Sampling and Site-Specific Practice in Contemporary Art

Margot Bouman (The New School, New York, USA)

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English

Bloomsbury Visual Arts
26 June 2025

Theory of art; Installation art; Electronic, holographic & video art; Media studies; Digital lifestyle

In the early 20th century, copying, cutting and pasting entered the Western European avant-garde through collage and readymades, as artists employed found objects and ephemera to create new meaning from existing materials.

This book explores how this practice has evolved in contemporary art today, looking at its important and distinct outcomes in the practice of artists such as Andrea Fraser, Douglas Gordon, Isaac Julien, Christian Marclay, Amie Siegel and Christopher Williams. It analyses the pivotal consequences of the interrelationships these artists establish between fragments of culture, from television and film, to internet culture and their artwork’s site, where the verb to ""sample"" has become deeply tied to digital music editing, writing, image production, database searches and social media.

Samples take many forms: quotations of other cultural works; replicas of other objects; reenactments of works by other artists; or fragments that are quite literally cut or removed from other works of art, design, or media. Via Bouman’s analysis, we visualise the shared frameworks of meaning that underpin these multifaceted, multidimensional and medium-fluid works. Focussing on ‘action’ and ‘form’, the book discusses the relationship between the referent and reference, and the citational labor that any sample performs. The distributive sense of authorship that emerges places the audience in a new position of significance.

Concepts and themes discussed include: queer and race theory, postproduction and mirroring, mobile site specificity, now-time and dragging, and gender fluidity and Drag King performance, centring sampling as a key form of 21st-century art. With novel insights into the conceptual, material, and aesthetic dimensions of sampling in contemporary culture, the book provides a new critical framework for understanding the complex implications of this practice, as a vital resource for researchers in contemporary art practice and visual culture.

By: Margot Bouman (The New School New York USA)
Imprint: Bloomsbury Visual Arts
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 236mm, Width: 160mm, Spine: 18mm
Weight: 580g
ISBN: 9781350114562
ISBN 10: 1350114561
Pages: 216
Publication Date: 26 June 2025
Audience: College/higher education , Primary
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Margot Bouman is Assistant Professor of Visual Culture at The New School, New York, USA and founding director of the B.F.A. in Design History and Practice offered at Parsons School of Design, New York, USA.

Reviews for Sampling and Site-Specific Practice in Contemporary Art

An essential text for the scholar and advanced student of postmodern art and cinema studies, as well as any reader interested in the ways sexual, racial, and gender identity are reflected in and challenged by cultural production. Bouman’s lucid, engaging style is a gift to the reader, and the intriguing, fully developed conclusions she comes to will be a major inspiration the next generation of scholars attending to visual culture. * Daniel Humphrey, Professor of Film and Media Studies, Texas A&M University, USA * By looking at significant works of contemporary multimedia art, from video installation, to photography and performance, Bouman’s exegesis highlights the fluidity of time, epistemology, masculinity, queerness, race, gender and feminism in sample-based practices. * Kitty Scott, Strategic Director, Shorefast and Fogo Island Arts, Canada * This book offers a refreshing and insightful exploration of sampling and site-specificity in 21st century artistic production. Nimbly analyzing works that bridge historical referents and present-day contexts, Bouman illuminates the complex interplay between postproduction techniques, phenomenological experience, and institutional critique in video and installation art. * Kate Mondloch, Professor of History of Art and Architecture, University of Oregon, USA *