Issues of cultural appropriation have recently gained in urgency and relevance. Ideational claims to ownership collide ever more frequently with the actual, existing distribution of property – and in an increasingly drastic fashion, as is shown not only by the current battles for a share in cultural goods, but also the legistic measures that accompany them. A new set-up seems to be emerging here, with the advocates of »copy, rip and burn« on the one side, and those who champion copy protection and anti-filesharing campaigns on the other.
In the appropriative procedures of art, the problems of original and copy, of reference and borrowing, have always been articulated in a complex way. In his article, Daniel Pies examines what forms the intertextual treatment of »extra-artistic« knowledge takes on today and what view of things is promoted by it. Ana Peraica, on the other hand, reminds us that the adoption of Western standards of originality and copyright puts the cultural scenes of eastern Europe into a paradoxical position - in view of the fact that the copying of culturo-historical or forbidden models long had an important function. And, in two case studies, Luchezar Boyadjiev demonstrates clearly to what extent the relationship between artist and collector is always exposed to a kind of dilemma of »appropriation as expropriation«.
But the symptoms of the globally growing »rip-off culture« extend far beyond the artistic field. They are apparent in the general viewpoint that equates creativity with non-conformity, as well as in the debate on patent rights and generic drugs in bio-technology and in the rampant practices of so-called »ethnic sampling« in contemporary music. It becomes clear in all these spheres that it is difficult to draw a line between property and theft. Or at least more difficult than the self-righteous trustees of Western industrial property - but also the proponents of unlimited access to the omnicultural sampling pool - are willing to admit.
So the looting of other cultures – but also of one’s »own« culture - remains a highly sensitive topic, and one that does not only concern the protection of intellectual property. Rather, it touches on superordinate power structures, which the articles in this issue critically interrogate.