When I was young, my Mom (who was a photographer) used to bring home packages of developed photographs for my sister and I to look at.
For logical reasons, she would always order doubles of every take, and I often wondered why.
I would take both copies and place them side by side to find any significant flaws to differentiate them from one another. I would ask her "are these identical?", "how are they exactly the same if they're two different pictures?" It was a concept I simply didn't understand, because I had a strong belief at a young age that nothing was ever the same.
This post is in reference to Copies, and Copying. The way I see it (and the way we tend to discuss matters in lecture) originality is dead. Everything is a copy of everything. Nowadays instead of flipping through photographs, I sit and look around at the posters on my walls. Being a university student, decorating your living space becomes routine. No matter where you move, you have to leave your mark, as though posters and references to popular culture objects is a way of defining yourself in such a judgmental environment. Every year, the poster sale that is held in the Concourse is loaded with students yearning for posters, that have been slightly altered from the previous year to appeal to the new audiences. Why is it that someone can be judged on such a deep level if they choose to purchase a copy of a Salvidor Dali piece, instead of a Fight Club poster complete with the eight rules of fight club along a half-naked Brad Pitt. With popular culture persuasion aside, wouldn't it make more sense to judge someone for spending a hundred dollars on large pieces of paper to fill their empty walls? In this sense, I see copies as a form of grouping students together, and putting automatic labels on their heads to make them find commonalities with others.
I suppose in a sense that mass-produced pictures and images are soulless copies, and although they make a strong statement, they tend to overlook the original image and perhaps the message all together. However, I find it ridiculously fascinating that the copies have the potential to create more of an impact on us than the actual artifact itself. Perhaps it's the fact that copies rely on circulation to gain popularity; but I can't help but wonder: Do we actually appreciate copies for retaining as much relevance to the original? Or do we appreciate copies because in a way it has a bit of originality in itself?
You know, it's interesting: I was at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto today, and when I was staring at the paintings there, my mind kept drifting to Walter Benjamin and what he wrote about original works retaining an 'aura' that copies simply couldn't convey. And I have to say that in regards to at least some pieces I agree - being able to get close enough see the actual texture and brushstrokes of a painting really gives you insight into the toil and creative process of a painting that a copy, no matter how detailed, simply couldn't provide.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I found your point about a copy having its own form of originality to be extremely interesting. My take would be that rather than originality is dead, we've simply changed how we process the concept. To me, it seems like originality is more of an empty signifier these days, an abstract notion that people can twist and subjectively apply as they will.
So, in this way, if somebody buys a Fight Club poster and manages to hang it or use it in a way that somehow breaks its clichéd status (I had a friend once who hung theirs in the bathroom for the intent of breeding an association of the movie with defecation... I guess there's something kind of original in that...?) they can consider that 'personalized' or 'original'. We'd been talking in class about the concept of ownership in regards to remix - I suppose if somebody can take a very familiar product and somehow 'work it' in a way unique to themselves, they could (and probably would) consider that a feat of originality.
I also still believe in the idea of a sliding scale of originality (as in going from complete, uninfluenced, "pure" creation to the most clichéd, completely copied thing ever), so that the term doesn't necessarily need to imply completely uninfluenced, cultural vacuum creation (as we've discussed, that seems to be kind of a romanticized myth anyway). Seeing the creases in an original 'professional painting' is pretty darn original, but a unique context for a Fight Club poster is as well. As for which one is 'more original' than the other... well I think that's really up to whoever's experiencing them. Yay subjectivity!