This is Not Stealing from Magritte
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Friday, March 16, 2012
Imagine....
Kenneth Goldsmith, founding editor of UBUWEB, asks us to imagine a world without copyright. It's a startling proposition, if not to say perturbing. Is this a John Lennon kind of imagining? Well, sort of. There's no mention of peace, religion, nations or even possessions, beyond intellectual "property". Neil Young in a performance of the song corrected Lennon's lyric by singing, "I wonder if I can" - "I" in place of Lennon's "you". For sure, my head is not nearly big enough to imagine all of the ramifications and implications of such a proposal. Yet, strangely enough, I find it just a little less difficult to imagine Lennon's proposal than Goldsmith's. True, should Lennon's scenario come to pass so would Goldsmith's; it would naturally follow. But that's just the problem with Goldsmith's proposal. It's the cart before the horse.
I do not vote Libertarian because I do not believe we as a people are ready for the kind of mutual trust such a system would depend upon. An author I admire once wrote, "what difference does it make who is speaking?" and I appreciate the question. There have been cultures in the past that existed for generations in which artists labored anonymously, and the world could produce such a culture again. Yet the world that produced the art championed by UBUWEB also championed the individual. Without the modern individual, as we understand it, none of that art would exist. I find it very difficult to imagine a world that produces such art without due consideration given to the people who made that art. Not that copyright is the best answer we can come up with, but that an individual asserting him or herself is, like it or not, at the heart of the way we make art. Yes, I know that Goldsmith says the art on UBUWEB "function[s] outside of normative capitalist modes, their value being more aesthetic & more historical rather than economic", but there's no such thing as an artwork that cannot be bought and sold. Whether they should or not is another question entirely.
Imagine a world in which this is not the case. Imagine artists producing their best because it is a value in itself, and others happy to accept these gifts, as well as give their own, yet without any sense of ownership whatsoever attached to them. And imagine people not being valued because of the gifts they bring, but simply for being. This is the truly radical idea. Let he who calls for abolishing copyright be the first one to give away his work anonymously.
As for me, I confess to the weakness of wanting to be admired for my work. And so, until I have the courage (or whatever it takes) to surpass this, I will not reject the process of copyright or the attempts artists make to exchange their work for bread.
Unfortunately these extreme statements obscure the more immediate and difficult matter of the shifting perception of what it means to share on the internet. That's the mess we are in right now, and I'm sorry to end on such a note, but this post has gone on long enough. To be continued....
Tuesday, August 14, 2012:
I'm adding links to a couple of audio statements by Goldsmith that I've listened to today, not because they resolve anything in my mind, but in order to represent Goldsmith's position as fully and fairly as I can. In this brief clip Goldsmith explains that he very much supports the efforts of artists to make money. In This one, which is about an hour long, Goldsmith describes his particular psychology as a collector and defines UBUWEB as a collection.
Goldsmith's contradictions are on full display in these recordings. On the one hand he wants artists to make money, and yet he can't help but make statements such as, "If you don't deal with money you can actually enact utopia." He is referring to the fact that everything on UBUWEB is free, that he neither accepts nor asks for money. As he explains in the recordings, the items on UBUWEB are obscure and as soon as any of them go back into print he takes them down from the site. As I pointed out in the comments section, he offers his own books for sale, but as of now the paperback version of his latest book is relatively inexpensive through Amazon. He deserves to try and make money from it, yet his own logic also suggests that he give up electronic versions of the book. For that matter, he suggests that he would not be troubled by a world without physical books. In short, it's not easy to navigate the apparent contradictions of Goldsmith's point of view with regard to sharing, publishing, educating and selling. Indeed he would happily consider selling UBUWEB to "an institution." If this were to happen I hope the site wouldn't become like MOMA's site, which Goldsmith rightfully criticizes.
For the record, I have been enjoying UBUWEB for a long time and by pointing out Goldsmith's contradictions I don't mean to obscure my own, but in looking to him, I don't see a way out of them.
I do not vote Libertarian because I do not believe we as a people are ready for the kind of mutual trust such a system would depend upon. An author I admire once wrote, "what difference does it make who is speaking?" and I appreciate the question. There have been cultures in the past that existed for generations in which artists labored anonymously, and the world could produce such a culture again. Yet the world that produced the art championed by UBUWEB also championed the individual. Without the modern individual, as we understand it, none of that art would exist. I find it very difficult to imagine a world that produces such art without due consideration given to the people who made that art. Not that copyright is the best answer we can come up with, but that an individual asserting him or herself is, like it or not, at the heart of the way we make art. Yes, I know that Goldsmith says the art on UBUWEB "function[s] outside of normative capitalist modes, their value being more aesthetic & more historical rather than economic", but there's no such thing as an artwork that cannot be bought and sold. Whether they should or not is another question entirely.
Imagine a world in which this is not the case. Imagine artists producing their best because it is a value in itself, and others happy to accept these gifts, as well as give their own, yet without any sense of ownership whatsoever attached to them. And imagine people not being valued because of the gifts they bring, but simply for being. This is the truly radical idea. Let he who calls for abolishing copyright be the first one to give away his work anonymously.
As for me, I confess to the weakness of wanting to be admired for my work. And so, until I have the courage (or whatever it takes) to surpass this, I will not reject the process of copyright or the attempts artists make to exchange their work for bread.
Unfortunately these extreme statements obscure the more immediate and difficult matter of the shifting perception of what it means to share on the internet. That's the mess we are in right now, and I'm sorry to end on such a note, but this post has gone on long enough. To be continued....
Tuesday, August 14, 2012:
I'm adding links to a couple of audio statements by Goldsmith that I've listened to today, not because they resolve anything in my mind, but in order to represent Goldsmith's position as fully and fairly as I can. In this brief clip Goldsmith explains that he very much supports the efforts of artists to make money. In This one, which is about an hour long, Goldsmith describes his particular psychology as a collector and defines UBUWEB as a collection.
Goldsmith's contradictions are on full display in these recordings. On the one hand he wants artists to make money, and yet he can't help but make statements such as, "If you don't deal with money you can actually enact utopia." He is referring to the fact that everything on UBUWEB is free, that he neither accepts nor asks for money. As he explains in the recordings, the items on UBUWEB are obscure and as soon as any of them go back into print he takes them down from the site. As I pointed out in the comments section, he offers his own books for sale, but as of now the paperback version of his latest book is relatively inexpensive through Amazon. He deserves to try and make money from it, yet his own logic also suggests that he give up electronic versions of the book. For that matter, he suggests that he would not be troubled by a world without physical books. In short, it's not easy to navigate the apparent contradictions of Goldsmith's point of view with regard to sharing, publishing, educating and selling. Indeed he would happily consider selling UBUWEB to "an institution." If this were to happen I hope the site wouldn't become like MOMA's site, which Goldsmith rightfully criticizes.
For the record, I have been enjoying UBUWEB for a long time and by pointing out Goldsmith's contradictions I don't mean to obscure my own, but in looking to him, I don't see a way out of them.
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