Détournement

My actual reading responses will follow soon, but in all the preliminary background reading about social practice I’ve been doing I came across a relevant term term that got me thinking: Détournement. This is the practice of directly referencing an earlier artwork, political item or other piece of media in a new creation. Using mimicry enables the creator to target a specific audience and zoom in on a specific idea, maybe creating a pun, a satire or an ironic situation of the original work. So now I know that this is called.

Everything we do as designers (and people) builds off of what came before, and this project is no different. We need to be very aware of the references we plan to make, and who will actually be able to ‘get’ our message. I feel that ideally for this project we should be trying to cast a wide a net and effect as many people as possible, and so we should be be paying close attention to any Détournement-esq elements we include in our project. On the other hand, including or even basing a project on a Détournement could be very interesting. (for example using a dated reference: only people of one generation might understand the cue and then respond. And another age group might respond to the same reference in a different, also interesting way)