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Accepted Paper:

Travelling images: subversive imitations and imitated subversions  
Aylin Kuryel (University of Amsterdam)

Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to explore the potentialities and dilemmas of imitation as a political/artistic tactic. The political implications of the ongoing battle between images that use imitation for subversive purposes and their re-appropriation by the discourses that they aim to criticize will be discussed.

Paper long abstract:

This paper aims to explore the potentialities and dilemmas of imitation as a political and artistic tactic, by shedding light on the concept of "détournement." This term, coined by the French political/art group Situationist International (SI) in the 1960s, can be translated as rerouting, distortion, misuse or misappropriation, and can be defined as a form of subversion that uses/imitates preexisting visual and textual material to transmit new, often revolutionary meanings. "Détournement," as a methodology based on imitation and re-configuration for political purposes, has been a core tactic within artist/activist/critical imagery from Dadaism, Surrealism, and SI, to YesMen, Adbusters and Rebel Clown Army. I analyze the processes by which transformation and subversion are achieved through reproduction and imitation, and the ways that the signification of an image changes while traveling from one discursive area to the other by looking at several images from SI to contemporary alternative-globalizationist culture-jamming groups.

Yet, the realm of subversion through imitation includes contestations and paradoxes. The new, critical imagery created by jamming existing cultural elements is not fully closed to being re-appropriated and domesticated by the discourses they criticize. I will also discuss the political implications of this circle of appropriation for subversion and appropriation for domestication or commodification ("détournement" vs. "recuperation"). In this light, I will look at the use of several popular images, such as the Ipod or GAP by activist groups, as well as the use of activist imagery like the image of Zapatista or the punk movement by advertisement companies.

Panel P44
Postgraduate forum
  Session 1