Art –project ”The Bootleg Oscar” for the Times Square Art Program

And new Museum of Motion pictures (Oscar Museum)in Hollywood
autor: Oleg Buryan (Moscow-St-Petersburg)

concept:

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 In my project I was inspired by the ideas of Benjamin's groundbreaking essay, "The Work of Art In The Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936)." In this piece,  Benjamin critiques the methods and motivations of image reproduction at the advent of the Industrial Revolution (the inception of commercial filmmaking and mass print media).  It argues that art, largely because of its past placement in religious ritual, acquired a kind of 'aura' giving its products an unique status. Benjamin claims that the authority or autonomy of original works of art derives from their non-reproducibility (except as fakes)  which gives them a magical aura, a charismatic halo that surrounds authentic art objects making them seem like holy relics; unique, irreplaceable and hence priceless, produced by the hand of genius. He argues that this aura is eliminated by mass reproduction; appearing in widely-distributed books, posters, postcards, T-shirts,CD'c,DVD's  etc.

Tones of pirate production create the new points on this pure artistic problem.

In my work I”m focusing on important aspect of modern culture -counterfeit .  Russia - is the worst pirate market in the world after China, that translates into a home run for Hollywood, which says it loses well over $300 million a year in Russia. Three days after the premiere, a grainy, camcorder copy of the $100 million-plus budget movie was available on DVD for under $6. Two days later a pristine version with interactive menu was on sale for the same price .Oscar lost his legs(smile) Total losses to Russian and foreign companies from all forms of intellectual property theft clock in at between $4 billion and $6 billion, according to German Gref, (Russia's former- minister of economic development and trade).

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From other hand -many peoples get positive arguments for the “chance to bring art to the masses”. After the great russian writer Anton Chehkov, I can say-art is not medicine, but diagnosis. Times Square, as the world crossroad -is a good place for discussion Realisation:
So-to give back the “AURA” of art to counterfeit movie- discs-I want to use them as material for original sculpture.

As a symbol of intellectual property was taken image of Oscar and as material for sculpture -taken from russian police arrested counterfeit DVD's of Oscar-winners films. I want to make elements of object in Russia and just combine full sculpture on the place.

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