Today something exciting and out of the ordinary, but not entirely unexpected happened. Today not one but two different people created appropriations of my two new sites AfterWalkerEvans.com and AfterSherrieLevine.com. First I received a press release from Badur Ramji informing me of his site AfterMichaelMandiberg which is up at http://www.scream.ca. He saw a review on wired (http://www.wirednews.com/news/culture/0,1284,43902,00.html) and his response was to build his site, to ask "Should digital expressionism also be an open source platform?" His site uses a screen shot of AfterWalkerEvans.com as its image, and has a compressed zip archive of the entirety of both of my two sites for download and posting.
Next, I recieved a press release from Kendall Bruns announcing his new site http://AfterMichaelMandiberg.com. I had previously received an email notifying me that he purchased the domain name, though at that time it was undeveloped. Kendall's site takes a slightly different approach, nearly exactly mirroring my sites, altering only the initial statement, where he inserts himself into the chain of appropriation.
I think it is totally appropriate, and a lot of fun. I had hoped someone would come up with a rejoinder of the sort, as the site is somewhat begging for it. Each repetition creates a new authentic object; each repetition creates a new fake that is one step more devoid of any (fallacious) real expression. Each step is one more iteration of this experiement at the cost of Walker Evans, Sherrie Levine, and now myself. I place myself with them in all seriousness, and at the same time aware of how absurd that statement is. This is why I am doing this. To experience that liminal moment.
Michael
Their press releases are available at:
http://www.AfterWalkerEvans.com/ramji.html
http://www.AfterWalkerEvans.com/bruns.html
The sites:
http://www.AfterWalkerEvans.com
http://www.AfterSherrieLevine.com
http://AfterMichaelMandiberg.com
http://www.scream.ca