Marcus Boon

To Boon, appropriation and copying are unavoidable, from a Buddhist perspective in which we are all nothing, and we are all copies and transformations at every level of being. This leads him to question the distinctions we draw between copying and originality, real Louis Vuitton handbags and fake ones, plagiarism and original student work. Something I liked:

Louis Vuitton … work[s] the boundary between fine art and craftsmanship, but also, more importantly, between art and crafts and the commodity and mass production. The company associates its products with the world of fine arts in the hope that the aura of the unique art object will also be transferred to their bags and clothes, enhancing the atmosphere of craftsmanship, which may have existed in the time of Louis Vuitton himself, but which has surely been transformed in the age of global mass production and intellectual-property law. IP law paradoxically, and perhaps impossibly, demands that the discourse of essence, of original expression and uniqueness, be continually asserted in order for a monopoly on the right to mass-produce particular items to be maintained. Copying must be disavowed, aesthetically and legally, even as it supports the entire vast apparatus of production.

This book wasn’t for me; I’m not much of a philosopher. But he does draw a lot of provocative connections. From his very interesting blog: “Couldn’t you say that the car plant worker whose job is outsourced is also experiencing a crisis in the way that we relate to copies?”… (meer)