Sampling and Site-Specific Practice in Contemporary ArtMargot BoumanLabel: Bloomsbury Visual ArtsDescription: In the early 20th century copying cutting and pasting entered the Western European avant-garde through collage and readymades as artists employed found objects and ephemera to create new meaning from existing materials. This book explores how this practice has evolved in contemporary art today looking at its important and distinct outcomes in the practice of artists such as Andrea Fraser Douglas Gordon Isaac Julien Christian Marclay Amie Siegel and Christopher Williams. It analyses the pivotal consequences of the interrelationships these artists establish between fragments of culture from television and film to internet culture and their artwork’s site where the verb to sample has become deeply tied to digital music editing writing image production database searches and social media. Samples take many forms: quotations of other cultural works; replicas of other objects; reenactments of works by other artists; or fragments that are quite literally cut or removed from other works of art design or media. Via Bouman’s analysis we visualise the shared frameworks of meaning that underpin these multifaceted multidimensional and medium-fluid works. Focussing on ‘action’ and ‘form’ the book discusses the relationship between the referent and reference and the citational labor that any sample performs. The distributive sense of authorship that emerges places the audience in a new position of significance.Concepts and themes discussed include: queer and race theory postproduction and mirroring mobile site specificity now-time and dragging and gender fluidity and Drag King performance centring sampling as a key form of 21st-century art. With novel insights into the conceptual material and aesthetic dimensions of sampling in contemporary culture the book provides a new critical framework for understanding the complex implications of this practice as a vital resource for researchers in contemporary art practice and visual culture.
