appropriation

i just wanted to say my 2 cents about appropriation. for me it is all about respect and ackowledgement. since i use other peoples designs and artwork in my collages i am always careful to alter the image enough so that it will not seem as though i am merely "stealing" the image and changing only the context. since the images i use are from published, public sources it is within my rights to appropriate them as an artist. however, if one of the artists of my source material were to approach me and say "hey, i don't like what you are doing with my work" i would gladly remove the piece from the web or whatever setting it was displayed in. of course i am not saying if marvel comics came to me and said "hey, you're making batman look bad", but if one of the painters who illustarted the marvel book i used images from did, then yes, i would hear them out. and i would hope other creative people would afford me the same courtesy. when we preach about stealing and how anarchistic it is, we forget that we ourselves are targets. and remeber, if you ever post images on myspace- or most other corporate sponsered web services- the site exercises the right to use the images in any way they see fit. newscorp owns myspace and theoretically, rupert murdoch could use your art to sell the ny post if he wanted to. that is if he has enough taste to appreciate what we do! hahaha

counter culture

i am just going to give advance warning that this entry is gonna be long, rambling and might not tie together until the end, if ever at all. first of all, ann powers is a douche bag. the reading pissed me off so bad that i had to google her to add fuel to my argument. she's on wikipedia and there was even a link to her blog! awesome. and the first entry was about the fucking tyra banks show. that's all i'm going to say about that and feel free to indulge yourself, here is the link
http://eensyweensy.blogspot.com/

to me the phrase "counter culture" is quite absurd. lets make a label for something that is anti-mainstream that's very existence is predicated by the "normal". there are so many levels on which i disagree with powers' ideas, but i am going to focus on stealing for the moment. unfortunately her idiotic views on theivery are embraced by many of the most popular "counter-culture" movements. ok, that sentence right there demonstrates how whack things have gotten in terms of what is counter and what is "popular" and what the hell those words even mean anymore. here's one great example- there is a grafitti crew in nyc called "irak". i assume lots of people know who they are, but if not, the name basically means "i steal" rak is some kinda slang for stealing. of course now the name has even more political significance, but it's inception was based on the fact that these kids stole everything they had and basically antaginized the public and the police with their shinanigins. of course once several of the members became visible in the public eye, the crew became famous. one of the most visable members is dash snow. he became famous for being in ryan mcginleys (who was himself "discovered" by non other than counter-cult. godfather larry clark and subsequently became the youngest person EVER to solo exhibit at the whitney- he was 25)photographs and then he decided he was not just a thief and a can hanger, but a legitimate artist. so dash started popping up in vice magazine which his pal mcginley edited and dan colon, another young inductee into the nyc art machine, and he became famous for making hamsters nests in hotel rooms with phone books after snorting ungodly amounts of cocaine. and in case you are wondering, yes, i fucking hate dash snow. but i digress, ultimately the robbing and stealing and overall anarchist slant of irak is completely undermined by the fact that it becomes public that dash is from a wealthy family. a VERY wealthy family, as in billions of oil dollars, as in the menil collection in texas, as in on the board of all the major museums, etc, etc. and on top of that he had gone legit and shown his work at...you guessed it- the whitney bienniel!!! his work in case you are wondering consists of polaroids he took when he was a teenager of his friends fucking and doing drugs. hmmmm, larry clark anyone!! so now, all the young, struggling graffers and punks who were into irak (myself included) were a bit peeved. sure, it's fun to steal and all when you have a goddamn trust fund!!! and it's also easy to buy tons of expensive drugs and get bailed out of jail when you get arrested. in short, up is down, black is white and fox news starts looking appealing to some of these kids. i don't think it's any coincidence that reactionary politics and thinking are en vouge now among
the hipster crowd in nyc. how can you live in the most expensive place on earth and claim to be "counter-culture"??? how can you pay $1500 a month in rent and turn around and complain that you are "broke"??? i suppose stealing can give these people a bit of a rush- a little taste of the dark side. but at the end of the day the reactionaries and the bohemian optimists generally retreat to the same neighborhood and plop down on the same ikea furniture. bought or stolen- does it really fucking matter????