The Iterative Turn

ABSTRACT KAJA MARCZEWSKA

Tis paper investigates the implications of what I see as the increasingly promi- Kaja Marczewska is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of Modern and Con- nent propensity to copy as a creative practice in contemporary culture. While temporary Culture/Department of English, Linguistics and Cultural Studies debates about plagiarism, copyright infringement, and the state of copyright at the University of Westminster. Her research interests span avant-garde and inform my argument, the focus here is on broader issues. My discussion is experimental literature and art, hybrid creative-critical forms and innovative formulated as an attempt at defning a cultural condition that triggers novel forms of criticism, digital aesthetics, as well as intersections of the humanities, attitudes to creativity in order to explore the possibilities of re-conceptualisation technology, and law. She has published work on questions of unoriginality, of copying as a creative category. By doing so, this project strives to interrogate creativity in the digital context, google surveillance and creative practice, and the restrictions and inadequacies of the dominant categories of originality, ideas of the curatorial as a creative paradigm. creativity, and authorship to propose the notion of iteration as a possible alternative. Drawing on the example of recent creative projects by child-star cum performance artist Shia LaBeouf, practices of copying are represented here as a necessary condition of the contemporary culture and a manifestation of a shift in aesthetics, here defned as the Iterative Turn. In its attempt to think about the contemporary, the paper posits a framework for looking beyond the established paradigms of creativity. 14 PARSE JOURNAL

S STEWART HOME PUTS it, “frst to Banksy dabbles in similar forms of copying as an there were modernists, then there expression of creative practice. Whether discussed were post-modernists, now there are as plagiarist gestures, manifestations of remix or plagiarists.”1 Although hyperbolic appropriation cultures, or what I describe here as in his attempt at defning changing an expression of the contemporary Iterative Turn, attitudesA towards creativity as they emerge in their the intensifying notoriety of creative practices respective cultural moments, in this statement reliant on the possibilities of reusing pre-published Home points to a distinctive aesthetic shift, one, I content posits challenges with respect to categories suggest, of increasing prominence today. Tere is a in which to consider them. At the time when on sense here that plagiarism is an aesthetic category the one hand the availability and accessibility of that has a clearly defned history: Home’s plagiarism information is far greater than ever before, and emerges as historically contingent and following developments in information technologies encourage on from modernism and postmodernism. But if a culture of communal creativity and free appropria- plagiarism can be seen as a natural successor to tion, increased eforts are also being put into place modern and postmodern thought and practice, then, to introduce often controversial means of control of by implication, both modernism and postmodern- what has varyingly been described as a democracy ism have to be understood as conditioned upon and an anarchy (recent examples of Stop Online codifcation of practices related to plagiarism, if Piracy Act [SOPA] in the US and attempts at an not plagiarism itself. What Home seems to imply, international ratifcation of Anti-Counterfghting then, is that clear afnities can be drawn between Trade Agreement [ACTA] are a case in point). Te dominant models of cultural production in the mounting tensions between the propagators of the twentieth and twenty-frst centuries and an ongoing creative remix culture and the defenders of tradi- creative commitment to acts of copying. From tional copyright law generate contrasting rhetoric of modernist allusion, through postmodern parody and tradition versus innovation, stability versus change, pastiche, to contemporary practices discussed in this and print versus digital culture. My discussion here article, evoked in Home’s trajectory is a sense of a is an attempt at exploring this cultural framework characteristic increase in signifcance of copying for as a trigger for what I consider an important shift creativity that reaches a characteristic tipping point in aesthetics. As I argue, creating by means of today. appropriation, borrowing, plagiarism—creating by iterative means—fnds its particular moment Examples of this move towards creative copying in contemporary culture and emerges not as a in both high and popular contemporary culture transgressive practice but rather as a characteristic abound and include Kenneth Goldsmith’s wider attitude towards creativity. My interests here reside uncreative project; Vanessa Place’s retweeted Gone not in instances of plagiarism or copyright infringe- with the Wind and her retyped legal briefs, recon- ment per se, but rather in the cultural condition ceptualised as poetry, alongside a range of similar that triggers the proliferation of acts of copying, a publications proliferating among the conceptual condition that afords their re-conceptualisation as writing community; Richard Prince and Roger creative, aesthetic categories. Koons’s ongoing commitment to appropriation art; the prominence of sampling practices in music; or Recent controversies surrounding Shia LaBeouf’s a controversial debut novel by Helene Hegemann, attempts at flm-making and performance art are published in 2010 in Germany to high critical a useful starting point for thinking about issues acclaim, but comprising signifcant amounts of pla- of creativity and originality as they impinge on giarised material. Today, everyone from Baldessari the contemporary art scene. In December 2013, KAJA MARCZEWSKA 15

LaBeouf, a child-star turned performance artist, posted online 1. Home, Stewart. Plagiarism: Art as Commodity and Strategies for its Negotiation. London: Aporia Press. 1987. back cover. his short flm HowardCantour.com, which had debuted at the Cannes 2012 festival to high critical acclaim. Its avail- 2. LaBeouf, Shia. Twitter post. 2014-01-08. @thecampaign- ability online caused a considerable controversy after signif- book. Te post has now been deleted. cant similarities were exposed between LaBeouf’s flm and 3. Interestingly, appropriation is a persistent and characteristic Daniel Clowes’s comic, Justin M. Damiano (2007). Te script, feature of Clowes’s work as well. As Daniel Nicolás Ferreiro points out, “Clowes’s works have continually revealed echoes many of the visuals, as well as dialogues of LaBeouf’s flm from flms, paintings or literature, blended with diferent forms all proved to be appropriations of Clowes’s, incorporated into of popular culture”. See Daniel Nicolás Ferreiro. Relational HowardCantour.com without acknowledgement. On 8 January Genres, Gapped Narratives, and Metafctional Devices in Daniel Clowes’s David Boring. In Relational Design in 2014 LaBeouf tweeted a storyboard for his next short, Daniel Literature and the Arts: Page and Stage, Canvas and Screen. Rui Boring. “It’s like Fassbinder meets half-baked Nabokov on Carvalho Homem (ed.). Amsterdam: Rodopi. 2012. p. 185. 2 David Boring is the prime example, built around references Gilligan Island” LaBeouf declared. Te storyboard was, again, to superhero comic books, and Star Trek in particular, here a copy of a comic series and a graphic novel David Boring reworked as Te Yellow Streak. Clowes’s response to LaBeouf’s (2000), also by Daniel Clowes,3 and the statement a quotation appropriations does not, however, acknowledge Clowes’s inter- 4 est in aesthetics of appropriation as a creative practice. of Clowes’s description of David. LaBeouf circulated his Daniel accompanied by a “cease and desist” letter from Clowes’s 4. See Clowes, Daniel. Te Velvet Gloves are of: A Boring Interview with Ghost World’s Daniel Clowes. Interview by Matt attorney, addressing the issue of both copied works and calling Silvie. Te Comics Journal. no. 233. 2001. p. 66. LaBeouf to undertake “all appropriate and necessary steps to redress his wrongs.”5 5. Michael J. Kump to Brian G. Wolf. 2015-01-07. Circulated as a Twitter post. 2014.01.08. https://twitter.com/thecampaignbook/status/420931894935834624/photo/1, and https:// While LaBeouf complied with the cease and desist note— twitter.com/thecampaignbook/status/420931951462477824/ photo/1 (Accessed 2016-04-08). the relevant tweets were deleted, HowardCantour.com taken down—his subsequent amends turned into a statement on 6. LaBeouf’s approach to writing his apologies was frst identi- the ambiguous status of the relationship between copies and fed by a Twitter user. See Molly Horan. Shia LaBeouf’s Pla- giarism Controversy. Know Your Meme. http://knowyourmeme. originals in contemporary culture. His public, social-media com/memes/events/shia-labeoufs-plagiarism-controversy driven apology for an act dismissed by the media as transgres- (Accessed 2014-10-10). sive and infringing took the form of a complete appropriation 7. Cowen, Trace William. Shia on the Moon: Te Necessary stunt. None of the tweeted statements were LaBeouf’s own; Dissection of Howard Cantour. Glide Magazine. 2014-12-20. instead his apology for plagiarism was also plagiarised and http://www.glidemagazine.com/hiddentrack/shia-on-the- moon-the-necessary-dissection-of-howard-cantour/ (Accessed included an eclectic mix of unacknowledged quotations from, 2014-10-10). among others, a hip hop megastar, Kanye West, the notorious Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, and Yahoo! website comments section.6 LaBeouf’s explanation of the nature of his art in an interview for Bleeding Cool was also a compilation of repurposed material: statements by Marcel Duchamp, Kenneth Goldsmith, Lawrence Lessig, Gregory Betts, and Steve Jobs, among others.

It is easy to dismiss LaBeouf’s transgressions as yet another manifestation of the contemporary celebrity art culture (Joaquin’s Phoenix’s I’m still Here, James Franco’s various artistic endeavours), the role of the social-media information machine, “generational aversion to ‘giving credit’”7 fostered by habits of sharing information online, and related popular culture consumerism. Charges of tastelessness, immorality, 16 PARSE JOURNAL

and bad art aside, LaBeouf’s act is nevertheless itself. His contemporary iterative project surfaces interesting as a characteristic manifestation of as an acknowledgement of the singularity of the what I see as a persistent contemporary tendency to current cultural moment defned by a drive towards create by means of copying occurring at an unprec- acts of re-appropriation of appropriation gestures, of edented level in both high and popular culture, repetition of repetition, to arrive at a novel, current in mainstream and avant-garde circles alike. It is aesthetic mode. indicative of a very characteristic thinking about current means of engaging pre-published content Like Berrigan’s, then, LaBeouf’s sources are sig- as an aesthetic project, unique to the contemporary nifcant and an expression of his commitment to moment. LaBeouf’s methods resonate, I suggest, copying as a contemporary avant-garde gesture. with echoes of Ted Berrigan’s interview with John Echoing Duchamp immediately foregrounds Cage (1967),8 a text entirely composed by Berrigan LaBeouf’s interest in the ready-made. His recurring from a compilation of statements by Warhol and references to Lessig and Goldsmith inscribe How- Burroughs, among others, but attributing everything ardCantour.com, Daniel Boring, and LaBeouf’s to Cage. As such, Berrigan’s take on appropriation apologies into the contemporary framework of is manifested not only in the act of recycling textual debates about creativity, authorship, and copyright. material itself, but, perhaps even more importantly, While drawing from Lessig can be seen as a justi- in the selection of sources, all pointing to a carefully fcation of LaBeouf’s acts in legal terms, an interest constructed statement on the creative possibility of in Goldsmith’s work ofers a creative and critical the copy. Berrigan’s act should not be seen as a man- point of reference. Promoting ideas of free culture ifestation of plagiarism. It foregrounds an aesthetic and creative commons, and of “an updated notion engagement with the dynamic of repetition so char- of genius [that centres] around one’s mastery of acteristic of Warhol’s silk screens and Burroughs’ information”,9 both Lessig and Goldsmith respec- cut outs, evoked in Berrigan’s text, and the broader tively move away from thinking about models of attitude it exemplifes. Tere is a sense of an appro- cultural production in proprietary terms and towards priation of not just the source, but of a particular paradigms of creativity—“uncreativity”, to borrow attitude to creativity that is repeated when the words Kenneth Goldsmith’s term—based on a culture of of Andy Warhol are being fagrantly repurposed. collecting, organising, curating and sharing content. For Goldsmith, in the contemporary context, LaBeouf’s plagiarism, I suggest, should be practices such as LaBeouf’s assume a creative quality considered in similar terms; as an iteration of a and are a manifestation of characteristic habits of certain persistent attitude to copying as a creative textual production and dissemination; “it is not act that fnds its manifestation in related forms of plagiarism in the digital age—it’s repurposing”,10 creative production, a trajectory illustrative of con- argues Goldsmith. “It is not plagiarism in the digital temporary models of creativity. Understood as such, age—it’s repurposing”11, suggests LaBeouf, without the propensity to repeat today should be seen as a acknowledgement. complete aesthetic project expressed in individual works which rely on iterative means as well as on a Tis approach, LaBeouf argues, contributes to his manner in which previous appropriation gestures are ongoing creative project as an expression of “meta- evoked. LaBeouf’s preoccupation with Duchamp modernist performance art”.12 His two artist’s and Goldsmith, and Goldsmith’s commitment to manifestos, positioning his work as meta-modernist engaging with Warhol’s oeuvre both exemplify this and intentionally uncreative, are also, perhaps trajectory. What LaBeouf repeats is not simply a unsurprisingly, composed by means of copying, specifc source text, but the method of appropriation repurposing Luke Turner’s meta-modernism KAJA MARCZEWSKA 17

manifesto, passed of as LaBeouf’s,13 and excerpts of Gold- 8. Berrigan, Ted. An Interview with John Cage. Electronic 14 Poetry Center. http://epc.bufalo.edu/authors/berrigan/cage. smith’s Uncreative Writing respectively. His recent “Twitter html (Accessed 2014-09-10). as Art” statement is a mash-up, bringing together a selection of performance art manifestos by Marilyn Arsem, Scott 9. Goldsmith, Kenneth. Uncreative Writing. New York: Colum- bia University Press. 2011. p. 1. Wichmann and Marina Abramvić, as well as passages copied verbatim from Painters Painting, a 1973 documentary. “All art 10. Goldsmith, Kenneth. Twitter post, 2014-01-2. https:// 15 twitter.com/kg_ubu/status/418787567354785792 (Accessed is either plagarisum [sic] or revolution”, LaBeouf suggests, 2016-04-08). (mis)quoting Paul Gauguin. However, the notion of plagiarism today, as acts such as LaBeouf’s seem to imply, requires a 11. LaBeouf, Shia. Authorship is Censorship—Bleeding Cool in Conversation with Shia LaBeouf. Interview by Rich radical re-conceptualisation. Where instances of creative Johnson. Bleeding Cool. 2014-01-02. http://www.bleedingcool. expression are concerned, “all rights and remedies [might be] com/2014/01/authorship-is-censorship-bleeding-cool-in- 16 conversation-with-shia-labeouf/ (Accessed 2014-09-01). reserved” under the rule of copyright law, as the “cease and desist” notice concludes, but LaBeouf’s stunt seems to imply 12. LaBeouf, Shia. Twitter as Art. Tweeted by LaBeouf in that in the contemporary context their reach, enforceability January 2014 (@thecampaignbook), the manifesto has since been taken down but is widely available online. See, for exam- and applicability prove limited. LaBeouf’s case is a reminder ple: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/gossip/shia- that the idea of culture as property is not an unquestion- labeouf-bizarre-behavior-performance-art-article-1.1587660 (Accessed 2016-04-06). able absolute. Rather, as Jonathan Lethem contends, it is “an ongoing social negotiation, tenuously forged, endlessly revised, 13. LaBeouf’s name was temporarily included in the by-line and imperfect in its every incarnation.”17 When paradigms of of Luke Turner’s Metamodernist Manifesto. It is preserved on Turner’s website: http://luketurner.com/labeouf-ronkko-turn- information production and dissemination change with the rise er/metamodernist-manifesto/ (Accessed 2016-04-06). Turner’s to prominence of novel media platforms, so does thinking about manifesto, now in its original format, can be viewed here: http://www.metamodernism.org/ (Accessed 2016-04-06). authorship and creativity, a trajectory true both in the context of the now familiar, historical, “old” technologies and as a 14. LaBeouf, Shia. #stopcreating. Te New Inquiry. 2014.01.20. manifestation of the contemporary new media cultural trans- http://thenewinquiry.com/features/stopcreating/(Accessed 2014-01-10). formations. Projects such as LaBeouf’s contribute to a collective attempt at renegotiating the standards that are otherwise taken 15. LaBeouf, Twitter as Art. for granted. 16. Kump to Wolf.

Although removed as a result of the copyright controversy, 17. Lethem, Jonathan. Te Ecstasy of Infuence. In Te Ecstasy of Infuence: Nonfctions, etc. London: Jonathan Cape. 2012. p. HowardCantour.com and LaBeouf’s tweets remain accessible 101. online. Tis widespread preservation and availability of the material ofcially deleted posits signifcant questions about the nature of the copy in the digital environment. Te dynamic of production and dissemination of content online is fore- grounded here not as a space of the original creation but of the inevitable copy, of its persistent proliferation, not only independent but, importantly, irrespective of the status of the original. Te original as a centre and source of meaning, in the context, becomes only an illusory centre. Tis logic of the digital copy fnds its manifestation in LaBeouf’s complete act. LaBeouf got away with plagiarism, until he did not, his transgression identifed by a Twitter user almost immediately after the release of HowardCantour.com online. If, as Warhol (appropriating McLuhan) puts it, art is what you can get away 18 PARSE JOURNAL

with, then LaBeouf’s performance is an example of attention away from the illegality to the aesthetics of how not to do art. But, perhaps, getting away with the act. But this is exactly why LaBeouf’s case serves plagiarism is not the point here. Perhaps plagiarism as a useful example here. It points to the urgency in not an appropriate term to describe LaBeouf’s and ubiquity of the debates and to the dynamic of act. His uncreative practice acquires an altogether the environment that generates them. Tat LaBeouf diferent status if viewed as a clear manifesta- has an extensive knowledge of the history of appro- tion of the infuence of the contemporary digital, priation art is a possibility; that HowardCantour. networked culture on the practices of information com, released two years before the plagiarism con- dissemination and artistic expression, on the status troversy started, had been created to incite the of the copy. As Goldsmith puts it, “plagiarizing well uncreative performance that followed is likely. is hard to do”.18 Plagiarising in the social-media But there is also a chance that it is the exigency driven culture proves an impossible feat. In this of the current debates about open sourcing, fle context, questions that need to be raised in relation sharing, copyright in the digital age, the ubiquity to plagiarism shift away from ethics and towards of the debates about information dissemination aesthetics of borrowing pre-published content. Te and circulation online, and the ease of accessing change in attitude might be a result of increasing materials about them that collectively enabled a availability of all published content online and of construction of LaBeouf’s defence that was only one simple, widely accessible tools that make plagiarism Google search away, collated as a publicity rather detection possible. If a “trial by Google”19 enables than an artist’s statement. And while the approach any online user to detect LaBeouf’s plagiarism might raise questions about the creative qualities of only a few hours after his work or a statement are LaBeouf’s art, the controversy touches at the core released online, then the motivations behind acts of of the contemporary cultural condition that drives copying must, inevitably, change. In the context of the aesthetic developments discussed in this article. ubiquitous digital media, plagiarism as an attempt Acts of plagiarising an artist’s statement, a perfor- at passing someone else’s ideas as one’s own ceases mance piece, plagiarising apologies for plagiarism, to be achievable. It is this sense of an impossibility although dismissed in LaBeouf’s case as instances of a copy that provokes a proliferation of copies, but of copyright infringement and plagiarism by law generated as an expression of transgressive creative and media respectively, should be seen, I argue, as gestures achieved though inherently uncreative neither. Rather, LaBeouf’s tenacious copying should acts. Plagiarism seen as such is not antithetical to be considered a manifestation of a condition of creativity, but rather, as Lethem argues, a necessary iteration as an emergent aesthetic attitude. condition of all writing and creativity, and organi- cally connected to it.20 Practices of copying today should be considered a necessary condition of the current cultural Tere is a certain sense that LaBeouf’s complete moment. While notions of plagiarism, copyright work of plagiarism came together as an after- infringement, and iteration all imply that forms thought, an attempt at reframing an unambiguous of authorship are defned in relation to a shared instance of plagiarism as a carefully constructed preoccupation with means of creative production performance to avoid the consequences of copyright informed by acts of copying, the base assump- infringement. LaBeouf, by choosing Goldsmith, tions about the essence of creativity and original- Duchamp or Abramović as his sources, makes a ity difer signifcantly where the frst two concepts stand about the status of his copy as an avant-garde and iteration are concerned. Both plagiarism project. His self-fashioning as an experimental and copyright infringement favour originality of performance artist is a conscious choice to shift creation, where originality is synonymous with, KAJA MARCZEWSKA 19

simply, not copying. Iteration, on the nature of LaBeouf’s “foolishness” fails 18. Goldsmith, Kenneth. Interview by Trace William other hand, recognises the creative to comply with the copyright paradigms Cowen. Nailed. 2014-01-08. potential of copying. Iteration, as I defne of authorship and originality. Similar http://www.nailedmagazine. it here, represents a tendency to repeat thinking pervades popular understand- com/interview/interview- with-kenneth-goldsmith- available material as a creative gesture; ing of what it means to create, echoed by-trace-william-cowen/ as an extension rather than a synonym in the media debates about LaBeouf’s (Accessed 2014-08-18). of copying and appropriating. While plagiarism. While often considered a 19. Shields, David. Real- copyright infringement and plagiarism manifestation of an unlawful practice, ity Hunger: A Manifesto. are preoccupied with questions of plagiarism is not a legal term. Unlike London: Hamish Hamilton. 2010. p. 38. whether copying has occurred, copying is copyright infringement, plagiarism is an always already implied in iteration. Tis ethical category. Although inherently 20. Lethem, Jonathan. I’m suggesting [originality] is an approach is inherent in my use of the transgressive, acts of plagiarism do not, overrated virtue. Interview term, itself an appropriation of Derrida’s in all instances, constitute copyright by Harvey Blume. Te concept of iterability. According to infringement. As Laurie Stearns Boston Globe. 2007.03.04. http://www.boston.com/ Derrida, the word “iter” means “again”. explains, news/globe/ideas/arti- Te logic of iterability is the logic of cles/2007/03/04/qa_jona- than_lethem/?page=full repetition. But iterability also inheres in some ways the concept of plagiarism (Accessed 2013-02-24). change. As Derrida explains, the term is broader than infringement, in that “iter” most likely derives from “itra”, or it can include copying of ideas, or of 21. Derrida, Jacques. Signature Event Context. In “other” in Sanskrit. Hence, “everything expression not protected by copyright, Limited, Inc. Trans. Samuel that follows can be read as the working that would not constitute infringe- Weber and Jefrey Mehlman. Gerald Graf (ed.). Evanson, out of the logic that ties repetition to ment […] fundamental to both Il: Northwestern University 21 alterity.” Repetition is that which, for plagiarism and copyright infringe- Press. 1988). p. 7. Derrida, alters. Te principle of iter- ment is wrongful copying from a 22. Kump to Wolf. ability assumes alterity as a condition preexisiting work. But the form, the of otherness, diference or change. amount, and the sources of the copying 23. Stearns, Laurie. Copy Wrong: Plagiarism, Process, Iterability implies a repetition, but a prohibited as copyright infringement Property, and the Law. In repetition with a diférance rather than a are diferent from those of the copying Perspectives on Plagiarism repetition of the same. Tinking about condemned as plagiarism.23 and Intellectual Property in a Postmodern World. Lise creative practice as iterative necessitates a Buranen and Alice M. Roy completely new set of questions, which, But, as it is often the case, the logic (eds.). New York: State Uni- versity of New York Press. I argue, defne contemporary attitudes to and the media rhetoric of plagiarism 1999. p. 9. creativity and the cultural moment that surrounding LaBeouf’s performance breeds them. I describe that moment as mirror the legal understanding of 24. Buranen, Lise, and Roy, Alice M. Introduction to the Iterative Turn. copyright infringement. Tere is a sense Perspectives on Plagiarism and that plagiarism is synonymous with a Intellectual Property in a Post- modern World. Lise Buranen LaBeouf’s project evokes this new failure of a creative process. Plagiarism, and Alice M. Roy (eds.). iterative attitude. In line with the as Lise Buranen and Alice M. Roy New York: State University dominant logic, LaBeouf’s acts are a case put it, “is perceived as a problem […]: of New York Press. 1999. pp. xv-xvi. of a “clear copyright infringement and ‘using someone else’s words without a misappropriation of Daniel Clowes’s telling whose they are or where you got work.”22 Dismissed as a “blatant copy”, them’; ‘stealing other people’s ideas or and a manifestation of “improper and words.’”24 Plagiarism, then, is considered outlandish conduct”, the derivative synonymous with theft and the under- 20 PARSE JOURNAL

25. Randall, Marilyn. Prag- standing of the notion derives, Marilyn any critical impulse that should be seen matic Plagiarism: Authorship, Proft, and Power. Toronto: Randall explains, from the Latin origins as a driving force behind developments University of Toronto Press. of the term, plagium meaning “to kidnap in modern paradigms of creativity. But 2001. p. 61. a person”, used only with reference it is easy to give into techno-deter-

26. Halbert, Deborah. to children, servants or slaves, people ministic reductionism while focusing Poaching and Plagiaris- who could be considered in proprietary on technological progress alone. My ing: Property, Plagiarism, 25 and Feminist Futures. In terms. Te same logic translates into thinking about the logic of iterative Perspectives on Plagiarism paradigms of creative production as creative practices is infuenced by but and Intellectual Property in a soon as creative outputs are considered not limited to the digital environment. I Postmodern World. p. 111. property, as defned by Intellectual am interested in the critical potential of 27. Boon, Marcus. In Praise Property law. “Once it becomes possible technological change and technology’s of Copying. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. to think of literary work as property”, ability to destabilise the familiar cultural 2010. p. 101. Deborah Halbert suggests, “it becomes codes and consider the contemporary possible to ‘steal’ that property.”26 digital culture as a contextual framework, 28. Siegert, Bernard. Cultur- al Techniques: Grids, Filters, a cultural technique in Bernard Siegert’s Doors, and Other Articulation Tere is a sense here that a copy is almost terms, that exerts signifcant impact on of the Real. Trans. Geofrey Winthrop-Young. New York, a taboo. However, my argument stems the dynamic of creative practices both NY: Fordham University from an assumption that as technolo- online and ofine. Following Siegert, I Press. 2015. p. 2. gies and economies of writing change, see new technologies as a characteristic

so does the inherent understanding of “condition of representation”,28 a system authorship and the dominant attitudes of reference for paradigms of contem- towards both creativity and plagiarism. porary creativity. Tis is to say that the We fnd ourselves now at a transi- iterative attitude is not limited to digital tional cultural stage—at the Iterative practices, but it emerges in response to Turn—characterised by the propensity the impact of digital culture on cultural to copy as an expression of creative production broadly conceived. Hence, it practice. Perhaps, this contemporary is the backlash of the Internet copy-paste persistence of acts of copying, of which culture of ubiquitous sharing rather than LaBeouf’s performance is only one that culture itself that forms the context example, should be seen as a shift, to for the Iterative Turn, emerging under borrow from Marcus Boon, “in relation the condition of postproduction and to the forces that constitute that taboo”.27 not as a straightforward expression of If copying emerges as an increasingly mechanism of digital culture. prominent avenue of creative expression, Developed by Nicolas Bourriaud, the then perhaps the base assumptions of notion of “postproduction” is useful here creativity need to shift accordingly. Te as a critical framework for conceptualis- critical and creative move towards the ing the state of contemporary creativity. Iterative Turn I propose here ofers one While contemporary digital technolo- possible way of thinking about creativity gies heavily inform the dynamic of the in response to these assumptions. postproduction culture, the technology is only one aspect of this much more Today, the context that triggers iterative comprehensive cultural ecology and of thinking is digital. As Lev Manovich the processes that inform the contempo- suggests, it is technology, more than rary aesthetic shift towards iteration. For KAJA MARCZEWSKA 21

Bourriaud, postproduction epitomises capitalism”,31 an environment character- 29. Bourriaud, Nicolas. Postproduction, Culture as the contemporary, and ofers a means ised by an abundance of language as an Screenplay: How Art repro- of presenting “an analysis of today’s art object of widespread, constant consump- grammes the World. Trans. in relation to social changes, whether tion and production online. However, Jeannie Herman. New York, NY: Lukas and Sternberg. technological, economic, or sociologi- the features of material consumed and 2002. p. 8. cal.”29 He sees contemporary culture as produced online alter the nature of this 30. Bourriaud, p. 7. defned by a characteristic sense of excess capitalism. In the digital context, tech- which manifests itself through excessive nologies come to be defned in terms of 31. Schmidt, Christopher. information production, dissemination processes of reproduction rather than Te Waste Management Po- etics of Kenneth Goldsmith. and manipulation characteristic for the production. Within a culture of informa- SubStance 37. February 2008. contemporary digital culture. Tis under- tion consumerism, governed by what p. 37. 32 standing of the contemporary condition Goldsmith defnes as “re-gestures”, i.e. 32. Goldsmith, Ken- serves as a means of distinguishing re-blogging, re-tweeting, the nature of neth. Te Bounce and the between the contemporary and postmod- information circulation and processing Roll. Harriet: a poetry blog. 2011-04-16. http://www. ern moments, the latter characterised presupposes a “scrambling of boundaries poetryfoundation.org/har- by extreme consumerism of hyper- of consumption and production”.33 Tis riet/2011/04/the-bounce- and-the-roll/ (Accessed capitalism that triggered appropriation is a culture that, as Bourriaud stresses, 2013-02-10). art as it developed in the 1970s. Tis “denies the binary opposition between characteristic trajectory exemplifes the the proposal of the transmitter and the 33. Bourriaud, p. 19. changing nature of appropriation, with participation of the receiver [...] the 34. Ibid., p. 40. the aesthetic transformation driven by a producer is only a transmitter for the 34 35. Ibid., p. 13. move away from the overload of things following producer.” As such, any act to information overload as a defning of consumption simultaneously turns 36. Guertin, Carolyn. features of creativity today. into an act of production, eradicating, to Digital Prohibition: Piracy and Authorship in New Media Te contemporary remix culture turn to Bourriaud again, “the traditional Art. London: Continuum, that Bourriaud poses as a pre-condition distinction between production and con- 2012. p. 21. of the postproduction moment inher- sumption, creation and copy, readymade 37. Poster, Mark. Te Mode 35 ently subsumes self-conscious acts of and original work.” of Information: Poststruc- appropriation as the dominant creative turalism and Social Context. Cambridge: Polity Press, mode of today. “It is no longer a matter What transpires, then, is a notion of 2007. p. 9. of elaborating a form on the basis of a creativity that turns copying into a raw material”, Bourriaud writes, “but creative paradigm. But copying in the working with objects that are already in postproduction environment assumes a circulation on the cultural market, […] hyperbolised structure of reproduction; objects already informed by other objects. “everything digital is a copy”,36 Carolyn Notions of originality […] and even Guertin contends. Driven by models of creation […] are slowly blurred in this digital re-creation, postproduction is new cultural landscape.”30 Te negotia- characterised by proliferation of copies tion of consumption-production dynamic of copies, copies without originals.37 implied in Bourriaud’s statement lies at Mark Poster points to a similar feature the core of his postproduction thinking. of digital information production. For His postproduction Web is an environ- Poster, an act of digital mediation can ment synonymous with what Christopher only produce reproductions, not copies of Schmidt describes as a “waste media originals but rather copies as simulacra, 22 PARSE JOURNAL

38. Ryan, Marie-Laure. Cy- i.e. copies that have no originals. A practice, already explored at diferent berspace, Virtuality, and the Text. In Cybertext Textuality: characteristic propensity for the fake stages of the twentieth century, arise in Computer Technology and is implied in this understanding of the the culture of postproduction through Literary Teory. Marie-Laure virtual culture and, as Marie-Laure an engagement with and in response to Ryan (ed.). Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Ryan points out, the term “virtual” itself the new digital hegemony, to address a 1999. p. 89. encompasses two distinct concepts: “the diferent range of questions, distinct from

39. Lévy, Pierre. quoted in largely negative idea of a fake, illusion- the preoccupations of the postmodern Ryan, p. 90. ary, non-existent, and the overwhelm- predecessors. Today, Fitterman and ingly positive idea of the potential, which Place argue, “production (industrial 40. Derrida. p. 7. connotes productivity, openness, and age) [becomes] replaced by simulation 41. Bourriaud, p. 8. diversity.”38 As Ryan explains (quoting (information age).”43 Te trajectory

42. Ibid., p. 93. Pierre Lévy), “the virtual is not at all the precludes a particular relationship opposite of the real. It is, on the contrary, between technology and creativity where 43. Fitterman, Robert, and a powerful productive mode of being, advancements in reproduction technolo- Place, Vanessa. Notes on Conceptualism. New York, a mode that gives free rein to creative gies inevitably result in association of NY: Ugly Duckling Press, process.”39 Hence, the derogative culture creativity with acts of copying. As modes 2009. p. 32. of copying turns into what could be of information, (re)production and dis- 44. Benjamin, Walter. Te described as an aesthetics of plagiarism, semination become more advanced and Work of Art in the Age of a diferent kind of creativity, distinct necessary technologies more accessible, Mechanical Reproduction. In Illuminations. Hannah from what we traditionally understand by notions of creativity and copying Arendt (ed.). London: Pim- the term, faunting the convention and gradually converge to eventually emerge lico, 1999. p. 219. speculating about the potential of the as interchangeable terms. As Benjamin fuidity and the openness of the source. predicted, in the age of post-mechanical Here, the new text remains at the same reproduction the work of art becomes time a deconstructed, displaced old text “designed for reproducibility”44 rather in a new context, linking, to repeat after than for the aura of its manifest singular- Derrida, repetition to alterity.40 In such ity. Tis is not to say that a propensity a cultural frame, iteration becomes a for originality is abandoned when cornerstone of creativity. increasingly more advanced technologies emerge; rather, the attitudes to original- Tis preoccupation with creative possi- ity alter as technologies develop. bilities implicit in acts of reusing material is, of course, as Bourriaud himself Similarly to Bourriaud’s, my reading of admits, “nothing new”.41 Te afnities contemporary reproduction strategies of the postmodern and postproduction in their current technological moment practices are signifcant. Te task of the is an attempt at identifying a broader early twenty-frst century is in the end, cultural tendency that emerges under a as Bourriaud stresses, “not to start from unique, contemporary cultural condition, zero or fnd oneself encumbered by the an attitude that I see manifested in store-house of history, but to inventory the emergence of the Iterative Turn. and select, to use and download.”42 As As Bourriaud explains, “today certain such, the contemporary digital impulse elements and principles are reemerging as brings forward new concerns; similar themes and are suddenly at the forefront, forms, similar approaches to uncreative to the point of constituting the ‘engine’ KAJA MARCZEWSKA 23

of new aesthetic practice.”45 Te same changes in the apparatus of technology 45. Bourriaud, p. 9. sense of contemporary culture that relies that should be seen as a trigger for a shift 46. Heidegger, Martin. on iterative gestures evoked in Home’s in aesthetic attitudes in their respective Te Question Concerning trajectory manifests itself clearly in cultural moments. As Žižek puts it, Technology. In Te Question Concerning Technology and Bourriaud’s postproduction thinking. the “essence of technology” does not Other Essays. Trans. William Te aesthetic paradigms of both Home’s designate a complex network of machines Lovitt. New York, NY: Gar- land Publishing. 1977. p. 4. plagiarist culture and Bourriaud’s and activities; rather it is a manifesta- postproduction condition presuppose tion of a particular attitude towards 47. Heidegger, p. 3. a dominance of inherently derivative reality; “technology”, Žižek comments, 48. Žižek, Slavoy. Event: practices, relying on repurposing and “is the way reality discloses itself to us Philosophy in Transit. Lon- recycling of the abundance of available in contemporary times.”48 Today, then, don: Penguin Books. 2014. p. 31. material proliferating and constantly we operate by means of a Heideg- generated online, a dynamic that gerian essence of technology, which, as 49. Žižek, p. 31. infuences habits of cultural production a dominant attitude, “structures the way and consumption also outside of the we relate to reality”.49 immediate confnes of the Web and strictly technology-oriented contexts. Te problem for Heidegger is not the existence of technology—or its Tis is a key assumption, indicative of manifestation in a variety of forms it a particular thinking about technology assumes—but rather a propensity for that informs the dynamic of the Iterative and orientation towards technology Turn. If contemporary reading and and technological thinking, a certain writing habits develop as a result of the technological imagination that fnds its ubiquity of digital environments that manifestations in an aesthetic project. transform and infuence our behaviours Te framework within which con- also outside of the digital sphere, then temporary iterative practices are best acts of creativity today can be conceived considered, I suggest, should be based on of as a manifestation of the Heideg- this concept of technology as an essence gerian “essence of technology” and rather than simply viewed as a response not of the technology itself. Tis is a to changes in technology themselves. Of distinction which informs Heidegger’s course, the technological developments inquiry in “Te Question Concerning and thinking about technology that Technology”—not a question of Heidegger posits are inherently interde- technology per se, but of what Heidegger pendent. It is impossible to speak of the refers to as Wesen, the essence of essence of technology without consider- technology: “by no means anything tech- ing technology in instrumental terms, nological.”46 “Technology”, Heidegger while any manifestation of technological explains, “is not equivalent to the essence progress is contingent on the conceptu- of technology […] the essence of a thing alisation of the essence of technology: is considered to be what the thing is.”47 In line with Heidegger’s thinking, it because the essence of technology is the changing understanding of the is nothing technological, essential very conception of technology, of what refection upon technology and decisive technology is, rather than simply of the confrontation with it must happen in 24 PARSE JOURNAL

a realm that is, on the one hand, akin to the essence activities and skills of the craftsman, but also for the of technology and, on the other, fundamentally arts of the mind and the fne arts. Technē belongs diferent from it.50 to […] poiēsis; it is something poietic.”53 It is in the afnities between technē and technology that the “Such a realm”, Heidegger suggests, “is art”.51 In nature of the essence of technology resides. Technē order to think about creativity in the contempo- is both technology and poiēsis, technē as a cultural rary postproduction moment, a model of techno- technique perhaps, where technology assumes a logical thinking is required that goes beyond the sense of a method of the arts, turning itself into restricted defnitions of technology viewed in purely an aesthetic tool. It is a matter of a certain orienta- instrumental terms. Te notion of the essence of tion towards technology as a wide-ranging cultural technology invites a broader, more adaptable and attitude. It involves an extensive engagement with comprehensive approach to conceptualising the processes of making and producing and is not a nature and role of technology today. Technology as manifestation of a singular machine or tool. essence cannot be defned as a specifc machine or a tool, but rather should be seen as a more general What is of particular signifcance to my argument concept of making, inclusive of processes of artistic here is the possibility aforded by thinking about production. As Heidegger puts it, technology as essence to explore the dynamic of alterity, subversion, and change, implicit in the if we speak of the “essence of a house” and the logic of the Iterative Turn. Technē, unlike modern “essence of a state,” we do not mean a generic type; technology, is inherently non-instrumental; the rather we mean the ways in which house and state essence of technology is a matter of constant change. hold sway, administer themselves, develop and As Heidegger argues, the world is set in place decay—the way in which they “essence” [Wesen].52 (gestellt), and the modern technology as a tool and a means to an end, is what Heidegger describes as If we speak of an essence of digital technology, it an Enframing (Gestell). While Enframing is char- is not the specifc applications, devices, or Internet acterised by an attempt at regulating, securing, browsers that we address—not the platform which using technology as a means of setting in place, the LaBeouf might have used to create his works—but emphasis of technē is on engaging with technology a broader attitude towards the ways in which we in non-instrumental terms, on unsecuring and engage with the means of information production unsettling the familiar categories and paradigms. and dissemination in an environment in which all of Te use of technology that informs contemporary these technologies infuence creative practices. aesthetic practice should be seen as the essence of technē rather than of technology per se. Te Tis is a trajectory that has its roots in what can be engagement with technology that informs iterative described as Heidegger’s taxonomy of technology. creative practices can be considered as a response Heidegger draws a distinction between modern to an ever-increasing technological move towards technology and its traditional equivalent. While, Enframing, a response to an efort to regulate the for Heidegger, the modern technology restricts arts, to secure the technē in purely instrumental the defnition of the technological to that which terms. Te aesthetic premise of iterative creative acts is purely instrumental, the traditional technology, stems from, I suggest, the possibilities of thinking or technē, typically encompasses manifestations of about technology and creativity as technē, where skill, art, or craft. Technē is a category used to denote creative process emerges as a result of unsecuring both the creative and the instrumental practice; it and unsettling the familiar, dominant categories. is, Heidegger writes, “the name not only for the While Heidegger sees Enframing as the essence KAJA MARCZEWSKA 25

of modern technology, I suggest that turning towards technē, 50. Heidegger, p. 35. with allowances for digital thinking, ofers a more accurate 51. Ibid. framework for the contemporary context. As such, the creative thinking at the contemporary postproduction moment should 52. Ibid., p. 30. be seen as governed by the essence of technology (Wessen) rather 53. Ibid., p. 13. than by its Enframing (Gestell). In this approach, any act of 54. In his translation of “Te Question Concerning Technol- digital reproducibility, assumes an aesthetic rather than instru- ogy” William Lovitt renders the noun Wesen as both “essence” mental function. It becomes an end in itself, governed by its and “coming to presence”, with the latter translation of particu- own logic of iteration rather than by the rules of techno-deter- lar prominence in Heidegger’s essay “Te Turning”. See Martin Heidegger. Te Turning. In Te Question Concerning Technology ministic pragmatism. Te iterative aesthetic, with its subversive and Other Essays. Trans. William Lovitt. New York, NY, and take on mechanisms of technology, becomes a space where London: Garland Publishing. 1977. p. 35, n. 1. the possibilities of technē as a universal creative paradigm are 55. Heidegger, Te Turning, p. 38. recognised and realised. 56. Ibid., p. 39.

Such understanding of the essence of technology as a fexible 57. Ibid. and fuid category, as a cultural state that is coming to presence,54 is inscribed into my notion of the Iterative Turn. Tinking about the contemporary change in technology emerging in the postproduction moment as “a turn” allows for an acknowledgement of a certain sense of continuity in conceptualising practices of appropriation in the variety of their historical guises, always informed by the essence of technology, and changing as a result of shifting conceptions of technology in their respective cultural moments. A turn does not imply a break away from the older models of technology or creative practice—Home’s plagiarism, for example, develops from rather than rejects the postmodern and modernist projects— but as an unsettling process that has generative qualities at the same time, as a Heideggerian “turning”. Heidegger speaks of a turning as that which comes to pass within Enframing. As Heidegger writes, “if a change in Being—i.e., now, in the coming to presence of Enframing—comes to pass, than this in no way means that technology […] will be done away with.”55 A change in the coming to presence of a new aesthetic paradigm in no way means that earlier creative models will be done away with. Rather, the coming to presence of a new conception of technology is characteristically driven by what Heidegger describes as the “change of its destining”.56 Te change, as a turn, or turning, manifests itself “out of the arrival of another destining”.57 A change in the Enframing, in the technological apparatus, a development of new technological possibilities, i.e. the ubiquity of the digital tools and methods, results in a turning not just in the technology itself, but in the essence of technology, in its conception and the attitudes towards an 26 PARSE JOURNAL

altered technological reality that emerge as a result. work, but rather the revealing of the making as In the turning, “everything is reversed”, but never- remaking. Conceptualised as such, contemporary theless it is “not a change of standpoint”.58 Rather, uncreative works should not be considered instances it is a change conceived of as a turning point59 of plagiarism or copyright infringement but are that allows for a shift in established paradigms better described as iterative acts and an expression in response to the change in the conception of of the contemporary Iterative Turn. Iteration as it technology. Te turning, then, emerges from a manifests itself at the postproduction moment can pattern of discontinuities with what comes before be seen as an expression of what Bourriaud describes it—appropriating in postproduction moment difers as a “confguration of knowledge, which is charac- from the related modernist and postmodern acts— terised by the invention of paths through culture.”63 but the conception of technology and the related Here Heideggerian thinking and Bourriaud’s project aesthetic that emerge as a result of the turning are converge to form a notion of an Iterative Turn that interpretable from within and through a relationship is indicative of shifting aesthetic attitudes and to earlier projects and concerns. emergent means of conceptualising them.

Hence, what is manifested in the contemporary Understood as such, the notion of iteration serves postproduction turn towards digital technology as a broad and fexible concept akin to, or perhaps and iteration is a transformation in the attitudes itself a manifestation of, the Heideggerian essence, towards forms of knowing (and technē, as Heidegger an essence of making by means of transgressing the explained, is linked with the word epistēmē—“both familiar notions of authorship and creativity that words are names for knowing in the widest sense”).60 turns into a creative act, one that is revealing of “Such knowing”, Heidegger suggests, “provides the paradigms of creativity constructed by iterative an opening up. As an opening up it is revealing”,61 means. Hence, iteration should be considered as indicative of epistemologies of contemporary a category particularly relevant to describing the aesthetics, revealing shifting paradigms of creative dynamic of technological and aesthetic turns, thinking and alternative approaches to originality where a change, a shift in tools, practices, and that emerge at the backdrop of such a conceptual attitudes, involves both a move away from the earlier framework. For Heidegger, technology is a way paradigms and a repetition of the earlier paradigms of revealing (das Entreben) of that which it brings at the same time.64 Hence, each turn, regardless forth, i.e. letting a thing disclose itself rather than of the cultural condition that defnes it, is always simply producing or manufacturing an object in an iterative process, repeating and altering earlier purely instrumental terms. ‘”What is instrumental aesthetic models and systems of thought in a chain in technē”, Heidegger writes, “does not lie at all in of constant change of charged diferences. making and manipulating nor in the using of means, but rather in the aforementioned revealing. It is as Te contemporary turn should be seen, I suggest, revealing, and not as manufacturing that technē is as iterative in such a broad sense. It should be bringing forth.”62 Creative acts such as LaBeouf’s, understood as evocative of the modernist and overtly reliant on repurposed material, are a mani- postmodernist commitment to repetition associated festation of such an assumption, openly disclosing with a certain propensity for technological change themselves, their methods and sources to draw as an aesthetic dominant. At the same time, this attention to their distinctive aesthetics, to alterna- current Iterative Turn is a turn towards iteration as tive models of thinking about creativity today. It is a creative method and form that defnes the cultural not the manipulation of sources, making by means and aesthetic dynamics today. As a response to the of remaking, that is at the core of iterative creative postproduction condition, iteration, or the essence of KAJA MARCZEWSKA 27

iteration, perhaps—a general attitude towards 58. Heidegger, Martin. Letter on Humanism. In Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings. Trans. F.A Capuzzi and J. Glenn Gray. D.F. Krell (ed.). Lon- re-appropriating earlier paradigms of aesthetic thinking don: Routledge. 1993. pp. 231-232. for a cultural moment—translates into specifc forms of expression that assume repetition as a model of 59. My description of change as a turning point is a reference to Hei- degger’s statement in his letter to William J. Richardson which, in the creativity. Here the principles of an iterative turn in German original, reads: “Das Denken der Kehre ist eine Wendung in general, and of a turn towards iteration triggered by the meinem Denken.” Te notion of “die Kehre” mentioned here has been varyingly translated as ‘a turn,’ ‘a turning,’ or ‘a reversal,’ and the state- current cultural moment converge at the Iterative Turn. ment itself has been translated with references to a ‘turning point’ and In Heideggerian terms, the contemporary Iterative Turn ‘change.’” William J. Richardson translates the statement as: “Te think- combines an essence of iteration and an Enframing of ing of the reversal is a change in my thought.” Reprinted as Preface to Heidegger: Trough Phenomenology to Tought. William J. Richardson. New iteration at the same time, or, as Derrida would have it, York, NY: Fordham University Press. 2003. p. xviii. In contrast, Emad an example of iteration in general—a condition of iter- Parvis’s translation reads: “Te thinking of the turning is a turning point in my thinking.” In On the Way to Heidegger’s Contribution to Philosophy. ability—and a singular iteration in itself. Seen as such, Emad Parvis. Maddison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. 2007. p. iteration should be considered both a method of creative 111. See note 41, p. 214 on Parvis’s comment on his translation. practice and a historical category of aesthetics. Te 60. Heidegger, Te Question, p. 5. contemporary turn emerges as a result of a confation of the two models, always intertwined in the contemporary 61. Ibid. iterative thinking, where the condition of iterability as 62. Ibid., p. 6. an attitude to creative practice, fnds its momentum and a manifestation in related iterative forms. Seen as such, 63. Bourriaud, p. 19. iterability turns into a law of not only repetition itself 64. Te same iterative logic is implied in my confation of Heidegger and but of postproduction creativity more broadly. While Derrida’s terms and the relationship between Heidegger and Derrida’s thought. Derrida’s could be described as an iteration of Heidegger’s phi- the possibility of a repetition of a particular creative losophy, as its altered repetition. Tis association with Heidegger is one form or mode of expression is always a probability, it is that Derrida makes explicit himself. See Jacques Derrida. Positions. Trans. the specifc context of the postproduction moment that Alan Bass. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press. 1981. pp. 52-54. Derrida’s wider philosophical project is, in fact, an iterative one. It is creates a condition for the Iterative Turn to manifest governed by what Spivak describes as “the notion of the joyful yet labori- itself most explicitly. Tat is to say, iteration as a creative ous strategy of rewriting the old language […] Derrida acknowledges that the desire of deconstruction may itself become a desire to reappropri- paradigm reveals itself in the mode of revealing that is ate the text actively through mastery, to show the text what it ‘does not most suited to it. know’.” See Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Translator’s Preface to Jacques Derrida. Of Grammatology. Baltimore, MD, and London: Te John Hop- kins University Press. 1997. pp. xx, lxxvii. Derrida’s work is within and At the Iterative Turn, the function of reproduction without the work of Heidegger, and his other predecessors more broadly; technologies is not simply a matter of technological it repeats it by means of alterity, it reverses it without rejecting it, ofering a framework particularly useful for thinking about the Iterative Turn and reproducibility as a means to an end, but rather an end my attempt to question the familiar terms of creativity, originality, and in itself. At the Iterative Turn, an act appropriating authorship. already authored content turns into an expression of iterative thinking. Today, it is not simply an aestheti- cisation of technology or technologisation of aesthetics that are at stake. Te ubiquity of contemporary digi- talisation means that distinctions between the technological in the instrumental sense and the digital aesthetics are increasingly impossible to draw, with digital technology assuming a role of all-encompassing digital culture. It is in such a context that the Iterative Turn emerges, a moment in which both technology and aesthetics are at a turning point, turning away 28 PARSE JOURNAL

65. I refer here to Walter Benjamin’s notion of the “aura”. Te aura is an aes- from earlier paradigms without rejecting them, thetic category, a way of describing particular qualities of art that Benjamin saw waning in modernity as a result of increasing mechanisation of society. Te aura and turning into one another as technē. Here, the of a work connotes its singularity and qualities such as authority, authenticity, process of digital reproduction loses its instrumen- and originality grounded explicitly in the Romantic understanding of creativity. tal, purely functional associations, to assume its As Benjamin argues, the aura disappears in the modern age, as a result of the possibilities of reproducibility that proliferate. Benjamin associates the notion own all-pervasive iterative logic. Tis is not to say of originality with an artwork’s unique presence in space and time and argues the Iterative Turn permits or favours plagiarism and that a reproduced piece loses the quality of originality exactly because it is always removed from the auratic original, because in reproduction the origin is copyright infringement. It does not ofer a context always absent, and so the work loses the quality of originality, authenticity, and for a defence or indictment of either, or of projects authority. Benjamin writes: “the presence of the original is the prerequisite to such as LaBeouf’s. Instead, it draws attention to the the concept of authenticity.” Benjamin, p. 214. changing conditions of cultural production, where 66. Tis statement is a reference to Heidegger’s notions of danger and saving questions of the aura65 are no longer a creative power. Heidegger understands modern technology as danger, danger to man, danger to Being, technology in its instrumental sense, as Enframing, “endan- concern. Te iterative project ofers means of recon- gers the relationship to the essence of truth”. See Heidegger, Te Question, p. ceptualising attitudes towards technology and, as a 33. Enframing, Heidegger explains, “banishes man into that kind of revealing result, transforms the “danger” that acts of copying that is ordering. Where this ordering holds sway, it drives out every other possibility of revealing. Above all, Enframing conceals that revealing which, typically pose to creativity into a form of liberation in the sense of poiēsis, lets what presences come forth into appearance.” (p. 27) from it, a “saving power”,66 transforming plagiarism But, for Heidegger, the danger always harbours the possibility of transformation, of a turn, there is a possibility of liberation in every danger. Heidegger into iteration, copying into a paradigm of creativity writes: “where Enframing reigns, there is danger in the highest sense. But itself. where danger is, grows/Te saving power also.” (p. 28) In line with Heidegger’s argument, acts of copying emerge as antithetical to paradigms of creativity and as inherently creative acts at the same time. Copying assumes creative qualities exactly because it is dismissed as “danger”, by law, by publishing standards, by prevailing notions of creativity and authorship.