Negativland Artistic Appropriation

Artistic Appropriation: New form of Art The question of whether implementing an original work to create new form of art is ethical or not has been amongst us for a decade now. It has become much easier to use parts of different artists’ work and create new form of art. Under copyright law, artistic appropriation is often illegal. One common reason is that the lawyers of original artists have much more resource to fight with in the court. One such case was between U2 and Negativland. Negativland is a group of musicians that combine various existing art to create a new kind of art. This pre-existing work they use can be anything from songs, advertisements, radio, or any other source. The main purpose of their work is to comment on social trends

According to Negativland, artists have always been using their environment, history, and surrounding to get inspired to create a new way to express or critique culture. So in case of artistic appropriation, new artists are just using original work as “raw material to mold and remold.” Negativland attempted to show this artistic side of their work, but it was overseen by the court. Negativland argued in their interview that “Negativland occupies itself with recontextualizing captured fragments to create something entirely new- a psychological impact based on a new juxtaposition of diverse elements, ripped from their usual context, chewed up, and spit out as a new form of hearing the world around us.” Here, Negativland explains how taking someone else’s work is not a form of “theft” but instead it is creating a whole new context that no one had thought of before. Using more than one artists’ rhyme to criticize a notion can become an art in itself. However, I believe that profiting from a mixtape of originals that makes a profit could hurt the original artists’ fame and would be unethical. Art is meant to share with others without profit, and if appropriating artists have put considerate effort in his new art and wants to make profit, part of their profit must go back to original artists in some way- fame or