Essay

Oliver Laric’s Versions, 2010, is a video essay that muses on the manipulation and [re-appropriation] of images throughout history.

[re-appropriation]
Laric offers–through the text, but also through a carefully orchestrated succession of found images and clips–that no image, icon, or thing can be singular. Each is haunted by another version of itself, or by something else entirely.

Versions (2010) is the second of [three] official versions of this essay, and forms part of a larger project that includes “a series of sculptures, airbrushed images of missiles, a talk, a PDF, a song, a novel, a recipe, a play, a dance routine, a feature film and merchandise.” All of these components come together to create a meta-exploration of the topics raised therein: the relationship between copy and original, authorship, piracy, and reuse. Ultimately, Versions is a celebration of visual culture as a collective, social project, historically and in the internet-enabled present.

[three]
From 2009-2012, Laric produced three iterations of the video essay Versions (2009), Versions (2010), and Versions (2012).