Machete Group

ON APPROPRIATION

Saturday 18 December, 8:00–10:00 PM
at Marginal Utility, 319 N. 11th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19107

DISCUSSION
In the last meeting of the Machete group, we considered the theme of negation from various theoretical perspectives, and, further, how those themes had impacted contemporary artistic production. Building on Debord’s notion of detournement in his chapter “On Negation,” we now turn to the theme of appropriation. In this turn a new set of problems emerges: Does appropriation name a useful tactic in the recuperation of genuine critique? Is appropriation ever able to truly wrest the taken image from the dominant culture? In what ways can appropriation serve as a regressive move – in the colonial encounter, for instance? The discussion will be framed with theoretical readings from Isabelle Graw, Benjamin Buchloh and Homi Bhabha, and will be presented by Avi Alpert, Alexi Kukuljevic and Edward Schexnayder.

Bhabha-Mimicry and Man (224KB)

Buchloh-Parody and Appropriation (1.7MB)

Buchloh-Allegorical Procedures (3.5MB)

Graw-Dedication Replacing Appropriation (6.4MB)

ABOUT THE MACHETE GROUP
The Machete Group organizes workshops, mini-seminars, reading groups, screenings and other events open to the public that have as their general focus the intersection between artistic practice and its theoretical articulation. The guiding proposition of the Machete Group is the claim that practice without theory is empty and theory without practice is blind. The goal of the center is to engender a rigorous and open atmosphere outside a strictly academic context that encourages autodidacticism, a willingness to question all forms of mastery and specialization, and the desire to think critically about artistic practice in an historically, socially and politically astute manner.

The Machete Group is an international consortium of artists and intellectuals based at Marginal Utility Gallery in Philadelphia. The Group runs the magazine Machete, offers seminars on current issues in the arts, and is invested in developing new collective forms of artistic and intellectual practice. Its members include Avi Alpert, David Dempewolf, Etienne Dolet, Ludwig Fischer, Alexi Kukuljevic, Holly Martins, Gabriel Rockhill, Theodore Tucker, and Yuka Yokoyama. The Machete Group seminars are monthly workshops on current issues in the arts run by Alexi Kukuljevic, Gabriel Rockhill and Avi Alpert (as of fall 2010).

Current Exhibition

Bryan Zanisnik – ‘Open Brain Case and Forceps’
On view through 23 January 2011

Zanisnik often shoots in the artist’s hometown and surrounding areas. This provides a biographical center to the work that Zanisnik elevates from private to shared daydreams of symptoms and emotional maladies that are set within scenes of suburban New Jersey and populated with artist’s family and friends. Zanisnik highlights the benefits of making the useful useless, through a counterpoint-like soup of jump cuts between a retired collector’s mania for mouse traps, and footage of the artist frantically riding a child’s rocking horse bare-chested and wearing a mouse tail made out of duct tape.Read more...

HOME ON THE WEB

Marginal Utility website at www.marginalutility.org. The website features information on all current and past exhibitions, a calendar of events, artist and edition info, etc.

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CONTACT US

If you have any questions, please contact: seminar@marginalutility.org

319 N. 11th Street, 2nd Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19107
PHONE 917.355.4487 www.marginalutility.org
HOURS: Friday 5:00–8:00 PM, Saturday-Sunday 12:00–5:00 PM