Art and Politics of Appropriation
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ART AND POLITICS OF APPROPRIATION by Martin Zeilinger A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Centre for Comparative Literature University of Toronto © Copyright by Martin Zeilinger (2009) Arts and Politics of Appropriation Martin Zeilinger Doctor of Philosophy Centre for Comparative Literature University of Toronto 2009 Abstract This thesis works towards a theory of creative appropriation as critical praxis. Defining ‘appropriation’ as the re-use of already-authored cultural matter, I investigate how the ubiquity of aesthetically and commercially motivated appropriative practices has impacted concepts of creativity, originality, authorship and ownership. Throughout this thesis, appropriation is understood as bridging the artistic, political, economic, and scientific realms. As such, it strongly affects cultural and socio-political landscapes, and has become an ideal vehicle for effectively criticizing and, perhaps, radically changing dominant aesthetic, legal and ethical discourses regarding the (re)production, ownership and circulation of knowledge, artifacts, skills, resources, and cultural matter in general. Critical appropriation is thus posited as a political strategy that can draw together the different causes motivating appropriative processes across the globe, and organize them for the benefit of a multitude which values concepts of reusing, sharing and collectivity over concepts of the individually authored and the privately owned. My arguments regarding this critical potentiality are based on concrete practices emanating from several media (textual – visual – sonic – digital). The corpus includes Berlin Dadaist collage, ‘found footage’ filmmaking, audio sampling, and digital media art. It is ii critically contextualized in the fields of philosophy, law, and aesthetics, and paired with relevant examples from extra-aesthetic arenas (economics, industrial production and science). Following a trajectory from the analog to the digital, my thesis traces the emergence and tactical employment of critical appropriative practices in the context of different historical, philosophical, technological and economic circumstances. Focussing on conceptual and practical shifts from the analog to the digital furthermore enables me to draw connections between analytic perspectives founded in dialectic materialism and contemporary theories foregrounding issues of immaterial labor. The important qualitative changes that practices and perceptions of appropriation have undergone are argue to significantly amplify the critical potential of all appropriative practices. Ultimately, my comparative analyses thus establish appropriation as an ideal site for effectively challenging – both in terms of form and content – the ingrained, restrictive notions of original genius and naturalized authorship-qua-ownership on which present cultures and technologies of global capitalism are so heavily based. iii Acknowledgements Thanks goes, first of all, to my family and friends, whose firm footing in life outside the university has reminded me, over the years, to keep my research real. My supervisor Eric Cazdyn has achieved the much harder task of doing the same for me within academia, for which I am endlessly grateful. Without his strong encouragement in the early phases of this project, I might not have gone through with it; without the inspiring and challenging discussions I have enjoyed with him, and without the persistence with which he has motivated me and pushed me beyond myself, my work would not be what it is. Thanks to Linda Hutcheon, who has been such a wonderful teacher and reader, and whose support over the years has been invaluable. Thanks to Elizabeth Legge, for great guidance and insights into fields that aren’t entirely mine. Thanks to Marcus Boon, who agreed to come on board at the 11th hour, and provided me with excellent feedback. Thanks to Mieke Bal, who played a crucial role during the early stages of setting up this project. I am also very grateful to Joe Culpepper and Keavy Martin, two colleagues whose rigorous feedback has helped me shape this manuscript into something better than it had been before. Thanks to Aphrodite and Bao, for their levelheaded yet passionate assistance in administrative matters. Thanks to Ronald Ng, for being a patient and supportive carrel mate, and a good listener; to Danielle Allen, for a very kind remark; to all my friends who have stuck with me over the geographical and mental distances that graduate school imposes. And, last but not least, thanks to Aisha Jamal, for everything. This thesis is dedicated to the late ao. Univ.-Prof. Dr. Kurt Albert Mayer of the University of Vienna’s Department for English and American Studies, and to my late grandfather Erich Stutzenstein. iv Table of Contents Introduction ..............................................................................................................1 1. Theoretical Scaffolding ......................................................................................20 1.1. What appropriation? Why appropriation? How appropriation?......................20 1.1.1. Excursus: historical, legal, economic considerations .................................31 1.2. Property, appropriation, agency ......................................................................35 1.2.1. A foundation in ethics or economics or aesthetics or law?........................41 1.3. Appropriation according to Marx....................................................................46 1.4. ‘Culture industry’ vs. critical appropriation ....................................................54 1.5. Mētis ................................................................................................................62 1.6. New media and theories of the multitude........................................................68 2. Early Appropriation Art and the Berlin Dada Tinkerers ..............................86 2.1. “Montage” – art historical contexts and a working definition ........................98 2.2. Conditions of production and producers – montage as process and product 104 2.3. Social function...............................................................................................112 2.4. Effekt – Effektivität – Umfunktionierung.......................................................117 2.5. Material status of the appropriated fragment.................................................125 2.6. Arbeitsteiligkeit – towards an economy of montage .....................................134 3. Found Footage and the Limits of the Analog ................................................140 3.1. Theories of cinematic found footage.............................................................147 3.2. Strategies of found footage filmmaking........................................................158 3.3. Peter Tscherkassky’s “Films from a Dark Room” ........................................164 3.4. Martin Arnold’s ‘discovery’ of the cinema of repression .............................177 4. Audio Sampling and Appropriation Beyond the Analog .............................186 4.1. Material appropriation of thin air? ................................................................188 4.2. Audio sampling strategies .............................................................................202 4.3. Beyond the Limits of the Analog ..................................................................216 4.4. Into the Digital...............................................................................................220 5. Towards a Critical Practice of Appropriation...............................................227 5.1. The business of appropriation .......................................................................233 5.2. The science of appropriation .........................................................................249 5.3. Digital vigilantism – two examples of contemporary appropriation art........261 5.3.1. Art Mobs...................................................................................................265 5.3.2. Manu Luksch’s Faceless...........................................................................272 Conclusion: Critical Appropriation and Wild Cultural Matter......................280 Works Cited .........................................................................................................305 v List of Figures Figure 1: “Narrative trajectory” vi Introduction This project concerns the theorization of ubiquitous cultural practices of appropriation, a term that here denotes the re-use of already-existing, already-authored cultural matter, and its incorporation in new works. This broad definition – which accommodates practices ranging from collage art to the reuse of film footage, from the physical cutting and pasting of photographic images to the more intangible sampling of audio recordings and the creative re-coding of digital information – purposefully foregrounds the practical, material aspects implied by the term ‘appropriation.’ Appropriation, in this sense, is to be understood as distinctly different from related concepts such as allusion and adaptation, with which it is, in common parlance, often wrongly conflated. This distinction is of great importance for numerous reasons: most importantly, it must be noted that creative practices marked by the purely conceptual invocation or referencing of prior works invoke an entirely different set of critical stakes than creative practices marked by