Collage or compilation. Found footage film or recycled cinema. Remix or détournement. Whatever one might call it, the practice of incorporating preexistent media into new artworks engenders novel juxtapositions, new ideas, and latent connotations… often entirely unrelated to the intentions of the original makers. In that regard, such works are truly “inappropriate.” Indeed, the act of (in)appropriation can reveal unimagined relationships between past and present, here and there, intention and subversion, artist and critic, and perhaps even compel us to reexamine what it means to be the “producer” or “consumer” of visual culture itself.
Fortunately for our purposes, the past decades have witnessed the emergence of countless new kinds of audiovisual material available for artistic (in)appropriation. In addition to official state and commercial archives, resources like vernacular collections, home movie repositories, and digital archives now provide the artist with a wealth of fascinating matter to reprocess, repurpose, and endow with new meaning and resonance.
Founded in 2009 by Jaimie Baron, Greg Cohen, and Lauren Berliner, the Festival of (In)appropriation is a yearly showcase of contemporary, short-form, audiovisual works that appropriate existing film, video, or other media and redeploy them in “inappropriate” and inventive ways. This year marks the culmination of the Festival’s first decade, with a program that ranges from militant political documentary, uncanny TV supercuts, and raucous re-mix juggernauts, to quasi-DIY orphan film animations, haunting YouTube mash-ups oozing with existential teen angst, and a brooding digital experiment performed upon a single, black-and-white, still photograph.
For the first time since its inception, this year’s festival will be guest curated by Marie-Pierre Burquier, Mariquita “Micki” Davis, and Allyson Unzicker.
