keywords discussion: détournement / appropiation / plagiarism

]] The left image is the painting "Portrait of Pope Innocent X" by Diego Valazquez, a Spanish painter. The right image is a painting by English modernist Francis Bacon,"Study after Velazquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X". [[

The other day the class discussion focused on the differences and similarities between three concepts (some keywords that we have to define through the wiki of "The electronic landscape"): detóurnement, appropiation and Plagiarism. I personally chose to edit "Plagiarism" because I've always had a keen interest in this topic, because of its very important relationship with journalism, especially with online journalism and web content.

The discussion was very interesting because the line that defines the three concepts is very thin, and often leads to confusion. In the context of visual arts, Appropriation is the act of borrowing imagery, forms or styles from history / popular culture or more commonly, the work of another artist. Plagiarism ocurrs when one imitates others' work and ideas and claims it as one's own. And Détournement is the use of pre-existing artistic or cultural elements in a new ensemble, often obliterating any pre-existing meaning associated with the original piece. A new and often radical meaning is then attached to the new piece, which is often contradictory to the original.

I personally find appropiation is a more general concept (the fact of borrowing “a piece of an artwork”, whereas plagiarism and détournement refer to more specific notions: claiming the ownership of other's work, or changing the original meaning of the piece of art.

I give you some of the links I find really interesting to explore about the three concepts:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detournement

http://www.beyondtv.org/nato/detournement/detournement.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appropriation_art

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~sources/about/what.html