In light of the controversy that has shaken the visual arts, as well as theatre and literature, in recent years, one thing becomes quite clear. The first reflex of an artist accused of cultural appropriation is to attack the very notion of \u201ccultural appropriation,\u201d in an attempt to show that it is a hollow, empty, and irrelevant concept. The debate gets swallowed up and the denunciation fades behind a smokescreen. Reviewing what this concept refers to therefore seems an important place to start. Cultural appropriation was first theorized in 1976 by Kenneth Coutts-Smith, a professor at the University of Toronto and a strong advocate for the Inuit cause. In a seminal paper,1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 1 <\/a> - Kenneth Coutts-Smith, \u201cSome General Observations on the Problem of Cultural Colonialism\u201d (paper presented at the Congress of the International Association of Art Critics, Lisbon, September 1976), https:\/\/bit.ly\/2wrjSTi.<\/span> he brought together the Marxist notion of \u201cclass appropriation\u201d and the concept of \u201ccultural colonialism\u201d in order to illustrate the ways in which Western culture appropriates cultural forms that come from oppressed or colonized cultures. Having since been further considered and expanded by many authors, today this notion refers to the manner in which the elements and iconography of a dominated culture are decontextualized, deformed, or simplified. In other words, the dominant-\u00addominated power relationship is an essential part of the definition of cultural appropriation, even though those in power constantly seek to deny it. Furthermore, the violence inflicted by the dominant over the dominated is not limited to the artistic or cultural fields. The controversy surrounding Dana Schutz\u2019s painting, presented at the Whitney Biennial in 2017, was so intense precisely because the biennial took place a few months after the election of Donald Trump, in the context of increased police violence against African Americans. Similarly, the controversy surrounding Robert Lepage\u2019s play Kanata created such a stir in the summer of 2018 because it arose in the midst of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the most common strategies for defusing the political charge of cultural appropriation is to radically shift the meaning by giving it a positive connotation. It then becomes a synonym for \u201ccultural exchange\u201d and is presented as a principle of artistic creation and ferment. For example, in the spring of 2017, Hal Niedzviecki, editor of the Canadian magazine Write, proposed to create an \u201cAppropriation Prize\u201d so as to encourage artists to develop more cultural exchanges: \u201cI don\u2019t believe in cultural appropriation. In my opinion, anyone, anywhere, should be encouraged to imagine other peoples, other cultures, other identities. I\u2019d go as far as to say that there should even be an award for doing so.\u201d2<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 2 <\/a> - Hal Niedzviecki, \u201cWinning the Appropriation Prize,\u201d Write (May 2017): 8.<\/span> Along the same lines, Ariane Mnouchkine, director of the Th\u00e9\u00e2tre du Soleil, which invited Robert Lepage to stage Kanata in Paris, claims that cultural appropriation doesn\u2019t exist because \u201ccultures are not anyone\u2019s property.\u201d3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 3 <\/a> - Jo\u00eblle Gayot, \u201cEntretien avec Ariane Mnouchkine: \u2018Les cultures ne sont les propri\u00e9t\u00e9s de personne,\u2019\u201d T\u00e9l\u00e9rama 3584 (September 19, 2018): 20\u201324.<\/span> This is extraordinary blindness to centre-periphery, North-South, colonizer-colonized relations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Appropriation art, for its part, seeks not to erase relations of power but to underline them. Like Coutts-Smith in the 1970s, the appropriation art theorists of the 1980s examined the notion of property within a Marxist framework. Canadian art critic Bruce Alistair Barber devoted a key article to analyzing the links between \u201cappropriation\u201d and \u201cexpropriation.\u201d4 His essay concludes with an addendum on the notion of copyright, in which he stresses that any challenge to the notion of property brings into question the \u201crights of ownership\u201d and therefore \u201ccopyright.\u201d In his view, appropriation art establishes a dialogue between the judge and the artist around the notion of fair use; he concludes that \u201cin a democratic society, testing is the only manner in which revision can be accomplished.\u201d4<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 4 <\/a> - Ibid., 39.<\/span> This is why appropriation artists are still regularly prosecuted for copyright infringement \u2014 trials during which the notions of \u201cfair use\u201d and the \u201ctransformative dimension\u201d of appropriation continue to evolve. Besides the high-profile lawsuits filed against Richard Prince and Jeff Koons, less showy debates reveal the fact that contemporary art always examines the notion of intellectual property and its related notions of authenticity and originality. In Qu\u00e9bec in 2014, controversy arose between the Regroupement des artistes en arts visuels du Qu\u00e9bec (RAAV) and appropriation artist John Boyle-Singfield regarding the latter\u2019s unauthorized use of another artist\u2019s image. The president of the RAAV went to great lengths to write a letter in which he explained that \u201cin this context, it is important to understand that the RAAV is not taking a stand on the artistic value of the phenomenon of appropriation but on the lack of authorization from the original creator. In general, the appropriation artist must ask permission from the creator of the original work before using it, otherwise such an artist could face legal action.\u201d5<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 5 <\/a> - Christian B\u00e9dard, \u201cCas d\u2019appropriation et d\u2019exposition ill\u00e9gales d\u2019\u0153uvres originales \u00e0 Ottawa,\u201d Regroupement des artistes en arts visuels du Qu\u00e9bec (August 5, 2014), www.raav.org\/cas-dappropriation-et-dexposition-illegales-doeuvres-originales-ottawa (our translation).<\/span> This is a remarkable misunderstanding of the very nature of appropriation art, which consists precisely in appropriating something \u201cwithout asking permission.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The positions of appropriation artists and those accused of cultural appropriation contrast sharply. While the former do not hesitate to explore and breach the limits of property rights and face the consequences in the courts, the latter hide behind the legality of their actions.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n It is remarkable that all the artists accused of some form of cultural appropriation present themselves not as adversaries but as allies of the cultures that they put in the spotlight. The aim of their work would be to make the greatest number of people aware of the injustices and suffering endured by these marginalized groups. In turn, any kind of challenge to the legitimacy of their engagement, including by the representatives of the cultures that they depict, is experienced as a form of censorship. They respond to accusations of cultural appropriation by waving the flag of being \u201cbeyond ethics,\u201d which, according to philosopher Carole Talon-Hugon, consists in responding to criticism by \u201cdisputing an overlooked ethical intention that is yet very real.\u201d9<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 9 <\/a> - Carole Talon-Hugon, Morales de l\u2019art (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2009), 169 (our translation).<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n Over the last thirty years, the \u201cdisappearance\u201d of political conflict and antagonism that is particular to the ethical turn of art has been encouraged worldwide by the globalization of art, which began with the 1989 Parisian exhibition Magiciens de la Terre, in which cultures from around the world were placed in dialogue on an equal footing. It took place under the paradigm of postcolonial studies, which posits that the globalization of culture takes place \u201cin a decolonized world.\u201d For example, this idea is at the core of a book written by the great postcolonial thinker Arjun Appadurai, titled Modernity at Large: The Cultural Consequences of Globalization.12 It is also not very surprising that Homi Bhabha, another founding father of postcolonial studies, who wrote an engaging essay for the catalogue of Magiciens de la Terre, recently opened a roundtable on cultural appropriation organized by Artforum by proposing to replace the term \u201cappropriation\u201d with the term \u201ctranslation\u201d: \u201cI prefer translation to appropriation\u2026 Unlike appropriation, translation is a relationship that does not immediately give a default value to some kind of original; the anterior is not seen as the \u2018appropriate\u2019 or \u2018original\u2019 text.\u201d His considerations were then reframed by artist Ajay Kurian, who was skeptical of this change in meaning and its consequences. In the end, Bhabha was compelled to admit that the term \u201cappropriation\u201d cannot be used for all forms of cultural exchange and that it applies to something more specific.10<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 10 <\/a> - \u201cCultural Appropriation: A Roundtable,\u201d Artforum 55, 10 (Summer 2017), www.artforum.com\/inprint\/issue=201706&id=68677.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n In conclusion, it is interesting to note that the few appropriation artists who have ventured into the cultural terrain in recent years are a world away from the \u201cethical turn\u201d of the intercultural relations advocated in postcolonial studies. One example is Richard Prince, who, for his exhibition Canal Zone presented in 2008 at the Gagosian Gallery, appropriated Patrick Cariou\u2019s photographs of Rastafarians, which led to a long legal battle. Another and very different example is David Krippendorff: in his work This Show Does Not Represent the View of the Artist (2016), presented at Art Berlin in 2018, he reproduced the Arabic graffiti that the Arabian Street Artists collective (Heba Y. Amin, Caram Kapp, and Don Karl) had created for the American television series Homeland (the graffiti surreptitiously introduced messages that were critical of the show, such as \u201cHomeland is racist\u201d and \u201cHomeland IS NOT a series\u201d). It is not my intention to hold up these two examples \u2014 which can be criticized for several reasons, starting with the profits (exorbitant in Prince\u2019s case) that they generated \u2014 as a model, but simply to point out that these appropriation artists did not at any moment ally themselves with the Rastafarians or the Arab cause when their act was challenged by the \u201cappropriated\u201d artists (Patrick Cariou and the Arabian Street Artists). Both artists took something that did not belong to them and did not seek to circumvent the consequences of their act. Confronted by the Arabian Street Artists for having reproduced their work without their permission, Krippendorff did not claim to \u201ccompete with their act of subversion, but reflect on the way it entered the public sphere.\u201d He sought to produce a creative act of appropriation that gave new meaning to their graffiti, focusing on \u201cthe reception of these images in the media.\u201d11<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 11 <\/a> - Andrea Scrima, \u201cHome, Identity, Exploitation, and Appropriation: A Conversation with David Krippendorff,\u201d 3 Quarks Daily (December 10, 2018), https:\/\/bit.ly\/2RV0WW0.<\/span> In a press release, he acknowledged the disturbing and controversial nature of his work: \u201cI was\u2026 operating in a vein similar to what I have been doing for many years: appropriating images from films and media and recontextualizing them to expose and rearticulate the true narrative at hand\u2026 I have never limited my field of interest or sense of empathy to any one particular culture, skin colour, or gender. If this makes a controversial artist, then I fully embrace it.\u201d12<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 12 <\/a> - David Krippendorff, \u201cThe Homeland Case,\u201d www.davidkrippendorff.com, www.davidkrippendorff.com\/selected-works\/the-homeland-case\/, accessed on April 30, 2019 (page discontinued).<\/span> This stance embraces the violence inherent in the act of appropriation without seeking to hide behind the contemporary consensual ethos that erases all forms of social and cultural asperity and ultimately denies the power relations between the dominated and the dominant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n![\"Arabian](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/97-DO1-IMG4-IM_Uzel_01_ASA_CMYK-scaled.jpeg\")
<\/strong>This Show does not Represent the View of the Artists<\/em>, Homeland on-set graffiti, 2015.
Photo : courtesy of the artists<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
The positions of appropriation artists and those accused of cultural appropriation contrast sharply. While the former do not hesitate to explore and breach the limits of property rights and face the consequences in the courts, the latter hide behind the legality of their actions. For example, on September 5, 2018, the Th\u00e9\u00e2tre du Soleil published a press release written in a surprising legalistic tone to justify staging Kanata after its brief cancellation: \u201cAriane Mnouchkine and the Th\u00e9\u00e2tre du Soleil have ultimately concluded that Kanata, the play currently in rehearsal, does not violate the laws of July 29, 1881 and July 13, 1990, or the associated sections of the Criminal Code\u2026 Since we consider ourselves subject only to the laws of the Republic passed by the elected representatives of the French people and as we do not have, in this case, any reason to challenge these laws or demand that they be amended, we are neither legally nor morally required, therefore, to submit to other injunctions.\u201d6<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 6 <\/a> - Th\u00e9\u00e2tre du Soleil, \u201cLe ressaisissement,\u201d editorial (September 5, 2018), www.theatre-du-soleil.fr\/fr\/les-editos\/editorial-du-5-septembre-2018-26 (our translation).<\/span> It is quite clear that culture as an intangible and collective good is very little, if at all, protected with respect to copyright, which stems from individual property rights. Can we claim, however, as Mnouchkine does, that \u201ccultures are not anyone\u2019s property\u201d? A striking difference will always remain between artists who examine the law and its underlying power relations and artists who justify their actions using laws currently in effect and reject any evolution of such laws.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Ethical Turn of Art<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The contrast between appropriation art and cultural appropriation becomes particularly clear in light of what French philosopher Jacques Ranci\u00e8re calls \u201cthe ethical turn of aesthetics and politics,\u201d which is characterized by the gradual erasure of all forms of conflict in the public sphere. According to Ranci\u00e8re, the \u201cethical community\u201d is founded on consensus, \u201ca mode of symbolic structuration of the community that evacuates the political core constituting it, namely dissensus.\u201d7<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 7 <\/a> - Jacques Ranci\u00e8re, Aesthetics and Its Discontents, trans. Steven Corcoran (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2009), 115.<\/span> In 2004, Ranci\u00e8re saw this ethical turn at work in relational art. He regarded this movement as being shaped entirely by a search for consensus, which aimed to create situations characterized by conviviality, intimacy, and sharing \u2014 and, more broadly, which sought to \u201crestore lost meaning to a common world or repair the cracks in the social bond.\u201d8<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 8 <\/a> - Ibid., 122.<\/span> Although the recent cases of cultural appropriation have no artistic connection with relational aesthetics, we can nevertheless claim that they too participate in this \u201cethical community,\u201d in which political conflict disappears.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"Arabian](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/97-DO1-IMG2-IM_Uzel_Arabian-Street-Artists_03_ASA_Krippendorff_CMYK.jpeg\")
<\/strong>1001 Jokes, comparison between Arabian Street Artists (2015) & David Krippendorff (2018)
Photos : courtesy of the artists<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"Arabian](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/97-DO1-IMG3-IM_Uzel_Arabian-Street-Artists_02_ASA_Krippendorff_CMYK.jpeg\")
<\/strong>There is No Homeland, comparison between Arabian Street Artists (2015) & David Krippendorff (2018).
Photos : courtesy of the artists<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\nThe Myth of the \u201cGlobal Village\u201d<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Translated from the French by Oana Avasilichioaei<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n