Oppenheim Sunburn Remix -1993
I’m looking at the works I did fourteen years ago to understand what I was trying to get at. The works were done as I was beginning to work with the internet. One of the web sites I created was called Faux Conceptual Art. I was thinking about the burgeoning business of counterfeit products such as watches and designer label products coming from China. Since I live a few blocks from Canal Street in New York, I am aware of all the counterfeit products being sold on the street. I thought that the fakes were a very interesting by product of globalism. They also functioned as a linguistic game. The game is about a shift in the idea of creativity. It also extends the 1980’s discussion of appropriation into the 1990’s debate about intellectual property. The shift in creativity is subtle. This also has it’s basis in the famous essay by Walter Benjamin, Art In The Age of Mechanical Reproduction. What Benjamin says is that art loses its’ “aura” when it is reproduced. The discussion is about the qualities of an artwork. This presupposes that art is about a unique object, a masterwork. The copy supposedly has no “aura.” What conveys uniqueness or the quality of art to an artwork? This becomes a central question for every generation of artists.

The problem with capitalism is that it devalues everything except that which can be turned into a commodity. What happens if you don't want to be bought and sold or you don't want to buy and sell? Then what? The world is not only barter and trade. It's a mistake to see it that way.