Arqueologias da apropriação : estratificações da autoria

Abstract

Archaeologies of Appropriation: Authorship stratifications is a dissertation resulting from the development of a theoretical-practical work carried out within the scope of the Master's Degree in Multimedia Art / Performance and Installation at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon which is based on the exploration of the authorship concept. The dissertation consists of two parts, subdivided into five chapters. In the first part, through a statement by George Dickie, the author's issue as a fundamental element in the world of art is problematized and the main objectives of this research are defined: to explore the relations of power that the author establishes with the artwork, with the world art and the public. The next chapter focuses on answering the question: what is an author? In the first place, the possibility of originality is analyzed, confirming if the concept of authorship is practicable. Next, a separation is created between two phases of authorship, both incomplete without the other - authorship in the present and in the past - and the difference is established between the author as "augmenter", the one who through his act of appropriation gives origin of the work, amplifying the field of culture, and the attributive author, which consists in the recognition and social attribution of those who once assumed a position of authorship with the text, leaving in their absence a void that is essential for determining the circulation of work in society. On the other hand, the attributive author is worked as a mythification of a public figure, which is built through his works. The author's relationship with the art world is explored, and the transition from author to artist is made exploring how the newly acquired status influences the acceptance of a given object in the art world, and how artefacts that benefit from this status possess a distinct circulation in society of those that are not art. The idea of the art world is introduced, and the author is contextualized within a complex system of powers, which include museums and galleries, curators and the art market. The power relation between the author and the observer is then discussed, defining that a political tool is characterized by the scope and depth of transformation that causes on its observer. The difficulty of contemporary art to establish an influence relationship with the observer due to the fact that art in trying to increase its reach can lose its contemporaneity and when trying to increase its depth of transformation it can lose its artisticity is then problematized. The second part presents the practical work that emerges as a means of reflection of the proposed issues, using Augmented Reality to explore the paper as a political field in which the interventions of the various participants overlap with the previous interventions or simply fight for space in a extremely conditioned environment. Each intervention represents a moment of appropriation on the work and as such, momentarily the authorship of the work is broken by the gesture of appropriation of the author who participates. Finally, the conclusions and future prospects are presented, based on the dialogue between the reflections and the practical explorations of this research