I was really excited by all of the Bourriaud readings this week because they felt liked they related very closely to how I’ve been making work lately, especially his ideas about appropriation vs the readymade and the role of the artist as being someone who is particularly good at surfing the culture or a kind of a semionaught – a term I really love. For me I think the idea of the role of the artist as not being so much someone who generates work or things in general is very apt. I think the project of originality is not so relevant in a culture where the stream of things being generated is already too great. This idea of the semionaught is to me someone who can interpret, make meanings from, and guide through the cultural rain. I really liked all the DJ analogies he made too because this idea of remixing, programming and play listing culture is exactly what I see me role as in my video mash-ups. The possibilities are really exciting and so are the difficulties. For one thing if you consider that the material of the artist is culture itself then you already have too much material and for another an appropriation and readymade practice is tricky in a litigious and copyright obsessed society. The idea of ownership is nebulous, ridiculous, and frustrating for everyone. I’ve also been reading this David Shields book that tackles many of the name issues in an interesting way.

Some questions about the readings over the past semester:

1. Lacan and Jeff Wall. Seriously confused here. I understand the argument Ross is making in theory, I think, about beauty creating desire and this leads to Lacan’s theories about desire as creating subjects etc. But where does Wall fit in here?
2. I was wondering about Crimp’s advocacy of lateral appropriation and distaste for historical appropriation, is this at odds with Rancier’s advocacy for borrowing operations from separate media? This strikes me as a kind of historical operation.
3. Any ideas about where photography’s expanded field will expand to from here? Is there a relationship between technology and the expanding of the photographic field? Digital, networks, etc?
4. Thinking about exuberance and exhaustion and the pressure to perform how are we to incorporate this into our art making. Should we more consciously defying the pressure to perform? Is it too much of a risk?