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Cover, reenactment, quotation, reinterpretation, free version, remake, copyright |
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Unlike remixes in which materials are taken independently from the narratives containing them, there are a few works which are based on the creations of other artists and which respect their organization in the same way that a musician reads and plays sheet music. Though in music or in cinema this practice is not only standard, but an actual tradition, it is not as established in the area of the plastic arts. Remakes, covers, free versions or even karaoke are somewhat distant concepts which are associated with and introduced from other disciplines. Various concepts enter into play here, such as authorship, original ideas and closed works. There are also various strategies used by certain artists in order to generate a "crisis" with these concepts in the digital realm. These artists act as interpreters of other authors, illustrating at times that it is not just ideas but the way they are presented and their contexts which give them meaning. Others play a two-fold role, functioning as actors in territory foreign to them, recreating works in a personal way. Then there are impostors who occupy, without prejudice, the author’s place, challenging his role and authorship. These practices also evoke two processes in the digital realm: identity theft and the system of successive software versions, two issues which come together in the practice of open code software, where we see that its strength lies precisely in free access, simultaneous authors, and a range of different versions. |
Vadim Epstein The term “remake” describes audiovisual productions which faithfully reproduce the plot, characters, atmosphere, and practically all the other features of a previous work. In theory, this new version by Vadim Epstein of the well-known work by Olia Lialina My Boyfriend Came Back From the War could be considered a remake. In the case of certain works for the Internet, simply replacing image files under the same name leads us to a new version of the work. Eva & Franco Mattes (0100101110101101.ORG) Working from the premise that information should be freely circulated, especially on the Internet, the “Zero-one” group took action, copying and publishing on their own website three well-known websites from the end of the 1990s: Hell.com, Teleportacia.org, and JODI.org. The first action began with a news item in Rhizome which announced that Hell, a closed-access site, would be open to the public for a period of 48 hours during which any user would be able to see the show Surface. During this time, Eva and Franco Mattes downloaded the Hell website in its entirety and published it, now without any access restrictions, on the site 0100101110101101.ORG. The authors have said: “Copies are more important than the original, even if there are no differences between them. Copies contain not only all the working parameters of the original work, but also a great deal more: the very idea and act of copying.” santo_file group (David Casacuberta, Marco Bellinzoni) X Reloaded offers “interpretations” of a fragment of El Quijote (Don Quixote) by authors as diverse as JODI, Olia Lialina, Barbara Kruger, William Burroughs, El Lissitzki, Tony Scott, and Ferran Adrià. These variations deal with the theme of appropriation, the remix, and, therefore, the revision of the traditional role of the author in the digital age. We might find a reinterpretation of Cervantes’ text as an experimental recipe in the style of El Bulli restaurant, or the memes of Cervantes and Burroughs in confrontation in the form of a cut-up. The work also features a reappropriation of the JODI map, originally a map of the backbone of the Internet, in this case used by Santo_file to broadcast Quijote’s memes by means of Google. We will also see a free version of My Boyfriend Came Back From the War, transformed into Don Quixote Came Back from the Library. Stanza For this series of works, which Stanza calls generative paintings, the artist uses software which automatically combines and alters various masterpieces in real time without any intervention on the part of the spectator, creating a true remix of art history. Eva & Franco Mattes (0100101110101101.ORG) Second Life is, by definition, a second part, a second world, a second opportunity. While everything that happens there takes place in real time – the same time which is shared by SL (Second Life) and RL (Real Life) – the “now” offered by SL takes us back to something past, something we knew or experienced previously. In this respect, the synthetic performances developed by Eva and Franco Mattes in SL make more sense as reenactments of performances previously carried out in RL.
As part of his repertoire of fake websites and his strategy of disguising himself and appropriating the practices of famous artists, Manetas presents us with his interpretation of Joseph Kosuth’s website. On entering the page, we are confronted with a simple phrase in white on a black background which tells us the opposite of what the URL would lead us to believe: “This is not a Joseph Kosuth”. Note: Neen is a cultural movement created by Miltos Manetas, whose name he ordered from Lexicon Branding Inc. The Neenstars are a generation of visual artists not yet defined. Some of them belong to the world of contemporary art, others are software designers, web designers, directors, or videogame animators.
Ryan Barone Yves Klein said that “blue is the invisible becoming visible”. Unique and perfect, IKB (International Klein Blue) is a colour developed by Klein and used in many of his famous monochromes. These characteristics of his paintings – the unique and the perfect – will become the multiple and the mutant thanks to the infinite transpositions which these paintings have suffered due to the shifts in the shade caused by the different reproduction systems used. Miltos Manetas Another impostor website created by Miltos Manetas invites us to share his own attitudes towards artistic transvestism: our mouse becomes a paintbrush, and we become Jackson Pollock All without getting dirty or having to suffer any angst – we can even start again if we are not satisfied by our “action painter” skills. We don’t have to spend a penny on paint or canvas: we hardly have to expend more than a watt of electricity in the process.
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