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We don't need word pastiche or appropriation anymore because we invented the word "research" which allows influence to become a value-added in PR fodder. Recycled material is now green-washed as "investigation" and we purchase a brown product because of it. Begin to prefer the brown recycled product as nostalgia, as the fan-service and reference-bait of reboots which provide franchise fans with back-patting. The products' comfortization toward viewers becomes congratulatory prize: "I understood that reference." Our nostalgia becomes legitimated. The candy of easter eggs thus becomes a packaged and sold as the whole meal. In art this recycling gets reframed as connoisseurship, knowledge, a one-sided forcible "collaboration" with the past. With "overlooked" histories. The recycling machine is the same. In the cargo-cult era, the detritus of the world is a shopping mall, hang these references like jewelry around your neck. And these are good sculptures.
