Dialogism and appropriationist practices in contemporary video art

Abstract

The main objective of this work is to evaluate two of the most important aspects of critical interpellation that operate in the field of contemporary video art: found footage and remakes. To do so, the authors relate the concept of dialogism to the notion of appropriationism, and look at them in light of the artistic dynamics of resignification initiated with the avant-gar-de movements of the past. In that respect, ever since the art of the early XX century began to work with materials that were already circulating in society, the migration of images from one medium to another has become a dominant feature of the current artistic system. And, more than advertising or television, the artistic discourse has used the cinematographic image as a privileged interlocutor. On the one hand, there are those creators who have appropriated cinematographic material in a literal sense, in order to deconstruct it into a new unit that recomposes the starting set (from Joseph Cornell to Douglas Gordon through Bruce Conner). On the other hand, there are those artists who have disscused with the cinematographic image from the outside: the proposals of Mark Lewis, Pierre Huygue or Deimantas Narkevičius demand audiovisual reflection that questions the concepts of originality and copy, essential elements of both aesthetic transformation, as well as the aesthetic experience referred to a subject. However, the same conclusion can be reached in both cases: if the contemporary artistic image is characterized by its ethereal and roving condition, it is the cinematic spirit that seems to animate it.