What is the main purpose of originalcopy?
In the arts-based research project originalcopy we collect copying strategies at the intersection of the digital and the analog. Our assumption is that copying is omnipresent yet invisible in the post-digital condition we are living in today. This means that copying in its most variable forms—from a Xeroxed sheet of paper to the conceptual mechanisms of appropriation—has become a standard in art production. Outside the specific field of the visual arts, when you think of our computer-saturated and thoroughly programmed life and work contexts, copying has become such a banality that we are not even aware of it anymore.
There are two main purposes of originalcopy which cannot be separated from each other: On the one hand, we aim to analyze copying techniques by collecting different forms, modes, and aspects of them—we copy the act of copying—and, on the other hand, we develop new copying methods derived from this research process. We create a loop that is self-reflective and auto-generative at the same time.
Why do you talk about the “post-digital” while working with digital technologies such as the Internet? Digital technologies are not over, are they?
No, digital technologies are not over at all. Quite the contrary, digital technologies are totally embedded in our everyday lives—they are ubiquitous. With the term “post-digital” we do not refer to a status after the digital rather to the omnipresence of all these technologies which have become so normal and intrinsic that we do not realize them anymore. Even if the digital is everywhere, it has become invisible. That’s the starting point for originalcopy. Precisely because of this very invisibility of digital technologies, their disappearance from the surface and the accompanying anxieties this fact provokes, we believe that they should be researched and made visible again.
Also, by shifting the focus from digital media and technologies to their usage and possibilities in art production without emphasizing their technicality and presence, we hope to foster a deeper understanding of how the digital has become an agent of art production itself. We understand “the digital” more as a subordinate phenomenon and as a figure and structure of thought than as a concrete set of technologies.
Most of the pictures on your page are not copies—they are original artworks…
Yes and no. For the purpose of our research we try to expand the idea of what a copy actually is and can be. Besides the familiar instance of a copy as something that looks exactly or essentially the same as an original, we also include works that copy processes, ideas and concepts, modes of production, parts of other things, even feelings, etc.
To be correct, most of the images on our website are not original artworks but photographic reproductions of original artworks and exhibition or installation contexts. Are these photos artworks too? Can the perception of these photos be described as a primary experience of art or is this type of viewing of a secondary nature? These are well-known questions in the field of performance art, for example, where the documentation of an ephemeral event is often treated equally with the event as such. Where are the boundaries between the artwork and its reproduction? These are some of the questions we investigate with originalcopy.
You speak of “performative research”—are you performance artists?
No, we are not performance artists, we are researchers, but we also do not exclude the possibility of working with performance as an art form in the context of originalcopy. With “performative research” we have developed a methodology that allows us to produce an aesthetic experience by creating artistic contexts while reflecting this process of creation simultaneously. As mentioned before, in originalcopy we conduct a sort of circular movement that is both self-reflective and auto-generative at the same time. The “performative” in “performative research” is not about happenings, theatre pieces, or similar public events—we are referring to the linguistic concept of “performative utterances” (John L. Austin) that distinguishes between expressions that describe the world and those responsible for its construction.
Why don’t you discuss copyright issues with originalcopy?
In this research project we are dealing with copying as an artistic working method. This sometimes touches on the important issues of copyright, intellectual property, and related discourses. Nevertheless, our focus is the artistic, visual, formal-aesthetic, material practices and less about the legal discussions that sometimes follow after such methods of producing art are developed and applied.
Even if the project does not deal with this topic explicitly, copyright issues are always implicit in originalcopy. As we work with found materials such as images, texts, sounds, or videos and compile them into a type of online repository, which is freely accessible in the form of a link database, we follow open source principles with our activities. If you wish, this is the most evident political aspect of our practice as artistic researchers.
Are there other sociopolitical aspects in this project, too?
As the act of copying—understood as a very broad cultural practice—touches us all in nearly all domains of our lives, originalcopy can’t be a-political or purely formal. Of course, our research does not explicitly focus on short-term political matter read in the newspapers, and we do not understand it as an activist practice intervening in actual societal occurrences or circumstances. However, in originalcopy we also negotiate topics such as globalized communication, the circulation of commodified artworks, the immaterialization and transparency of power structures, the potentials of networks, and the inherently political character of the image in the aforementioned contexts. With such issues on our agenda, it is undeniable that we contribute to relevant sociopolitical discourses.