Oliver Laric: Vary to create

In a 2003 interview carried out by the art critic Domenico Quaranta, Oliver Laric, (b. 1981, Innsbruck, Austria), Austrian artist who lives and works in Berlin, states:

" D.Q. -You have said: “I don’t see any necessity in producing images myself — everything that I would need exists, it’s just about finding it.” Is the artist as creator a thing of the past?

O.L. - Using an existing image creates a new image, just as with iconoclasm: the destruction of an image creates an image. Or with translation: as Jorge Luis Borges described in the often-quoted Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote, translations produce new works......".

http://artpulsemagazine.com/the-real-thing-interview-with-oliver-laric

accessed 30/04/2021

Laric takes this method of "creative appropriation" to the extreme, affirming that his site, where he represents his works, is "only" a site of "primary experience". 

His works will then be represented in other places, virtual or physical, and, by the very fact that there has been a variation of place, these will be other works. 

Furthermore, the mediation of spaces, contexts and methods of use will lead to other variations, which, in turn, will create other versions, and therefore other works. 
Laric's artistic philosophy is well described by his work "Versions":

"....Versions is an ongoing project by Oliver Laric, proposing that present methods of creative production challenge the hierarchy of an authentic or auratic ‘original’ image. Rather than privileging a primary object, Versions suggests a re-direction for image making, one in which copies and remixes increasingly usurp ‘originals’ in an age of digital production. This video from 2012 was presented alongside a series of polyurethane casts, sculptures and appropriated items, and aims to explicate contemporary image circulation and their exchange through present and historical conditions.....".

(2012, https://vimeo.com/85436770, accessed 30/04/2021).

My response to this artistic thought is conflicted, because on the one hand, I understand the pure logic of Laric's thought, on the other hand, I think that the proposal of this thought has been facilitated and supported by the advent of the digital age, where it is It is possible to make a copy of an artwork, to then manipulate it and change it.

In the analogue era, the copied artworks would have been declared false and the alleged author would have been accused of plagiarism. In the digital age, not only is the subject tackled without prejudice, but, indeed, it is pushed to the point of affirming that it no longer makes sense to create any work from scratch, given that it is extremely likely that there is already another identical one.

The concept is quite depressing for those who, like me, not only love to create personal work, but also study to be more aware and master of their own creative process.

 
However, we are in the virtual world, which is made up of representations and not of real and physical objects (artworks): not addressing this issue would be like withdrawing into a house on top of a mountain.

(Oliver Laric, ext. from "Versions"2012, https://vimeo.com/85436770, accessed 30/04/2021).