[Creative practice] has been in a plundered, fragmentary state for a long time ... it becomes apparent that appropriation, mimicry, quotation, allusion, and sublimated collaboration consist of a kind of sine qua non of the creative act, cutting across all forms and genres in the realm of cultural production.
Jonathan Lethem, The Ecstasy of Influence, Harper's, February 2007

For the eighth Dispatx collection we are considering the role of appropriation in creative practice, with a particular focus on the use of developed ideas and theories as a material across different artistic disciplines.

Contemporary artists regularly appeal to theory and philosophy as justification, premise, or point of departure. More recently some artists have begun to incorporate theoretical texts as a material for their work. This treatment of philosophy, as if it were cardboard or paint, questions perceived boundaries and dependencies between theoretical idea and creative practice.

How can theoretical ideation and structure be appropriated by different creative practices? What effect might this have on the development of work or on the creative method in general? Crucially, in what ways can ideas themselves be treated as material substances, rather than as jumping-off points or conceptual armatures, and does this alter their influence and status?

The use of appropriation in this context has little to do with appropriationism as a characteristic of the final work, but rather with the way in which it forms a part of the creative process; in ideas, theories, images, and objects.

Arthur Danto suggests that after the end of art - which up until modernism had been understood as historic - there is a movement towards a different plane: the philosophical. When philosophy and structured ideas form an integral, evident aspect of a given practice, this raises a number of issues about the ways in which both art and theory can do, such that conceiving of clear boundaries between them becomes problematic.

The formalisation of theory as an additional material - in the final work as much as in the creative method - can be envisaged in numerous forms relative to context. It may be systemised or abstracted in its incorporation into an artefact or art object; scientific research or mathematical theory might be integrated into a given practice; different aspects of theoretical language might be grafted into poetry or fictional writing; film theory might end up as a constitutional element of film; theory might be performed. An example of concretization and appropiation in the creative practice, from the many that exist, can be seen in Fellini's work.

In this context it may be useful to consider the creative process as a platform for experimentation in which previously developed ideas are treated simply as another material available to artists. Thomas Hirschhorn is clear as to how he sees the encounter:

I don't have to understand philosophy in general. I am not a connoisseur. I am not a specialist. I am not a theoretician. But I want to confront, fight and be affected by philosophy in general. (taken from an interview with Flash Art in 2004)

Appropriation in Creative Practice questions and analyses the intersection between the potential of creative work and theoretical ideation, underlining different methods of appropriation and assimilation in the process.