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Home , Found object, Kuleshov Effect, Mashup (video)

DEPARTMENT OF FILM YORK UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF FINE COURSE OUTLINE

Course: Recycled Images: From Found to Digital Term: Winter 2013 Prerequisite: FA/FILM 1400 or FA/FILM 1401 or permission of the Film Department Course Instructor: Eli Horwatt Office: Centre for Film and Theatre, Room 204 Office Hours: by appointment E-mail: [email protected] Time and Location: Wednesday, 9:30-1:30PM (York ACE 004) Class Blog: http://recycledimages3360.wordpress.com/

Expanded Course Description Explores the diverse array of strategies, theories and historical trajectories of from the beginnings of cinema to current practices. The use and transformation of existing media in 20th century artworks signaled the rise of mass culture and the centrality of images in everyday life. Simultaneously, appropriated works posed provocative challenges to thinkers, artists and audiences forced to reconcile previously held positions on authorship and . The aesthetic and political practices of appropriated film and video will be placed in dialogue with other media like visual and music. Major theoretical concerns will surround media critique, feminism, queer theory, post-colonial historiography and otherwise radical returns to the past. Students will engage with major forms of appropriation, including , readymades, essay and compilation films, detournement, , propaganda and documentary to examine the ethical and aesthetic motives for recasting moving images and more broadly question the emergence of this tendency in modern art. Prerequisites: FA/FILM 1400 or FA/FILM 1401 or permission of department. Course Learning Objectives:

• Develop a familiarity with found footage film and video throughout the 20th and 21st century.

• Examine the aesthetic, rhetorical and political strategies of appropriation in art, music and the moving image.

• Develop an understanding of the transforming social and cultural contexts which brought appropriation into the forefront of artistic practices and made the strategy important for marginalized groups to use in the critical examination of media.

• Begin or further develop a practical approach to the creation of derivative/recombinant works armed with knowledge of its history.

1 • Understand the ethical (and unethical) dimensions of appropriation as a strategy seeking both to improve knowledge and in some cases obfuscate knowledge while broaching the idea of theft, borrowing and piracy.

After taking this course students should be able to:

• Critically engage with works of appropriation art by identifying both historical antecedents and the rhetorical and aesthetic strategies deployed by the artist.

• Understand theories of authorship and the transformation of the category “author” between modernist and post-modern thought.

• Understand shared strategies and techniques of appropriation across media including fine art, music and literature.

Method of Evaluation/Grading: • Participation: 20% (10% Attendance, 10% discussion and weekly symposium participation) • Project due February 6th: 15% • Reading Facilitation: 20% (2 x 10%) (Generating reading questions, facilitating discussion in the form of blog posts submitted Sunday (before midnight) to generate class discussions. See below for detailed description of the schedule) • Essay or Film Proposal, and Annotated Bibliography due March 7th: 15% • Final Research or Recombinant Media Project (with artist’s statement) due April 8th: 30%

All assignments due at the beginning of class. Any late assignments will be docked 10% per day.

Assignment Descriptions:

Weekly Symposium: This is a totally voluntary activity for students who either wish to share pertinent images, videos, music, literature or other media in class because of its relevance to the week’s readings, or an opportunity for those less inclined to engage in discussion to receive participation points. Each day before class, up to three individuals may sign up to share (for five-minutes or less). Presentations will occur after lecture and before screenings. Please keep presentations concise and on topic. Off topic videos and presentations will not be rewarded participation points.

Plagiarism Project: Utilizing Jonathan Lethem’s “The Ecstasy of Influence” as a model, “write” a two-to-three page (500-750 word) text on appropriation itself, or some mode of appropriation (DJing, Collage, The Readymade, Commodity ) utilizing only words from other sources. Essays must use a minimum of five separate sources (not including Wikipedia). Sourcing should be done through footnotes, either after a series of appropriated words or after sentences. These assignments will be graded based on 1) The diversity of source materials, including the number of texts

2 found in books, magazines and other printed material, as well as internet research or even transcription from audio/video interviews, 2) The “flow” and “bridging” of multiple texts in a coherent way, or the successful juxtaposition of contrasting arguments 3) The depth of understanding expressed in the multiple sources 4) The creative interaction with existing materials. 5) Minimal interjection of “original” text to create flow between paragraphs. Please try to avoid this unless it is totally necessary. Assignment due at the beginning of class February 6th.

Reading Facilitation: Students will be allocated a group (A, B, or C) which will generate responses to the next week’s readings on the class blog. If it is your group’s week to respond, you will email me ([email protected]) a response to the readings on the Sunday prior to the Wednesday class before 5PM. PLEASE SEE ME THE WEEK PRIOR TO YOUR RESPONSE so that I can assign you to a particular reading if there are multiple texts for that week. In your response you will write 1) Two or more of the central arguments made by the writer in the form of two paragraphs, 2) Two important questions the article answers, 3) Two discussion facilitation questions for other students, and 4) As a bonus: Important media texts that might relate to readings but which are not specifically mentioned in them and why they are relevant. I will post these to the class blog (http://recycledimages3360.wordpress.com/)

In the next class, if you are part of the group responsible for that week’s readings, you may be called upon to help facilitate discussion. It would also help to facilitate discussion around relevant media texts.

All groups will do this twice, for 10% each time (total 20% of final grade).

Schedule for Weekly Reading Facilitation Responses (DUE SUNDAY @ 5PM BEFORE CLASS:

January 20th, Week 3: A Group January 27th, Week 4: B Group February 10th, Week 6: C Group March 10th, Week 9: A Group March 17th, Week 10: B Group March 24th, Week 11: C Group

IMPORTANT NOTE: ALL STUDENTS ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR READING THE CLASS BLOG AFTER FACILITATION RESPONSES ARE POSTED. BE PREPARED TO DISCUSS THESE QUESTIONS IN CLASS.

Proposal/Annotated Bibliography: Students will propose either a research paper or recombinant media project with an annotated bibliography (which may include films) to frame the research. Proposals should be 2-3 double spaced pages in length (500-750 words) and introduce 1) A major research question, 2) A working thesis for your project, 3) Films or other works you will engage with in your essay and 4) Short 1-3 sentence breakdown for each of the included texts and art objects in your essay. Recombinant media proposals should include 1) The major objectives of

3 the art-work, 2) The type or mode of appropriation with which you are engaging, 3) Antecedent practices or works which have influenced your ideas, and 4) An outline of your methodology for making the art-work.

Making a creative work is not an opportunity to ease your workload. If anything, it will be more difficult, requiring research and some form of artistic production. I will evaluate these based on the rigor and thought I see put into them.

Final Research Paper/Recombinant Media Project: A 10-15 page (2500- 3750 word) research essay elaborating on themes from the class and/or introducing new lines of enquiry in found footage practice. Essays must use four or more sources with at least one book cited. Please use Chicago Style for citation/bibliography formatting.

Students may also complete a 5-10 minute found footage work or other work of appropriation art with an artist’s statement of approximately 4 pages (1000 words), including a description of how the work was executed. Media works must incorporate any notes made to your proposals.

Resources:

The York University library portal may be accessed by searching through research guides on the library catalog search page (http://www.library.yorku.ca/) Many of your assignments will require searching through articles in art, music and/or film databases. I recommend using the “Art, Architecture and Design” research guide and clicking “Indexes & databases” to use the “Art Index with Fulltext” for articles on visual art. Use the “Film Studies” research Guide, searching under “Journal articles” and using either the “International Index to the Performing Arts” or the “International Index to Film and Television Periodicals” to find research materials. JSTOR and ProQuest are also useful databases, which you can find by searching “Periodicals” in the catalog.

Class Schedule

Week 1 – Jan 9th - Introduction to Appropriation and the Expanded Concept of Authorship

In week one we will broadly examine the development of appropriation in film, art, music, and literature at the turn of the 20th century. We will focus on the changing role of the artist in the 20th and 21st centuries amidst the proliferation of culture through media. How have 20th Century artists taken up existing media as a subject of artworks? What does this mode of art-making do to the emphasis on “originality” in the arts? How do artworks become self-reflexive through appropriation? Key Terms: Appropriation, , Collage, , Authorship,

Screenings: The Grey Video (Laurent Fauchere and Antoine Tinguely, 2:42, 2006)

4 Right Wing Radio Duck (Jonathan McIntosh, 8:00, 2011) Dan Carter (Allison Kobayashi, 15:00, 2007) Color Adjustment (Marlon Riggs, 1991) (excerpts)

Week 2 – Jan 16th - What is Found Footage? Key Concepts

How is appropriation unique to film, video and new media? This week offers an overview of the major theoretical issues in scholarship around found footage, introducing major , strategies and practices from across history. How do the technological, material and aesthetic features of film and video inform the many practices that characterize its re-use? What opportunities arise from the recycling of filmic material when the moving image has been given such a privileged position in the documentation of historical reality? Key Terms: Found Footage, Collage, .

Readings:

Jonathan Lethem. “The Ecstasy of Influence.” Harpers Magazine. February 2007. (http://harpers.org/archive/2007/02/0081387)

William C. Wees. “In the Domain of Montage: Compillation, Collage, Appropriation,” Recycled Images: The Art and Politics of Found Footage Films. New York: Anthology Film Archives, 1993. (32-48)

Supplementary Readings: Roland Barthes. “The Death of the Author.” Image, Music, Text by Roland Barthes. Trans. Stephen Heath. New York: Hill and Wang, 1978.

Molly Nesbit. “What Was an Author?” Yale French Studies. No. 73, Everyday Life (1987) pp. 229-257 (http://www.jstor.org/stable/2930205)

Screenings: A Movie (Bruce Conner, 8:00,1958) Man in the Mirror (Unknown Director, 4:00,1987) (Michael Jackson music video) Atomic Café (Kevin Rafferty, Jayne Loader, 1982) Excerpts Why We Fight (Frank Capra, 1942-45) (excerpts)

Week 3 – Jan 23 - The Politics of Appropriation: The Soviet Re-editors, Detournement, Photomontage and the Situationist Strain

The Russian revolution gave birth to a new paradigm of filmmaking, arguably derived from the crippling poverty faced by the nascent industry after the fall of the Czar. The appropriation and transformation of footage by Esther Schub, , Dziga Vertov and Lev Kuleshov introduced and concretized the association of the technique with radical politics. The use of found footage at this time initiated early theories of cinematic montage and introduced editors to the enormous spectrum of meaning available within a single filmstrip. This week focuses on what Paul Arthur

5 called “the politicized re-calibration” of images, principally through montage and what the Situationists called “detournement.” Key Terms: Juxtaposition, Montage (continued), Detournement, Situationists

Readings: Yuri Tsivian. “The Wise and Wicked Game: Re-editing and Soviet Film Culture of the 1920s.” Film History 8:3 (1996): 327-343.

Margarita Tupitsyn, “From the Politics of Montage to the Montage of Politics” in Montage and Modern Life. Ed. Matthew Teitelbaum. Cambridge: MIT Press,1992, 83- 105 (excerpt)

Guy Debord and Gil J. Wolman. “A User’s Guide to Détournement” Situationist International Anthology. Ed. Ken Knabb. Berkeley: Bureau of Public Secrets, 2006.

Supplementary Readings Miguel Orodea. “Alvarez and Vertov.” Appropriation: Theories and Documents. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2009.

Screenings: The Kuleshov Effect (Lev Kuleshov) The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty (Esther Shub, 1927) (excerpts) Can Dialectics Break Bricks? (Rene Vienet, 90:00 1973) (excerpts) Black Celebration (Tony Cokes, 1988) Now / 79 Springtimes of Ho Chi Minh (Santiago Alvarez, 1965 & 1969)

Week 4 – Jan 30th - Legacies of and : , Readymade, Ruin

Post World War One European avant-garde art placed significant emphasis on the introduction of found objects, unmodified commodities and loaded historical artifacts into an art context for critical examination. The Dadaist introduction of objects seemingly without any authorial intervention raised significant questions about the labour of an artist, while Surrealist found objects probed the psychological landscape of the materials surrounding us in daily life. ’s metaphysical study of actress Rose Hobart sought to uncover a hidden text within a schlocky b-film, while filmmakers like Jacobs and Jones take the radical authorship of appropriation to its plenary endpoint by nominating films without altering them. Key Terms: Readymade, Found Object, Found Sound, Dialectical Image, Ruin

Readings:

Jodi Hauptman. “The Erupting and Occluded Body: Rose Hobart.” Joseph Cornell: Stargazing in the Cinema. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999: 85-115.

6 Thomas Crow. “ and Mass Culture in the .” Modernism and Modernity: The Vancouver Conference . Benjamin H.D. Buchloh (Ed.). Hallifax: Press of Nova Scotia College of Design, 1983, 215-223.

Supplimental Readings:

Benjamin H.D. Buchloh. “Allegorical Procedures: Appropriation and Montage in Contemporary Art.” Art Forum September 1982: 43-56.

Screenings: Rose Hobart (Joseph Cornell, 1936) Perfect Film (Ken Jacobs, 1985) Works and Days (Hollis Frampton, 1969) What Makes Day and Night (Jeanne Liotta, 1998) Tearoom (William E. Jones, 2007) (excerpts)

Week 5 – Feb 6th - The North American Avant-Garde and Mass Culture

A revived interest in found footage occurred in the late 1950s when Bruce Conner and other filmmakers began working with found materials, creating sophisticated montage, often focused on the relationship between mass media and culture. Simultaneously, signaled a new focus on advertising, product design and the rhetoric of capitalist exchange. But while art of the era tended to reflect on the surfaces of mass cultural objects with and ironic humour, filmmakers veered towards darker visions of an alienated public and the shallow values championed by commercial media. Key Terms: Pop Art, Assemblage, Funk/Junk Art,

Readings:

Bruce Jenkins. “Explosions in a Film Factory: The Cinema of Bruce Conner.” 2000 BC: The Bruce Conner Story Part II. Walker Art Center Press: Minneapolis, 2002: 187- 223.

Screenings: Cosmic Ray / Take the 5:10 to Dreamland / REPORT (Bruce Conner) Tom, Tom, The Piper’s Son (Ken Jacobs, 1969) (excerpts) Trip Down Memory Lane / Very Nice, Very Nice (Arthur Lipsett) Murder Psalm (Stan Brakhage, 1981) Mayhem (Abigail Child, 1987)

Week 6 – Feb 13th - The Video Art Revolution and Identity

The introduction of inexpensive video cameras occurred in tandem with transforming social contexts for women, people of color and queer communities in North America. Additionally, philosophical concerns with gender and sexuality, post-colonial philosophy and its engagement with the subject, and a renewed interest in the art-

7 world and the academy to tackle discrimination (with varying results) made video the medium par-excellence for challenging essentialist representations of minorities and women in the moving image. Appropriation was a valuable tool for these artists, who could speak powerfully about oppression using the materials constituting mainstream media. Key Terms: Video, Activism, Feminism, Queer Theory, Gender and Racial (Mis)representation in Media

Readings:

Dot Tuer. “Mirrors and : An Examination of the Strategies of Image Appropriation and Repetition in the Work of Dara Birnbaum.” N. Paradoxa (Issue 3) May 1997: 4-16.

Mark Rappaport. “Mark Rappaport’s Notes on Rock Hudson’s Home Movies.” Film Quarterly 49 (1996).

Barbara Kruger. “Taking Pictures.” Appropriation: Theories and Documents. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2009.

Nate Harrison, “The Pictures Generation, the Act of 1976, and the Reassertion of Authorship in Postmodernity” Art & Education. (http://www.artandeducation.net/paper/the-pictures-generation-the-copyright-act-of- 1976-and-the-reassertion-of-authorship-in-postmodernity/)

Screenings: Local TV News Analysis (Dara Birnbaum & Dan Graham, 1980) (excerpt) Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman (Dara Birnbaum, 5:23, 1978-80) The Smell of Burning Ants (Jay Rosenblatt, 7:52, 1994) Planet of the Arabs (Jackie Salloum, 9:00, 2006) Rock Hudson’s Home Movies (Mark Rappaport, 63:00, 1992)

READING WEEK NO CLASS Feb 20th.

Week 7 – Feb 27th - Found Footage Documentary Part 1: (Meta)History, Loss and Revisionism

Appropriation is a strategy which always has one foot in the past—dealing as it does, with the already made. This weeks readings and films offer ideas for how artists might return to the past with new insight and fresh priorities, transforming historical material in unorthodox ways, not just to re-present history, but to radically alter it or re-imagine it to transform it through certain rhetorical goals. Key Terms: Metahistory, Revisionist History, Archive, Post-Colonial Theory

Readings: Michael Zryd. “Found Footage Film as Discursive Metahistory: Craig Baldwin’s Tribulation 99.” The Moving Image Volume 3, Number 2, Fall 2003: 40-61.

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Paul Arthur. “The Status of Found Footage.” Spectator 20.1 (1999-2000): 57-69.

Sharon Sandusky. “The Archeology of Redemption: Toward Archival Film.” Millennium Film Journal 26 (1992): 2-24.

Screenings: Tribulation 99 (Craig Baldwin, 1992) Gringo in Mañanaland (Dee Dee Halleck, 1995) The Great Mojado Invasion, Part 2 (The Second U.S.--Mexico War)(Guillermo Gómez- Peña and Gustavo Vazquez, 2001) (excerpts) The Hart of London (Jack Chambers, 1970)

Week 8 – March 6th - Found Footage Documentary Part 2: Essay and Compilation Films

Essay and Compilation documentaries divert from the principles of “clarity, simplicity, and transparency” dominant in many documentaries, vying instead for the uninterrupted collection of archival materials or firmly rhetorical point-of-view essays and polemics on history and its reconstitution by the moving image. With new generations increasingly reliant on film as a dominant means of apprehending history, how should documentary seek truth when the apprehension of such a lofty ideal has been challenged so effectively? Key Terms: Essay Film, Compilation Documentary, Rhetoric in Documentary

Readings: Phillip Lopate. “In Search of the Centaur: The Essay-Film.” Beyond Document: Essays on Nonfiction Film. Charles Warren (Ed.). Wesleyan University Press, 1998: 243-270.

Paul Arthur. “Essay Questions: From Alain Resnais to Michael Moore.” Film Comment, 39:1 (January-February 2003)

Films: Night and Fog(Alain Resnais, 1955) Point of Order (Emile de Antonio, 1963) (excerpts) Nitrate Kisses (Barbara Hammer, 1992) (excerpts) Los Angeles Plays Itself (Thom Anderson, 2003) (excerpts) Grin Without a Cat (Chris Marker, 1977) (excerpts) The Trap (Adam Curtis, 2007) The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu (Andrei Ujica, 2010) (excerpts)

Week 9 – March 13th - The Archival Impulse: Cinephilia, Collection and the Materiality of Film & Video

Appropriation artists are first and foremost collectors. This week we look at artists engaged in transforming collections and archives into works of art by constructing patterns through tropes or by examining the materiality of film itself as an object

9 subject to entropy. Cinephilia itself may become the subject of such films—which seek to draw from the Hollywood image bank in an effort to uncover something hidden or to put on display those images taken out of circulation due to chemical decay. Key Terms: Archival Impulse, Allegorical Procedures, Cinephilia, Materiality and Media, Collection

Readings:

William C. Wees, “The Ambiguous Aura of Hollywood Stars in Avant-Garde Found Footage Films.” Cinema Journal 41.2 (2002): 3-18.

Erika Balsom. “A Cinephilic Avant-Garde: The Films of Peter Tscherkassky, Martin Arnold, and Gustav Deutsch.” New Austrian Film. Robert von Dassanowsky and Oliver C. Speck (Eds.). New York: Berghahn Books, 2011: 263-270.

Supplementary Readings: Hal Foster. “An Archival Impulse.” October 110, (Fall 2004): 3–22.

Screenings: Collection/Cinephilia: Home Stories (Matthias Muller, 1990) The Phoenix Tapes (Matthias Muller and Christoph Girardet, 1990) (excerpts) Alone: Life Wastes Andy Hardy (Martin Arnold, 2001) Countdown (Volker Schreiner, 2009) Lets Enhance (Unknown Author, 2008) Materiality of Film: Eureka (Ernie Gehr, 1974) (excerpt) The Color of Love (Peggy Ahwesh, 1994) Decasia (Bill Morrison, 2002) (excerpts) Variations on a Cellophane Wrapper (David Rimmer, 1972) Lyrisch Nitraat (Lyrical Nitrate)(Peter Delpeut, 1991)(excerpts)

Week 10 – March 20th - Activism, Culture Jamming, Piracy and the Copyright Wars

The 1980s saw the birth of the VCR, a proliferation of affordable video recording equipment and an explosion in the home movie market. In the U.S. these technologies would all be key tools for a growing activist movement responding to the “culture wars” fomented by the rise of Ronald Reagan and the American right. At a time when public attacks against art (and its funding arms), a woman’s right to choose, gay rights (especially in the era of the AIDS crisis), welfare, accompanied by pervasive coded racism, anti-intellectualism and the desperation born of crack- cocaine’s rise in American cities, many artist-activists mobilized. The resulting works utilized Situationist detournement, parody and humour to ridicule self-righteous political rhetoric and the role of the media in fomenting public rage. Simultaneously,

10 the rise of hip-hop and sampling culture initiated copyright lawyers to become litigious and begin crackdowns on derivative works. Key Terms: Culture Wars, Culture Jamming, Consumerism, Interventions, Pranking, Hacktivism, Piracy

Readings: Christine Harold. “Pranking Rhetoric: ‘Culture Jamming’ as Media Activism.” Critical Studies in Media Communication Vol. 21, Issue 3, September 2004: 190-211.

Scott MacKenzie, “Flowers in the Dustbin: Termite Culture and Detritus Cinema.” Cineaction 47 (1998): 24-29.

Lawrence Lessig. Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in a Hybrid Economy. New York: Penguin Press, 2008: 1-23

Screenings: Sonic Outlaws (Craig Baldwin, 1995) Gulf War Videos (Emergency Broadcast Network) Special Report With Bryan Boyce (Bryan Boyce, 2001) Wolverine (The Work Print) (2010) (excerpts)

Week 11 – March 27th - Remix and New Media – Machinima, , Fan Vids and the Rise of the “Amateur”

With a transformation in media from object-based content storage (like VHS) into easily transferable files (like mp3 and mov) the Internet set the stage for the largest circulation of video content ever seen. A proliferation of cheap editing software like iMovie and Final Pro initiated amateur transformations of video files for a multitude of purposes by fans, artists and amateur remixers. Once that content found a popular distribution platform in YouTube, an explosion of derivative content began circulating, giving birth to entirely new strategies and modes of appropriation. Other new media technologies, like recording functions of video game consuls, allowed for the birth of Machinima. Key Terms: , Remix, YouTube, Machinima, Fan culture, , Mashups, , Recuts, DRM (Digital Rights Management), File Sharing, Napster, BitTorrent,

Readings: Francesca Coppa. “Women, Star Trek, and the Early Development of Fannish Vidding.” Journal of Transformative Works and Cultures. no 1. (http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/44/64)

Ed Halter. “Recycle It: A look at found-footage cinema, from the silent era to Web 2.0.” Museum of the Moving Image. July 10th, 2008: (http://www.movingimagesource.us/articles/recycle-it-20080710)

11 Eli Horwatt. “A Taxonomy of Digital Video Remixing: Contemporary Found Footage Practice on the Internet.” Scope Online Film Journal. November 2009: (http://www.scope.nottingham.ac.uk/cultborr/chapter.php?id=8 )

Elisa Kreisinger. “Three Reasons Why Women Make the Best Remixers.” Pop Culture Pirate. (http://elisakreisinger.wordpress.com/2011/10/14/3-reasons-why-women- make-the-best-/)

Supplimental Readings: Kristina Busse. “Affective Aesthetics.” Transformative Works. November 23, 2010 (http://symposium.transformativeworks.org/2010/11/affective-aesthetics/)

Films: Apocalypse Pooh (Todd Graham, 1987) Sex and the Remix – Queering Sex and the City (Elisa Kreisinger, 2009) Political Remix Videos (Jonathan McIntosh) The Message (Oliver Laric, 2007) (http://oliverlaric.com/messagethe.htm) Chevy Tahoe Commercial Contest (Various artists, 2004) Manifestoon (Unknown Artist, 2006) The Artwork in the Age of its Mechanical Reproducibility by Walter Benjamin as told to Keith Sanborn © 1936 Jayne Austen (Keith Sanborn, 1996) 300: This is Revisionism (Lewiston, 2008) Various Works (Wreck and Salvage)

Week 12 – April 3rd - The Ethics of Appropriation: FINAL WEEK

Many of the films and artworks discussed in this class promote a renewed concept of authorship that does with more than just abscond with the property rights of an artist, but also hijacks the original meaning. This week, we look at case studies that challenge some of the ethical premises of appropriation and look at incidents where the moral rights of an artist may have been violated. At what point is an appropriated work unethical? When does interceding in a text become a violation rather than a transformation? These difficult questions will be discussed in the context of a whole semester assimilating the history of appropriation.

Readings:

Aram Sinnreich, Mark Latonero & Marissa Gluck. ‘Ethics Reconfigured: How Today’s Media Consumers Evaluate the role of Creative Reappropriation.” Information Communication Society. Volume: 12, Issue: 8 (2009): 1242-1260.

Vito Campanelli. “Remix Ethics.” International Review of Information Ethics. Vol. 15 (September, 2011): 24-30.

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