Concert photos by Urania Mylonas
Food chain Barbie photo by Tom Forsythe
| | Mark Hosler |
"Illegal art?" John Filker, a New York-based
photographer and painter grew incredulous when asked what he thought about using someone else's work without permission. "It's wrong! You can't
just copy someone else's work and then add your name
to it! You can't use another artist's images or other
work without their approval. That's not right." But
when asked about using corporate images or sounds
illegally, his response was far different. "Oh, well
it's OK to fuck with corporations, it's not like a
corporation is an artist" he said.
Even an employee
for a large advertising agency in New York City, who
works in the art department (but didn't want her name
or firm to be disclosed), didn't seem to mind that the
Illegal Art Festival, which had its New York run from
November 13 to December 6, and was organized by Stay
Free! magazine, was
making use of some of the corporate images that her
company might have made. "This sounds like great
fun," she said. "I'm tired of large restaurant chains using my
good work. Let someone else use it and turn it into
real art!"
| | Christian Marclay |
So is stealing from the "big guys" OK? Is it fine to
make art out of corporately owned culture? Or someone else's work? Artists
like Mark Hosler of the audio-collage group
Negativland would tell you it is OK. He might even say
that it's not stealing, that it's "transformative
re-use," as he called it in a recent lecture at
Anthology Film Archives. Using fragments of one thing to
create another, potentially more interesting, work is a part
of artistic freedom and shouldn't be silenced, Hosler
said. What the Illegal Art Fest is exploring is the
illegal use of images or sounds; mostly corporate or
at least owned by corporations like record labels, toy companies and
other media giants, and how they are being
reinterpreted by artists.
In a society where creativity is to be rewarded but free and
open access to ideas -- from music to journalism to art --
allowed, a conflict can arise, leaving lawyers to sort out questions of ownership and compensation. What are the copyright issues and who do
copyrights really protect anyway? And, in the case of
illegal use of images or sounds, who is actually
getting hurt by the copyright laws?
At a recent short film showing at Anthology Film
Archives, Hosler presented
some (very) illegal short films he and the other
members of Negativland made for some of their recordings. The screenings included a short called Gimme the
Mermaid, which was made with help from Disney
animator Tim Maloney, who created the film using Disney's
equipment after hours. Mermaid combines the sound of
a music industry lawyer with the voice of the Little
Mermaid and Negativland's cover of Black Flag's "Gimme
Gimme Gimme," Former Black Flag guitarist Greg Ginn was
part owner of SST Records, the label that tried
to force Negativland to pay the entire legal costs
associated with a lawsuit brought on by Island Records
regarding illegal use of a song by Irish megastars U2, which almost broke
the band financially.
The U2 piece also included unauthorized a recording of Casey Kasem, a bootlegged outtakes from his American Top 40 show in which, during a dedication to a dead dog called
"Snuggles," he cursed the sound engineer and insulted the band U2, saying, "these guys are from
England and who gives a shit?" The piece -- featuring manipulated and deconstructed segments of the U2 song "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" -- was called "U2: Special Edit Radio Mix" and included on
of Negativland's album "Negativland: U2," an album
that U2's label,
Island Records, thought looked a little too much like
an actual U2 album since the letter "U" and the
numeral "2" were featured far more prominently than
Negativland's name. The 15-minute long album had
barely been arrived in stores when Island Records
slapped the group and SST with a
lawsuit. And
while Kasem didn't file a lawsuit, he and his lawyers
did threaten Negativland with one if they tried to
release the track again or in any way
use the unauthorized outtakes of Kasem from the show.
This move may have seemed hypocritical, however. While
being interviewed during a concert that was part of a protest
against nuclear weapons testing outside Las Vegas in
1992, Kasem was asked about the Negativland record, and he wasn't going to take action against the band and that he was against censorship.
"No, I'm not
going to complain about it, it's a free country and we
have the First Amendment, so...no problem," he said. "I'm against
censorship of any kind...Nobody should be censored."Negativland chronicled the
saga in their book Fair Use: The Story of the Letter
U and the Numeral 2.
Legal actions aside, the song was one of the first, and certainly one of the most prominent, of a wave of art that steps on the toes of copyright control.
At CB's 313 Gallery in New York City, artists and photographers made creative use of corporately owned imagery. One of them, Tom Forsythe, stuffed the beloved Barbie doll in a blender and a martini glass and messed up her hair for
good measure in his series of photographs entitled
Food Chain Barbie. Forsythe received a letter from
Mattel claiming the series of images he had
posted on his Web site infringed on its
copyright and trademark. Forsythe wasn't making
any money from the images and decided to fight the
case with help from the ACLU. A federal court ruled in
favor of Forsythe and Mattel immediately appealed. A
decision is pending in May, 2003. Freedom of expression
is OK, but don't mess with Barbie.
Canadian copyright laws are even stricter than in the
US and while our neighbors to the North enjoy other freedoms, fair play, the Canadian equivalent of fair use,
does not allow for parody, as artists Diana
Thorneycroft and Michael Boss discovered when their
series of drawings Man, Dog, Husband & Wife, Dinosaur, Man with
Large Nose, Mouse -- which portrays Marge and Homer
Simpson, Barney Rubble, Burt of Sesame Street, Barney the Dinosaur,
Goofy and Mickey Mouse in various
stages of bondage and victimization -- was rejected by Gallery 1CO3 in
Winnipeg, Manitoba, at the advice of the gallery's
lawyer. The artists eventually showed
their work at another gallery in Winnipeg and have not
been sued as of yet.
While Thorneycroft and Boss were subverting known
cartoon characters to bring to light the face of
violence, Brooklyn-based artist Heidi Cody wrote the
word "subvert" in letters from corporate logos. The piece is part
of a larger work called The American Alphabet and
not only has she not heard complaints from those
corporations, but some advertising agencies have even
paid Cody to use the letters, seemingly allowing some
freedom of expression and perhaps freedom to profit.
When artist Kembrew McLeod decided to copyright
the term "Freedom of Expression," he got his wish and
10 years of exclusive use of the term for his zine.
McLeod, with the help of a friend posing as the
publisher of an imaginary punk rock magazine also
called Freedom of Expression, pretended to sue the
magazine and even had a lawyer send a cease and desist
letter to the "offending magazine." McLeod was later
interviewed by a local paper, which quoted the
frustrated copyright holder as saying "I didn't go to the
trouble and expense of trade marking 'Freedom of
Expression' to have someone else come along and think
they can use it whenever they want."
Luckily for most artists, McLeod was just kidding, since freedom
of expression and freedom to express yourself using
many, many samples, was the thing at a night of music that was
part of the Illegal Art Fest at Tonic in the Lower
East Side.
Musicians and sound manipulators put on performances
that would be a copyright lawyer's dream (or
nightmare, however you choose to see it).The
experimental music duo Spin-17 used noisemakers, toy
horns, and electric pianos, a turntable playing sounds from
science fiction movies like Godzilla and recordings from space shuttle launches.
Motoko Shimizu sang from operas, while
Ed Chang played guitar during their performance. "No
genre is safe and the boundaries between art and
doleful indulgence are blurred," the duo writes on
their Web site.
The Thimbletron, an invention created by the one-man band
Evolution Control Committee, could be considered the
ultimate indulgence for an artist who likes to use
samples. The group claims to have
discovered the science of Thimbletronium, as well as its relevant subatomic particle,
Superdupertron, and to begin the show, Mark Gunderson donned Thimbletron: a pair of gloves with wires and
thimbles attached which trigger samples from a laptop when touched together.
After applying olive oil to the thimbles "for
conduction purposes," Gunderson, with his wild
white hair and white jumpsuit, pressed his fingers
together, but no sounds ca m e out. Afte r much fumbling
and the further application of olive oil, the
device sprang to life and the sounds ranging from AC/DC and Dan Rather to instructional records and meal menus pumped out of the speakers.
The quirky band is better known for their
controversial single "Rocked By Rape", which features
samples of Rather and resulted in a lawsuit
against them by CBS and the record being pulled. Even in cases where a song might be protected as parody or freedom of expression, artists can scarcely defend their work against deep-pocketed corporations and their Philadelphia lawyers.
Lawrence Lessig, a law professor at Stanford University, said copyright laws
have reached a level of control where even an
educator, wanting to use a three-second clip from "The Simpsons" is required to pay $25,000 for the privilege.
"The problem is their insane rules
are now being applied to the whole world," Lessig said in a speech he gave
this past summer at the Open Source Convention in
California. "This
insanity of control is expanding as everything you do
touches copyrights."
But is having a low profile, like Evolution
Control Committee, the only way to get around the
radar screen of the lawyers and avoid paying hefty
usage fees? Are artists like Beck, Public Enemy and
Beastie Boys and countless other "mainstream" artists
who have the money to pay for rights (and lawyers) the only ones who can
use sampling in their music? Not as long as
Negativland and Evolution Control Committee and
other "underground" artists continue to keep the samples and the music and humor coming, in hopes that the next piece of mail isn't
another subpoena, but a fan letter.
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