A question of art

As Jim Jarmusch once said:
"Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don't bother concealing your thievery-celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: "It's not where you take things from-it's where you take them to."

This next video could be an example of this quote; a very interesting video, which I happen to came across this weekend, directed by Keith Schofield.



The video, as you may have seen, contains a great amount of abstract and obscure images. It’s a great video to watch, you can see it over and over again and every time discover something new. What makes it so interesting though is not necessarily the video itself, but the whole discussion that followed.

People interested in art and photography, or those who are just very active on the internet, might have noticed a lot of ‘references’ to artwork (Rene Magritte, William Hundley), and random photographs circling around on the internet (fat kid with guitar, man with half-beard, spongebob being arrested, pancake astronaut). The references however, are not extremely obvious or that well-known, so people who are not familiar with the images, won’t see that most of the video is a re-enactment of already existing images.

In the controversy that followed after the release of this video, a lot of people questioned whether this video was based on stealing, or an attempted tribute to either obscure images in general, or to several artists. Keith Schofield himself however said he was inspired by the website ffffound.com (one of my favorite websites ever by the way), and the images he had seen there.

So what is this video exactly, regardless of what Schofield himself says; using already existing obscure images in a not necessarily obvious way (aka stealing)?, re-enacting images as a tribute/reference, either positive or negative, to the concept of websites such as ffffound? or a tribute to the artists themselves, as a way of showing interest in obscure images? Answer: I don’t know really. It could be all, could be none.

What I find interesting about the whole video and discussion is that it, probably subconsciously, shows what happens to art in this day and age when it comes to the internet: pictures get linked and linked everywhere, due to websites like ffffound and blogs (yeah including mine, I know).
This raises a few questions: ‘Is this a bad thing? Do artists and their work lose their authenticity?’, or ‘Is it a good thing; because people can easily access art and an artist’s name can grow more easily (depending on whether people mention names on their blogs etc)’, another one being: ‘Is anything (read: images) really owned or copyrighted when on the internet?’ It’s quite hard to answer these questions, as there are both pros and cons, so multiple answers to each question. And I think there isn’t any right or wrong answer, it’s just a matter of opinion. And it shows us one of the many forces that ‘art’ has one us: it can be controversy and it makes people discuss. And I like that.

Nonetheless; the song is awesome, Beck and Gainsbourg form an interesting music duo, and the video remains an interesting piece of surrealism and a good topic for discussion. And if Jim Jarmusch is right or not, or if Keith Schofield is an thief or a great artist, well that depends on one's own opinion.