Review: Illegal Art

An anonymous reader writes "I just got back from the Chicago opening of Illegal Art, Freedom of Expression in the Corporate Age, January 25 - February 21 (See the website for location, film screening dates, and information on the panel debate featuring Lawrence Lessig) and quite enjoyed myself." The anonymous review follows.

The reader continues:

The exhibit is of artwork on the legal fringes of intellectual property, litigation clouds loom over many of the pieces. (Buy now! This is a limited time offer! ;-) Even to an artistic ignoramus such as myself, it's clear the exhibit contains classic works of the genre. In this category are such items as the "Disneyland Memorial Orgy" (Poster, 1967) by the Mad Magazine artist Wally Wood, and the trademark certificate which certifies Professor Kembrew McLeod's ownership of the phrase "Freedom of Expression" (Conceptual, 1998). I also particularly enjoyed the finely detailed Spiderman quilt (Untitled) (Commercial fabric and recycled materials, 2002) by Ai Kijima and the counterfeit postage stamps, including "Prozac" (Computer generated laser print, 1996), of Michael Hernandez de Luna. De Luna creates stamps good enough to fool postal workers, as attested to by successfully delivered letters complete with postmarks. (Sorry, I cannot find any contact info for this Chicago artist on the web.)

An exhibition like this is innately political and nowhere is this more apparent than in the exhibition's video accompaniment, much of which is strongly anti-war and anti-corporate. Like the visual artwork, the borderline legality of the video work is due to its appropriation of corporate trademarks and sampling of copyrighted work. What makes it interesting as well as sometimes funny, regardless of your politics, is how the material reveals the manipulative techniques of everyday media and thereby turns the content against its owners. The very strength of the alternative message the videos present is often due to the strength of the original images.

Audio works are also included in the exhibit but I have not had the time to sample the wares.

Those who can't physically visit the exhibition in Chicago can experience many of the works via the Illegal Art web site. Video, audio, and visual art is available for download. A number of works have been added to the exhibit since it has come from New York. Images of the Chicago artists' work should be added to the web site as soon as the organizers get around to it. FWIW, rumor has the exhibit traveling to San Francisco.

Comments

My favorite

[Tuxinatorium]

The ascii-art version of the CSS-auth code: http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/DeCSS/Gallery/Pooshee bla-dvd.html

I wonder...

[FyRE666]

What would happen if I copied their site and put it online on a Geocities page? Think they'd sue?

"Counterfeit" pound notes

[pchown]

Here in Britain, we had an artist who drew pound notes. He wasn't forging them in the sense that he was going to pass them off as originals. His work is difficult to pin down; it is part parody but he is also improving the originals.

What would happen is that the artist, Boggs, would go into a shop and ask to buy something. He would try to convince the person at the checkout to accept a Boggs note rather than a normal one. So, he might offer you a £5 Boggs note in exchange for £5 worth of goods. If you felt that his art was worth £5, you would accept.

If you did accept, you were about to become very rich. He would tip off the people who collected his art that a note had been "spent", and the lucky shop assistant would be offered thousands of pounds for the note.

Of course, Boggs was charged with counterfeiting currency, because the people who govern us don't have a sense of humour. In due course Boggs appeared in court, represented by pro bono counsel. It seems that Boggs offered to paint his fee, but, not wanting to get struck off, his lawyer said that he would rather work for free!

After one of the most wacky trials I can remember, the jury voted to let Boggs off. In the process, the government made Boggs rich; thousands more people heard about his art, and the price went through the roof.

Shortly afterwards, the British currency had one of its periodic redesigns. The banknotes had changed to include a claim of copyright. Presumably the government wants to be able to get an injunction against any future Boggs, rather than taking its chance in front of a jury.

Re:"Counterfeit" pound notes

[Patrick13]

There was a PBS program about Boggs during a visit the US. If you can see it, it is definitely worth seeing.

There are some examples of his work, interview transcript and whatnot.

Re:"Counterfeit" pound notes

[swb]

I don't remember him being British or doing it with Pound notes, but there was a fairly long New Yorker article about his run-ins with the US Dept. of Treasury for doing the same thing with the dollar notes. Essentially making his own money and bartering for goods and services with it.

If I remember right, the long-haired speculation was that the Treasury wasn't keen on this not so much because of the counterfeiting aspect of it but because they're more afraid of people using something other than dollars as a medium of exchange.

I'm not sure what the law is about this. Is it specifically illegal for me to print up a 10,000 Flugelbucks and then convince everyone in my community that they should accept and use my Flugelbucks as a form of payment?

I'm not even sure what the tax ramifications are of this. I suppose you're supposed to keep track of even direct barter (painting for plumbing) transactions above a certain amount -- but what if I start say painting houses and have only *ever* done it for Flugelbucks? If I do all of my other transactions in them, how do I know what the dollar value of the transactions is?

It's kind of surreal path and I can understand where it would give people who like to keep economic transactions in neat and tidy dollar amounts a big headache.

Re:"Counterfeit" pound notes

[evilquaker]

I'm not sure what the law is about this. Is it specifically illegal for me to print up a 10,000 Flugelbucks and then convince everyone in my community that they should accept and use my Flugelbucks as a form of payment?

I doubt it, considering that some cities print their own money: Ithaca, NY most notably.

I'm not even sure what the tax ramifications are of this... If I do all of my other transactions in them [Flugelbucks], how do I know what the dollar value of the transactions is?

Most likely the "fair market value" in dollars would be applied. If you're painting houses, then you have to ask: what would someone else charge in dollars for this? Now, if you can find a service that no one else can/does provide, then maybe you've found a tax loophole that can be exploited... (but probably not, because IANATA)

zine with companion articles

[urbazewski]

This month's issue of the 'zine stay free! has companion articles and a CD with some of the pieces in/related to the exhibit, like negativland's U2 radio mix and sampled tracks from De La Soul and the Beastie Boys. I'm looking forward to seeing the exhibit in Chicago.

The opening was off the hook

[Anonymous Coward]

.. . I dropped into the this place (western on the blue line, 2040 north milwaulkee upstairs, in the In These Times magazine office.)

The show is off the hook. There is some video pastiche and collage from the first gulf war that was on GNN (www.gnn.tv?) that is amazing and oddly precient for what is going on now, what is about to happen yet again.

They were asking for donations for the wine, but weren't pushy about it. Thusly, the wine ended up being resonably priced and quite good. It started to snow around 7pm or so, and I didn't get there till after six, so I didn't hear the opening speach (which was quite good, I heard).

I'm so glad this came to Chicago, I'd seen the NY announcement and thought it bad ass. This show rules, and the SF MOMA should definitely try to scope it (it plays to the SF Moma strength of design) for a west coast engagement.

But mostly, this stuff should be on-line. Somebody should take a good ditital camera and make some higer-res photos of the show and do a real on-line catalog, the low-res shit on the current site doesn't do it justice.

They were giving out this CD of music that looked good (and soon to be MP3'd) that says: "Not for Sale: Stay FREE! 003"

Ha. Right on. Also, it has an Invisibl Skratch Piklz track on it (also in CDDB as Various Artist Illegal Art): finally a free giveaway cd that doesn't suck. De La Soul track, Beasties, ubiquitous Negativeland "U2" track, hopefully some punk: tracks like "the JAMS - the Queen and I" sound kind of punk-rock, don't they?

Re:The opening was off the hook

[SirSlud]

Good sounding CD. I thought I'd expand on the appropriateness of some of those artsts:

Invisbl Skratch Piklz - turntablist group that uses presumably copywritten recordings, deconstructing and reconstructing COMPLETETLY original music from prerecorded vinyl records.

De La Soul - first rap group involved in sample-litigation for a sample they used from some Turtles (I think) song. Top 40 R&B Rap today is very canned, and rarely self-referential .. producers today obscure source samples as to not get caught using them, or create much of their sound from the ground up. Not that theres anything wrong with it, but De La ended up being the poster child for a persecuted movement in the progression of music. (Interested parties may also note that classical music greats would 'borrow' 3 or 4 bar melodies from each other verbatim .. what De La Soul got sued for has been happening, safely and positively, between musicians for centuries. Too bad the lawyers dont get it.)

Negativeland - I _think_ they coined the term "Culture Jamming" ..

Just felt like I should point out why these groups would be involved in an exhibit like this.

Re:For the most part, looks like the exhibit sucks

[SirSlud]

Art can be purely asthetic, or it can be a message. Anything can be art.

If you copied all your CDs, and called it art, poof! Its art!

Whether is good art, or not, thats for you to decide. You didn't like it, good stuff.

But art is a message (in this case) .. if you copied your CDs and put them on display, then its art. And think about it .. if you copy all your music (illegal) and put them on display (ie, youre not ripping the artist off because youre not even listning to their product, youre just making a point) .. why should that be illegal?

I think thats the message there .. by putting the CDs on display, they cease being usable for their intended purpose, and become art - but, for reasons other than keeping artists from making free "CD Collection Exibits", its illegal to do that, and the point is made! The message is the irony that its illegal to copy information if you dont use that information in such a fasion that the original creator of the information should be compensated. Presumably, he could have copied anyones CDs .. the actual product (the music) is being completetly disregarded in this case, so no artist should get paid .. youre left wondering if this piece of illegal art, should, in fact be illegal.

So who cares if its good or not .. should it be illegal to create art by copying data off of CDs, when the infomation on those CDs is never used by the purchaser? Should the purchaser owe the musicians on the CDs money for using their creations to make a statement .. should we not consider the context in which the information is being used before the law states that copying that information is illegal? Is this fair use? Etc, etc ...

Re:unpublished CD

[certron]

"I read about someone who had made an entire CD from sampled works, and then couldn't get anyone to publish it. I haven't been able to find anything else on it, and couldn't pull it up again later on. I *think* it was called "Nothing to Fear" but I can't be certain.

Also, the U2 song that negativland sampled, or whatever, was recalled and all copies they could find were destroyed. It isn't about art, it is about how much money can you afford to pay to copy other works. It is a little nutty, if you really think about it."

well, now I know what happens when you moderate and then post, even as AC... :-)

What I was trying to say is, has anyone else heard of this CD, knows any more information, and/or where it can be bought?

Re:For the most part, looks like the exhibit sucks

[SirSlud]

Oh come now. Equating art with effort is rediculous. Art is art, buddy, and its okay that you didnt like the CDs. But by virtue of the artist calling it art, its art.

Feel free to make your own, work as hard as you like on it, but dont expect people to honestly critique your work based on the effort you put into it. By your measure, you should be the most famous artist in the world, regardless of artistic ability, so long as you work 20 hours more than the next best artist.

The asthetic, the message, .. there are tons of qualities you can analyse in art.

And how you can spin a 6th grade project into a case for what is art - uh .. no comment :)

I think your reaction is natural tho; imagine how many people should feel upset at whoever wrote the song "Happy Birthday" .. its such a simple song, it seems like anyone could come up with it. The point is, nobody did until the composer did. So the composer deserves the credit (like the artist for the CD piece) for recognizing that something so simple could still become a point of conversation, of thought, for other people.

Art isnt a meritocracy - in line with the definition, by working against nature, art is made to escape any value judgement you can place on it by quantitative analysis (how big is it, how long did it take to make) alone.

I think your questions are valid, but you'd have a very difficult time convincing anybody remotely affiliated with the artistic community that art can be discounted as being such based soley on the effort that went into it. More effort goes into producing , in terms of how many people worked on it, for how long, etc. So now is some shitty blockbuster that took 500 people 3 years to make better than, the mona lisa, which only took one guy a few months to make in the comfort of his own home? Of course not.

(I should point out that I didnt agree with the troll mod.)

Here's an "illegal" web site

[release7]

An organization I'm familiar with, the Anti-Displacement Project, created an "illegal" parody of a large corporation called Labor Ready. They claim the logo on the site infringes on their trademark. You can see the logo at www.slaverready.com. Labor Ready is now suing them.

The logo is clearly not an infringement of copyright or trademark. First, it is protected under the First Amendment because it is a parody. Also, it's being used in non-commerical way to criticize a company, which of course is also protected speech. Third, no one would ever confuse our site with Labor Ready's so it does not infringe on their trademark. What's more, the parody logo only vaguely resembles the company's official logo.

This is just another way corporations get to push around the little guy. They have the resources at their disposal to try to scare and intimidate this organization into shutting up or else face the prospect financial ruin trying to put a fight.