Postproduction Thoughts/Questions

In Bourriaud's introduction to Postproduction (p 17), he states, "The artistic question is no longer: 'what can we make that is new?' but 'how can we make do with what we have?'" This made me think about the artist striving for originality. Many times, most noticably in my own field of metalsmithing, artists can be praised for groundbreaking work that is not that groundbreaking. Basically, they are utilizing a new technological process, or a new industrial material in their work. The idea behind their work is not usually very coherent, but the application of a new medium is "revolutionary." This seems to me like an example of desperate artists, grasping for a unique idea in a world where it seems like everything already exists.


On page 25, Bourriaud talks a little bit about the history of appropriation. He brings up Duchamp's readymade, and the emphasis on the "artist's gaze" rather than manual skill as the artistic process. He says that Duchamp, "asserts that the act of choosing is enough to establish the artistic process, just as the act of fabricating, painting, or sculpting does: to give a new idea to an object is already production." As someone working in the craft field, this made me think about the devaluing of skill. While Duchamp was making a point about the definition of art, today it seems that concept is often the only thing of importance. People seem to forget that how they assemble their expression makes an impact on how it is interpreted.

On page 32, Bourriaud states that, "Art tends to give shape and weight to the most invisible processes. When entire sections of our existence spiral into abstraction as a result of economic globalization...artists might seek to rematerialize these functions and processes, to give shape to what is disappearing before our eyes." This page was very interesting to me, and I re-read it several times. After that sentence, he says that this process can not be done in the form of objects, but by making experience. I am not exactly sure what why he makes this distinction, and if he thinks it is only possible to achieve this goal through experience, not tangible objects.

My next question might seem somewhat trite, but with the movie we watched and reading this book, I definitely thought a lot about copyright laws. I have always accepted copyright laws in the arts as what they are, and it made me think about the fate of the visual arts in particular if there was an age without these laws.

At the very end of Postproduction, Bourriaud talks about the responsibility of the artist. I think this point is very important- to understand the imagery/materials you use and their implications. These implications might be environmental, historical, political, etc. He also begins to skim the surface of semiotics, which I think is important to note in our icon based/symbolic society.