WHEN early 20th Century critic of psychoanalysis Karl Kraus proclaimed, in his attack against Freud and the Austrian school: “From now only piracy will be permitted,” he was merely answering the terrifying problematic which American, Ralph Waldo Emerson had previously
delineated: “It is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others, as it is to invent,” consequently all forms of appropriation, whether they be the outright theft of the remix pirate, the anti-hierarchic nomadism of the schizophrenic or the mashup culture of the hiphop musician, are all really just comments on the artistic process we call invention.
To be alive in the maelstrom of today’s insanely literary pop culture, to write about art, is to risk offending highbrow critics who maintain theory is the sole prerogative of the academic, that any discourse is invariably that of the Western Canon vs the Other and all activities, including the activity of art should, and can only be, understood from within the realm of polite bourgeois society, through a lens provided by domestic homeland safety security regulations, 2010 soccer stadiums and a city by-law prohibiting urination, belching, farting in public and noxious odours?