"The origin of copies"is the title of the end product of research in which influences of the french philosopher Jean Beaudrillard where the main concept. The work is based on a sentence I found in a book on Beaudrillard by William Stearns and William Chloupka. The book was a result of the conference"Modern Communication and the Disappearence of Art and Politics"in Missoula,Montana.

"Disappearence of Art and Politics" is a great book in which Beaudrilard is challenged to defend his theories on U.S society published in Beaudrilards"Amerique" in front of a critical audience of academic specialists.

The sentence is as follows:

"The viral spread of "copies of copies without originals" may be devastating to"history"and the authenticity, but it is not without it's own(seemingly irresistible)energetic appeal"

For me this sentence clarified many developments in the visual arts and music alike,in which repetittion of information is basicaly the material you work with.

During the Nineties "my material' consisted of "the image bearers of modern time".

A4 and A3 copy paper on which images photographed from televisionscreens where xeroxed.

The images consisted mainly of soap opera stars in close up and daily news accompanied by English"subtitels"(Dutch television is subtiteled)

Then the paper was glued in a repetitive fashion on canvas which had the relative size of a television screen. Next step in the proces would be colouring the paper and painting selected images in a painterly fashion on the canvas as if to proclaim individuality over massmedia production.( yes! I will show you these paintings some day soon)

The painting above is in fact the last painting in this series and as you can see the soap and news images have changed into arrows giving certain velocity and direction to the image.

As the title suggests the influence of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species is translated into the realm of represenation and put in the universal setting of a"Big Bang" symbolising the ever expanding universe.

In this case the question has to be"in near future,will we be able at all, to distinguise the original from the copy,the real from the false or the truth from the lie?"