduction of the original but if they make that song their own it takes on a new life. Johnny Cash is a great example of this in my mind, when he covers a song he owns it. When Depeche Mode’s Personal Jesus comes on the radio its their song, I don’t sit there to myself wishing I could hear Cash’s cover. They are completely different, yet the same yet I feel different emotions from each song.
There are artists that have used other works of art from the past as well as the present. Vic Muniz has recreated The Raft of Medusa in chocolate syrup and Warhol’s Marilyn in peanut butter and jelly. Recently Shepard Fairey has been in the news for his Obama Hope poster, taking a copyright image of Obama, according to Fairey he used the image under the fair use doctrine. Another artist, Christian Marclay cuts and remixes prerecorded sounds form cassette tapes and vinyl records. Marcy, a film grad student at CU, used dialog from old westerns in a film she did about Ward. It is an amazing mixture of old cowboys discussing the west with the current visual narrative of Ward today.
The Internet has made taking sources incredibly fast and easy. While in the past I looked through numerous magazines to find the perfect image, today I can just scan Google image search. Some of my faculty seems to have a big problem with me using the Internet for research, urging me to spend more time at the library and site research. While I understand where they are coming from I don’t think they completely understand this method of research and source material. While some people have disregarded Nicholas Bourriaud’ s Altermodern I have embraced some of the ideas and theory he is claiming today, “Altermodern, the ‘alternative modern’ is the product of non-stop communication, globalization and new forces that shape the way artist operate today.” Perhaps some of the conflict with the idea of free open source has to do with one generation verse another. No one has a problem with Duchamp or Rauschenberg’s use of sources, but why? Why is there a problem today? What is the difference of cutting out an image from a National Geographic magazine verses taking an image from the web or going to Times Square and taking a photograph verses taking a photograph from the numerous web cams? (I know this depends on the type of outcome you want)
Overall I think the advantages of free open sources out weigh the disadvantages. I don’t have a problem with it as long as you make what you take your own. Who cares if you captured the exact moment a bear kisses a butterfly? That doesn’t mean you own that moment in time, if I want to create a sculpture from that image and put it in an installation I feel like I can? If I illustrate your book through a series of drawings I believe I am making your words my own? If you take a photo of my sculpture do I then own that photo?
