Today something exciting and out of the ordinary, but not entirely
unexpected happened. Today not one but two different people created
appropriations of my two new sites AfterWalkerEvans.com and
AfterSherrieLevine.com. First I received a press release from Badur
Ramji informing me of his site AfterMichaelMandiberg which is up at
http://www.scream.ca. He saw a review on wired
(http://www.wirednews.com/news/culture/0,1284,43902,00.html) and his
response was to build his site, to ask "Should digital expressionism
also be an open source platform?" His site uses a screen shot of
AfterWalkerEvans.com as its image, and has a compressed zip archive of
the entirety of both of my two sites for download and posting.

Next, I recieved a press release from Kendall Bruns announcing his new
site http://AfterMichaelMandiberg.com. I had previously received an
email notifying me that he purchased the domain name, though at that
time it was undeveloped. Kendall's site takes a slightly different
approach, nearly exactly mirroring my sites, altering only the initial
statement, where he inserts himself into the chain of appropriation.

I think it is totally appropriate, and a lot of fun. I had hoped someone
would come up with a rejoinder of the sort, as the site is somewhat
begging for it. Each repetition creates a new authentic object; each
repetition creates a new fake that is one step more devoid of any
(fallacious) real expression. Each step is one more iteration of this
experiement at the cost of Walker Evans, Sherrie Levine, and now myself.
I place myself with them in all seriousness, and at the same time aware
of how absurd that statement is. This is why I am doing this. To
experience that liminal moment.

Michael,