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Reappropriation/Re-use in the Arts: The "Re-'s" of Film and Art

The re-use or reappropriation in film, the graphic arts, literature and music is a great tradition; each definition with its own theory and impetus. This guide is intended for practitioners and scholars to study the forms of reappropriation in the arts.

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The Concepts of Re-use

  • Appropriation; Reappropriation; re-; mimesis; copyright; ownership; 

  • Remix; ownership; quotation; reinvention;

  • Curation; museums; archives; archival materials; provenance; preserving; stealing;
    -in the creative arts, a curator is keeper, a custodian, a trustee of the object(s) in use.  From the Latin, cūrāre, to care for, cureto take care or be in charge of.  Cf. custodian, one who keeps a building or is in charge of a minor, a Curate, a priest of cleric in charge of a congregation.  In the art sense, it's the one in agency of the object to use and reuse it in other works of art, to address  “the archive, and archival materials.”  Think of the 16-the century “cabinet of curiosities” which later became our museums of today and how they reassemble works into a whole new meaning. 

  • Recombinant; assemblage; art and technology; artificial intelligence; authorship; pastiche

  •  Repurposing; reusing; recycling; original and copy; plagiarism;
    the thing in itself (usually whole) for another use e.g., medieval spolia

  • Montage; collage; allusion; parody; irony;
    Cubist collage is actually montage

  • Series; development; underdevelopment; history;

  • Repetition; iteration; fragment; copy;
    Repetition: Nam June Paik, Televisions;  Fragment: Raphael cherubs

  • Proximity; relational esthetics; sociality; context;
    Rauschenberg EA “relational esthetics”

  • Boundary; border; edge; interval;