Zoo security drills prepare workers in the event of an escaped animal.
- Media journalist and staunch New York Times defender David Carr died suddenly last night after collapsing in the newsroom. A video of one of his finer moments, grilling the journalistic stunt style of the VICE editors. “Just because you put on a safari helmet and looked at some poop doesn’t give you the right to insult what we do.” [YouTube]
- The most honest, beautiful and horrifying account of addiction we’ve ever read, by David Carr. [The New York Times]
- The best slide show we have ever seen. Zoo security drills for when animals escape. Incredible. [The Atlantic]
- Record prices set for Ai Weiwei and Mark Bradford last night at Phillips London. [Baer Faxt]
- Also, Christie’s has acquired Collectrium, an online database management system akin to ArtBinders that helps gallerists manage their inventory and track their sales. Wonder how Christie’s will use this software. [Baer Faxt]
- I have no idea what the hell is going on with this booby performance costume at the #CAA conference, but I will be investigating further. [@nikkigphd on Twitter]
- GIF artist Rebecca Mock has accused Diplo of ripping one of her GIFs to promote his new song. [Dazed Digital]
- Weird. A listicle on the relationship details of art world power couples because Valentine’s Day. Many of those on the list are dead. Still, stories about people brought together by shared intellectual interests is better than the usual crap. [artnet News]
{ 4 comments }
It’d be interesting to hold the thing with Diplo and Rebecca Mock up to the recent argument between Jamian Juliano-Villani and Scott Tepin:
http://news.artnet.com/art-world/when-is-artist-on-artist-theft-okay-jamian-juliano-villani-and-scott-teplin-duke-it-out-241339
Juliano-Villani said in that case:
“It’s important to realize that all visual culture is fair game for artistic content, ‘appropriation’ isn’t a ‘kind’ of work, it’s almost all art. When making a painting or a print or a sculpture, it’s nearly impossible to make something without thinking of something else. A good reminder that when dealing with images 1) once an image is used, it isn’t dead. it can be recontextualized, redistributed, reimagined. 2) It should have several lives and exist in different scenarios”
…which, at the time, I found a little coldly self-serving given the source material. And the language is a little bit exaggerated (Tepin isn’t calling the image “dead”, exactly, nor is he saying you can make something without thinking of something else).
It also brought to mind an analysis of Kanye West’s sampling that I ran into at a lecture from Jace Clayton. To paraphrase, sampling has allowed those who are disempowered to compete with those in positions of power and influence, but when you hear a sample of Nina Simone on a Kanye West song, you’re just listening to a conspicuous display of consumption (he has the money to pay for its use and you, my friend, don’t).
So I end up thinking that, when you’ve got money to credit and compensate (as do Diplo, Villani and West) you should do it, regardless of how “free” what you’re taking feels. But doing so also isn’t a moral get-out-of-jail-free card. It’s still worth thinking about your relationship with your source material, even if you’re paying for it.
Yeah, I thought Juliano-Villani’s position was a little self-serving as well, but it’s interesting to see the depth to which that informs a belief system. Joy Garnet, for example, paints from media images, and that prompted a Cease and Desist from Susan Meiselas (Garnet appropriated the Molotov cocktail photo). I’ve never felt that Garnet’s painting practice is so deeply rooted in media consumption—she’s just painting images she found on the internet—but her online presence since Joywar has been deeply influenced by the suit and internet campaign. Basically, she wants to be able to paint what she wants, and has developed an ideological frame work from which to defend that position, that’s almost indistinguishable from Juliano-Villani.
That’s fine, but generally speaking, I’m with you on compensation and credit. If you can afford to pay someone for the work you’re drawing on, then you should do it.
I think the issue for me that has always made Garnet’s (and Villani’s) argument seem thin is that recontextualization isn’t apolitical. Meiselas is a documentary photographer who went to the site of a revolution in collaboration with two journalists, not a dilettante artist who google image searched for something (which actually kind of reminds me of the Carr quote above). It sort of exceeds “it’s mine, so you can’t have it” and bends more toward “it’s not yours to use independent of its context”, which is an ethical/political question. Things don’t become yours merely because you want them and “just painting images she found on the internet” is really “just” that. Nothing is added when the framework around them is as basic as that. The argument of recontextualization is only decontextualization in preparation for temporary housing in a white room with the intention of being sold.
also: Diplo’s apologetic-ish statement is kind of nice in at least showing that he didn’t intend to wrong anyone and at least tried to do the right thing (his pretty inflammatory twitter persona notwithstanding): http://pitchfork.com/news/58471-diplo-semi-apologizes-to-gif-artist-im-sorry-i-have-trollish-tendencies-and-i-like-to-fight/
Comments on this entry are closed.