My
friend Adrien told me a story. He was watching a reality TV
show about a family passing on their drag racing business
to their three teenage daughters. In one scene the daughters
are having a conversation about asking some guys to a Sadie
Hopkins dance. One of the girls said: "I don’t want to
do anything original". One of her sisters responds and
agrees that she shouldn’t do something similar to everyone
else. The third daughter interjects and says, "Doesn’t
original mean different, not the same?" The first daughter
says, "…No, it means the same, like original Coke or
original Levis..." The girls decide to call a friend
and ask her to look it up in the dictionary.
o·rig·i·nal
: Pronunciation[uh-rij-uh-nl] –adjective 1.
belonging or pertaining to the origin or beginning of
something, or to a thing at its beginning: The book
still has its original binding. 2. new; fresh; inventive;
novel: an original way of advertising. 3. arising or
proceeding independently of anything else: an original
view of history. 4. capable of or given to thinking
or acting in an independent, creative, or individual
manner: an original thinker. 5. created, undertaken,
or presented for the first time: to give the original
performance of a string quartet. 6. being something
from which a copy, a translation, or the like is made:
The original document is in Washington. –noun 7. a primary
form or type from which varieties are derived. 8. an
original work, writing, or the like, as opposed to any
copy or imitation: The original of this is in the British
Museum. 9. the person or thing represented by a picture,
description, etc.: The original is said to have been
the painter's own house. 10. a person whose ways of
thinking or acting are original: In a field of brilliant
technicians he is a true original. 11. Archaic. an eccentric
person. 12. Archaic. a source of being; an author or
originator. —Synonyms 1. primary, primordial, primeval,
primitive, aboriginal. 7. archetype, pattern, prototype,
model. —Antonyms 7. copy.
The confusion about the meaning of original exposes
a greater cultural confusion. On the one hand many believe
that no original exists without fragments, influences, or
derivatives from other sources. Classical music, the Surrealist
movement and pop art are all based in unauthorized remix.
On the other hand, copyright law asserts that any form of
reuse without payment or permission is theft. This tension
has spawned many debates and is a core interest of my art
practice.
The use of found footage without permission is an act that
opposes the private ownership of our common cultural life.
All artists sample, appropriate, transform, rearrange, use
fragments, collage, recompose, or remix in some way or another.
Yet, economic interest defines creative formats; in addition
to inhibiting and channeling the direction of “independent”
art forms. Artists do not have the freedom to create new contexts
for old realities, but we do it anyways, creating new originals
that draw on many previous originals all the time.
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