NICOLAS BOURRIAUD: POSTPRODUCTION
Postproduction
• Originally a film/TV term referring to editing, adding effects, subtitles, etc.
• In Bourriaud's theory, it means creating art through the reuse, remix, or
recontextualization of existing cultural products.
Since the early 1990s, an increasing number of artworks have been created using preexisting
works or cultural products.
• Artists are more and more frequently interpreting, reproducing, re-exhibiting, or
incorporating works made by others or elements drawn from cultural circulation.
• This mode of creation, called postproduction, responds to the chaotic overload of
global culture in the information age, marked by an abundance of forms and the revival
of those previously ignored or dismissed.
Postproduction artists contribute to the erasure of traditional boundaries between production
and consumption, creation and copy, readymade and original.
• They work not with raw materials but with objects already circulating in the cultural
market—objects already shaped by other objects. In this context, traditional ideas of
originality (being first) and creation (making something from nothing) begin to dissolve.
• The contemporary artist resembles a DJ or a programmer: someone who selects cultural
elements and inserts them into new contexts.
• The remixer replaced the instrumentalist as the primary creative force.
The relationship to culture and the artwork is no longer about reverence or originality, but about
producing new ways to engage with what’s already there.
Typology of postproduction
• Reprogramming existing works
• inhabiting historical styles and forms
• Image reuse
• Using society as a catalogue of forms
• Investing in fashion and media
o All these artistic practices, although different in style and execution, share a
fundamental reliance on already existing forms.
o They reflect a deliberate choice to place art within a larger network of meanings
and signs, rather than treating it as something self-contained or wholly original.
o The focus has shifted away from the notion of creating from a blank slate;
instead, it’s about finding a way to position one’s work within the constant and
overwhelming flow of cultural production.
“Things and thoughts grow out from the middle,” and that’s where artists must begin—not from
origin, but from within. The central artistic question today is no longer “What can we make that
is new?” but “What can we do with what we already have?”
In a world overflowing with products, pre-existing images, constructed spaces, and well-worn
narratives, art becomes less about originality and more about reconfiguration. The art field—
along with media, cinema, and literature—is no longer seen as a sacred archive of
masterpieces to be referenced or surpassed, but as a set of available tools and materials,
waiting to be activated.
Viewer is no longer simply a passive recipient, but a potential co-author. In the
postproduction paradigm, meaning is not fixed by the artist’s original intention—it is generated
dynamically through use, interpretation, and recombination. The artwork becomes a starting
point, not an endpoint; a trigger for interaction rather than a closed statement.
• artwork functions like a script- can be interpreted differently by each "reader" or
participant.
• This breaks down the traditional division between artist and audience, between
production and reception, reinforcing the idea that culture is a collective, ever-evolving
process.
Semionaut - A “sign-navigator”: an artist who creates new paths through existing signs,
forms, and meanings.
• Every artwork becomes part of a chain, a node in a system of shared references, images,
and forms. It offers not a singular message, but a framework that others can inhabit,
modify, and extend.
The distinction between artists who work with already existing objects and those who create
from scratch echoes a broader historical and philosophical divide, as identified by Karl Marx in
The German Ideology.
• Marx differentiates between working with nature’s raw materials and working with the
products of prior labor—tools already shaped by civilization.
• In the latter case, creation is no longer purely about transformation of raw substance,
but about engaging with materials that already carry meaning, context, and labor
history.
• This idea extends to art: the moment Duchamp exhibited a bottle rack as a work of art in
1914, he introduced industrial, mass-produced objects into the realm of fine art. He
also repositioned the artist, making them less a “maker” and more a selector, similar to
a merchant circulating goods.
For Duchamp—as for Marx—consumption is not a passive act but a mode of production.
Meaning arises not merely from the fabrication of an object, but from its use. A dress is only
really a dress when worn; a house becomes a house only when inhabited. In this sense, the
readymade doesn’t diminish the creative act, but shifts its focus—from the hands-on crafting of
an object to the conceptual gesture of choosing, framing, and inserting it into new meaning
structures. The readymade collapses the boundary between choosing and making, consuming
and producing—an idea that challenges both the romantic ideal of the artist-genius and labor-
based ideologies of value.
Duchamp shifted the definition of art from an act of manual skill to one of conceptual
recontextualization.
• Choosing an object and placing it in a new scenario became as much a creative act as
painting or sculpting.
• The object becomes a character in a narrative, and creation becomes a matter of
projection, not fabrication.
This logic continued through 20th-century art in different ways. A key distinction arises between
European New Realism and American Pop Art. The New Realists (like Arman, César, and
Spoerri) were fascinated with the residue of consumption—garbage, scraps, used products—
treated as anonymous traces of collective behavior. In contrast, Pop artists like Warhol,
Rosenquist, and Oldenburg focused on the mechanisms of desire and acquisition. They
scrutinized the visual language of marketing and the forces that shape individual consumer
decisions.
• Pop Art explored exchange value and personal consumption
o artwork was a pure product—less a reflection of personal expression and more a
mirror of social desire ("I buy, therefore I am.")
o Sherrie Levine rephotographed or copied existing works by artists like Walker
Evans and Degas, destabilizing ideas of originality and ownership.
o Jeff Koons combined kitsch imagery, corporate aesthetics, and luxury
presentation—displaying basketballs suspended in water or shiny balloon-like
sculptures that seemed both playful and inaccessible.
• New Realism emphasized use value and collective experience
o For example, “poster artists” like Raymond Hains collected torn advertising
posters from city walls and presented them as art, positioning the urban
environment itself as an author.
Koons explains that in his view, objects in Western capitalist culture function as rewards and
support systems for self-identity. His art acknowledges that we define ourselves through what
we acquire.
• we desire what is well-displayed, what others desire. Presentation becomes everything.
