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SWWE 2009: The Politics of Cultural Ownership http://swwe.ecla.de/index.html European College of Liberal Arts, Berlin (ECLA) http://www.ecla.de/ ECLA State of the World Week (SWWE) http://www.ecla.de/index.php?id=160
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“Molotov Man”
Art
Internet Culture
&
Intellectual Property
Creativity
Versus
Property
Kinds of Property
Tangible goods
apples
houses
Intellectual Property
expression
ideas
Not protected by copyright:
Ideas, facts
Protected by copyright:
Expression
Legal Limits on Copyright
Fair Use
[Shepard] Fairey's multi-colored Obama gave visual definition to the intangible excitement stirred by the candidate, and soon that face was everywhere. […] the Obama icon propagated itself. Fairey's free distributive model fit well with Obama's bottom-up, technologically-oriented, self-starting organization and base, and Fairey's web traffic spiked as thousands of people downloaded the image, applying it to their own sites and printed materials. A collaboration with a San Francisco street-wear brand called Upper Playground put the image on t-shirts. The Obama campaign commissioned 50,000 copies of an official poster, raising $350,000 for the campaign. Other artists followed suit, creating limited editions under the banner of Artists for Obama.
-- Joshuah Bearman, Modern Painters. http://laweekly.blogs.com/joshuah_bearman/2008/11/about-that-hope-poster.html
February 2009
The Associated Press accuses Shepard Fairey of Copyright Infringement
In response, Fairey and his attorneys bring suit against the Associated Press, asserting that Fairey’s work does not constitute copyright infringement, and that Fairey as well as any other parties in possession of this work, are
protected by the Fair Use Doctrine.
Precedents
Fairey expropriates and recontextualizes artworks of others, primarily propaganda
imagery, from 1920s (Russian Constructivism and Bolshevist posters) to the 1960s (Chinese Socialist Realism and
counter-culture rock posters).
Shepard Fairey’s Method
Traditions of Agitprop Poster Design & Street Art
- Dada in the 1920s- Psychedelia in the 1960s
- The Situationists in the 1970s- Postmodern strategies of the 1980s
including- Appropriation
- Culture Jamming- Adbusting
The legacy of the Che imagery includes
”American Investments in Cuba,” by Patrick Thomas
Collage
The Readymade
Marcel Duchamp established the concept of the readymade with his ceramic urinal “Fountain” (1917);
Earlier in the 1900s, Picasso produced extraordinary collages that incorporated "found" newspaper images.
John Heartfield (1891-1968) was a master of photomontage. A Communist German, he produced montages of appropriated Nazi symbols in order to subvert and undermine their power as propaganda.
“Adolph, the Superman: Swallows Gold and Spouts Junk.” 1932Photomontage
Raoul Hausmann, ABCD, 1923-1924
Dada presents a challenge to art and the Visual. 'Anti-art' movement of the early 20th Century, rebelling against traditional art and consumerist society.
Utilizing new techniques in myriad mediums, jarring juxtapositions, collages, text.
Be young and be quiet (a variation on the more common "Sois belle et tais toi", the classically sexist French version of "Just sit there and look pretty")
Paris ca. 1968
Painting + OPEN SOURCE
an ongoing collaborative
creative cultural
experiment.
Visual Convergences
Pictorial conventions
painting >>> photography
Che Guevera’s corpse (ca. 1967)
Freddy Alborta, Che Guevera’s Death, 1967
Rembrandt : The Anatomy Lesson of Dr NicholaesTulp (1632)
Giovanni Antonio Bazzi “il Sodoma”: Lamentation Over the Dead Christ (1503)
The Lamentation over the Dead Christ by Andrea Mantegna (c.1490)
Painting from Photographs
Painters have been using photographs
and cameras ever since modern photography
came to into existence, and earlier…
"Officer & a Laughing Girl"Vermeer(1657-1659)Frick Collection, NY
Vermeer and other Dutch and Flemish painters of the period used the camera obscura...
"Bathers, Dieppe" 1902Walter Richard Sickert (1860 - 1942) Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, UK
The English Impressionist painter Walter Sickert developed a method of painting scenes of modern life from photographs.
This off-center composition, which features no horizon line, is an immediate, "snap-shot" moment, much like a photograph..
Andy Warhol:
Red Race Riot (1963)
Interview, Greater Boston Arts TV series and website: Artists & Violence (2002)
“I’m nuts on images. I cut them out of books and newspapers, mostly books and magazines. And this is absolutely crucial to me, because this is one of the ways I tap into the world.
“I see the world because it comes to me through media. Through film, through newspapers. Through TV.”
L: Confrontation 1 (Gegenüberstellung 1) (1988) R: Gudrun Ensslin from “October 18, 1977,” based on “ubiquitous photographs” of the Baader-Meinhof.
Gerhard Richter
Kinds of Source Photographs
Declassified US Military Documents
<<<
Public military documents
Television: Night vision / Tracer fire : The First Gulf War (CNN)
Other Sources
News + Documentary Images
The Media Narrative…
Copyright laws are terrible for culture. It's illegal to respond to the imagery that surrounds you; you're bombarded every minute of the day with mass-media sludge. It should be the opposite: Everybody should have to respond to it. This is what should be taught in the public school system. […] All students should be given tape recorders and cameras to constantly record the gray veil that surrounds them, so that they can recognize that it's even there-and manipulate it. Most people are not aware of the white noise they exist in. Tape recording and photography allowed people to become aware of what was invisible to them for the first time. We're surrounded by invisibility. That's what I think art can do -- make things visible.
-- Mike Kelley, Interview with Glenn O’Brien, 2008http://www.interviewmagazine.com/art/mike-kelley/
“Riot”
The Media Narrative: Photojournalism
The photographer’s intentions do not determine the meaning of the photograph, which will have its own career, blown by the whims and loyalties of the diverse communities that have use for it.
— Susan Sontag:
Regarding the Pain of Others (2003)
The new work that is based on, comments on, responds to, and
engages its sources, may recontextualize the original,
discarding and changing some of its information. It neither supersedes, replaces, or denigrates the original.
It’s a separate event.
Furthermore, unlike street art or agitprop, painting does not supply a simple message, or even a complete recontextualization; instead, it invites the viewer to finish the artwork…
“A painting's meaning lies not in its origin, but in its destination. The birth of the viewer must be at the cost of the painter.”
--- Sherrie Levine, 1981
“Riot”
(2003-2004)
Exhibition of Paintings: Joy Garnett, "Riot" at Debs & Co.
New York, NY February 8, 2004 -- Debs & Co. is pleased to present Riot, a series of new paintings by Joy Garnett. Riot will be Ms. Garnett's third solo exhibition at Debs & Co. These new paintings in Riot depict people in emotional distress, the figure in extremity. As in much of Ms. Garnett's previous work, the causes behind the explosive action are generally political in nature. The immediate sources for these acts and images are often taken from newspapers and other media. Her re-casting of these visuals plays with the history of history painting itself.
In Molotov, the artist has painted a monumental figure of a longhaired youth in a black beret throwing a freshly lit Molotov cocktail. The heroically-proportioned figure twists off the frame of the painting, his home-made bomb front and center… Whatever background existed in the original image has been reduced to the blank grayish blue of smoke. The figure, in his moment of action, is removed from his surroundings; the context, cause, time and place, or justice of his actions are irrelevant and not portrayed. […]
Halfway through my show I received an ominous email from an acquaintance…
Susan Meiselas: NICARAGUA, Esteli (1979).
“The purpose of this letter is to inform you that your painting entitled Molotov (hereinafter “the Infringing Image”), which was recently exhibited at your gallery and used as the announcement for the invitation of the exhibit at your gallery and continues, as of this date, to be displayed on the Debs & Co. website, infringes Ms. Meiselas’s federal and state intellectual property rights, principally her exclusive rights of display, reproduction and right to make derivative works under Section 106 of the Act.”
“Whilst one recognizes that artists often pay homage to other artists, copying of this kind constitutes copyright infringement. You are simply sailing under the flag of “piracy”, taking verbatim, protected artistic expression. Under the Act, Ms. Meiselas’s has the right to request that you cease and desist from any further exhibition, display, sale or reproduction of the Infringing Image. Nevertheless, Ms. Meiselas is willing, in this one instance, to forgo her right to an injunction, seizure of the Infringing Image and damages, to permit your creation of a derivative work on acceptance by Debs & Co. and you of the following terms and conditions in writing.”
“Piracy”
?
Online community discussion…
Internet Culture
We are all
producers
As well as
consumers
of culture
Artist Tim Whidden mirrored the image on his own site…
Artist Mark River created a “derivative” work based on Molotov that demonstrated the idea of “mirroring”:
Artist Ryan Griffis declares “Joywar”( a reference to “Toywar” c. 1999)
Jess Loseby
Joseph + Donna McElroyhttp://electrichands.com/shanghai-pepsi.jpg
Michael Szpakowski : Solidarity webpage
Ottokin.com:
Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2004 16:33:22 +0100Re: tshirt
Produce this shirt an fuck the Pepsi!
Bye from ItalyPaolo
“Spook” site
Quicktime movie: “Art not Crime”
Kate Southworth: Pirates of Penzancehttp://www.gloriousninth.com/piratesofpenzance.html
Molotov Remix - consists of a jpg of Joy Garnett's painting "Molotov" sliced into 121 43px X 52px images. Each sliced image is randomly loaded via java script into one of 121 cells of an html table.
Users may click on the "Recompose" link to achieve a new randomly generated recomposition each time. The chances of users hitting upon a perfect realignment of image slices is less than winning the lottery, but just in case I have a "fair use" argument ready.
http://art-design.smsu.edu/cooley/molotov/
mark cooley
Edward Tang: “Molotov Landscapes” created using a custom software in Windows C++ using Visual C++ .NET and OpenGL for graphics.http://antiexperience.com
Pau Waelder: http://www.sicplacitum.com/arte/molotov.htm
“Culture is made of objects, expressions, stories, gestures, etc. that MUST be repeatable (and repeated) in various situations - precisely to create an identity to be held in common. …it is through this process of repetition that a group's consensus of history and identity is created.
“Culture is composed of copies that we as a society share and subsequently hold in common - and that fundamentally bind us together. (We ALL copy without authorization all the time - that is called memory. Technology extends its perception and there is no 'self' without it.)”
-- David Clarkson, artist, NYC (2009)
The End
