TAKING CREDIT ( text from video)

TAKING CREDIT

I sometimes have a hard time taking credit for my work.

On the other hand, I have NO PROBLEM appropriating other people's work into my own, being extremely derivative, or out-and-out stealing others' ideas. I used to justify this behavior as being POST MODERN.

I especially did this when I was working in a group or a collective.
This is an area where ownership of concepts is murky at best. Who's to
say that the ideas from a group "BRAIN STORMING" environment are
completely the possession of one individual?

That concept worked fine for me until some other artist RIPPED ME OFF! I realized that this was KARMA. I began to work alone, so as to avoid the temptation of USURPING OWNERSHIP of others' ideas.

Working in this way, I began to realize that most ideas are not NEW. They may be unique to that individual, but most things are DERIVATIVE in some sense.

So now I have realized that the importance of ownership of art is blown OUT OF PROPORTION anyway. What I do is . . . what I do. If someone else did the same thing 3, 30, or 300 years ago, so be it. If most people are so uneducated that they don't know that I'm ripping off Andy Warhol or Marcel Duchamp,
FUCK EM!

Does the name
JENNY HOLZER
mean anything to you?

copywrite 2002
chaos studio

http://www.atomicelroy.com