In the essay Postproduction. Culture as Screenplay: How Art Reprograms the World, French writer and curator Nicolas Bourriaud discusses how, since the early nineties, an ever increasing number of artworks have been created on the basis of preexisting works; more and more artists interpret, reproduce, re-exhibit, or use works made by others or available cultural products.

This art of postproduction seems to respond to the proliferating chaos of global culture in the information age, which is characterized by an increase in the supply of works and the art world’s annexation of forms ignored or disdained until now.

Nicolas Bourriaud was the co-director of the Palais de Tokyo in Paris and an art advisor for the Victor Pinchuk foundation in Kiev. His previous books include L’ère tertiaire (Flammarion), Esthétique relationnelle (Les presses du réel), and Formes de vie (Denoël).

First published 2002. Reprinted with a new preface to the second edition 2005.