To follow up or expand (expound?) upon a recent Tweet - All art is sampling. When it comes down to it all artists take something whether that be a tool, a logic or an aesthetic from another artist. No one has every invented anything out of whole cloth.
Even the first cavefolk to take a burnt stick and scratch a deer into the wall of her/his very humble abode, was referencing something s/he saw somewhere else. Granted the deer was not an artist, but maybe so. I am sure that there is a dead French philosopher who has written about consciousness and and the creation of art. But anyways...
Duchamp was a sampler. Did he invent the urinal and the wall? Titian was a sampler. Did he invent the canvas?
What prompted these thoughts was a conversation I had with a woman after a performance I was in this past Monday at Schwelle7 - living together during - instant composed evening at Schwelle 7. I had given her a card for the dance on film festival I am organizing, On The Wall. After clearing up some confusion about dates and times of the festival, I told her about one of the films I would be presenting, Allemande Redux.
She wondered how I could call this my work. Sampling, she said, is not art. Hip hop and rap I wondered about. Where would those art forms be without sampling? Nobody is successful as an artist using sampling. I was at a loss for words. Still annoyed thinking about it. At the start of the conversation she said that she didn't like Americans.
Why is it okay to say that you don't like people from a certain country when it is not okay to say that you don't like someone because of their religion, skin color, orientation etc.? Guess because those are more personal than what country you came from.
Anyways...everything is sampling unless you create a new aesthetic, a new tool, and a new logic all in one go.
Good luck!
No comments:
Post a Comment