Networked Economies: Six Degrees of Boggs

Abstract

Just as Baudelaire invented an image of originality in, and out of, the world of infinite copies, J. S. G. Boggs produces original works using the means of multiple copies. The milieu of the mass market, demanding multiple copies, changes the role of artisanal crafts. When Walter Benjamin wrote that Baudelaire "stood in uninterrupted contact with the market" by using defamation and counterfeiting as strategies, he opened the door to studying markets and economies as grist for poetic experiments. Baudelaire was "perhaps the first to conceive of an originality appropriate to the market, which was at the time just for that reason more original than any other: to invent a cliché, trivial piece of work"(Benjamin Central Park 37). Rather than simply eliminating the artisan's craft, the mass market may paradoxically create a new context for individual expression -- except now the market itself becomes the sociopoetic canvas. When aesthetic and poetic decisions embodied in artworks lead to a heightened or changed social situation, then one needs to describe these forms as sociopoetic rather than as artworks within particular social contexts. The social situation is part of a sociopoetic experiment.