Our discussion on the reappropriation of the Molotov Man really pushed me into thinking about the underlying ideas of authenticity. More specifically, whether or not reappropriation and decontextualization (or even reproduction, slightly altered or not) in any way diminishes an "original."
While I did find artistic merit in Joy Garnett's process of decontexualizing, I don't believe that decontextualization can happen without knowing what that first context. Whatever that struggle could be, whether it's with the Somoza family in Nicaragua or with PepsiCo, it is vital to the picture's history. Garnett's own posing of that question pretty much aligns her with that viewpoint; the "rights to this man's struggle" is quite a clear reference to the context of the Molotov Man's image and her entry of blogger nmazca's question at the end makes it hard for me to believe she is defending her position soley on that intention as an artist.
That isn't to say, though, that I'm "siding" with Susan Meiselas. Authenticity and originality are pretty abstract terms with incredibly inconsistent and unclear definitions. In my (humble) opinon, there are very few "authentic" or "original" elements of culture: sampling, quoting, and vocalise are all integral parts of some really great music; I also thought the new Star Trek film was a great reappropriation of the 1960s series; even some "authentic" and characteristic elements of Chinese opera can be traced to other, foreign types of performance; and most written languages are influenced by previous modes of communication.
I find that nowadays, it's almost impossible to remain unaware of an image's history, of how it came to be as well as it's aura. Considering all that, I think we should be wary of what my History of Comm professor calls the "tyranny of context." That is, we are so preoccupied with searching for context that we may argue details while missing the much bigger picture.
No comments:
Post a Comment