lawshare.ca

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Telephone: (604) 681 3535 ext.213
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Email: artistslegaloutreach@gmail.com
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Art, Revolution and Ownership: Can anyone own the Commons?
Artists and Copyright in Conversation September 8-11,2011

The Artists Legal Outreach (artsistslegaloutreach.ca), in partnership with the New Forms Festival, is pleased to present Art, Revolution and Ownership (aro.artistslegaloutreach.ca). The exhibition/event includes 3 living labs, featuring works in various media (remix video, painting, photography, animation, printmaking, and graphic design), as well as a dance performance at W2 on September 8, 2011.

Each of the works confront our ideas about copyright and uses the law as a lens through which to explore the meaning of copyright in relation to aesthetic practice. In so many ways art transforms what we see and do, but does it transform the law? Each artist has contributed a short statement directed to the question of whether/how their work has been affected by copyright and the law. The program is curated by Martha Rans. Mark Hosler, founding member of Negativland, will join us as the roving moderator/agent provacateur.

LIVING LAB ONE

Living Lab One is our war room. In it Marching to May by Faith Moosang will be shown next to video projections of Hart Snider's Newshole War Coverage and Diyan Achadi's Camouflagehead. They are viewed together with Sonny Assu's iHamatsa_rise. These works pose important questions about the nature of political representation, and our responses to it. Even though most of the imagery has been abstracted through manipulation of some sort, each of the art works contain elements that have been suppressed at different times by a thesis committee, a broadcaster or VANOC.

LIVING LAB TWO

Living Lab Two is our homage to the Group of Seven. It features Diana Thorneycroft’s Group of Seven Awkward Moments (White Pine and the Group of Dwarfs) and Ben Reeves [Name(s) of work]. Both pieces are reflections on the iconic Canadian landscape re-imagined and replicated, and reference the original Group of Seven by transforming their paintings into something quite different. Also featured is the work, Cereal Box by Sonny Assu, in which the viewer is invited to question how we see Canadian territory.

LIVING LAB THREE

Living Lab Three features a mural by Michael Nichol Yahgulanaas based on his book of Haida Manga :“Red.” This along with Ben Reeves’ work in progress, “Borges Comic”, offers us another perspective on transformation – specifically the recontextualization of text and tradition to other media.

PERFORMANCE

On September 8th in the Atrium at SFU Woodwards's and W2, Plastic Orchid Factory will perform the piece “art is either a complaint or do something else” set to text by John Cage. This one time performance will be remixed live by Josh Hite and then re-viewed in the same space with the dancers and choreographers present. In the piece, we hear John Cage reading a poem based on an interview Cage had with the painter Jasper Johns. “art is either…” brings a physical dimension to Cage’s original text. To accentuate this layered materiality, the work includes text panels that discuss the legal issues involved with John Cage's work, his use of silence, and the questions of improvisation. The video remix and related material will be installed at the Waldorf Hotel for the duration of NFF.

DIALOGUES

Everyone is welcome to participate as the dialogues that will follow the performances throughout the evening of September 8th. Tina Piper, McGill's Canada Research Chair in Intellectual Property, will consider the extent to which the improvisational, ephemeral and ever changing nature of many contemporary art forms can possibly be described by the language of intellectual property law. She will consider the extent to which using and applying copyright, in particular, requires a particular way of seeing and being, and she will discuss how this kind of analysis leads to collaboration and creation in unimagined ways. Choreographer James Gnam, lawyer Martha Rans will facilitate the conversation with the audience.

On Saturday, September 10, 2011 from 1 to 5 we will hold two additional dialogues at the Waldorf Hotel in in conjunction with the Centre for Humanities at SFU. Both will be moderated by Mark Hosler.

Panel One:

Authorship and Art Practice in the Digital Age.
Diyan Achadi, professor Emily Carr University of Art and Design, printmaker and animator, and artist Sonny Assu share their perspectives on authorship and its relevance to their work. What is an authentic voice? Whose voice is it anyway? Why does it matter? Laura Murray, founder faircopyright.ca, Faculty of English, Queen's University participates as does Geoff Glass, Faculty of Communications, SFU .

Panel Two:

The Status of the Thing: copyright and digital materiality.

Debates over copyright within crafting communities are particularly thorny, jumping as they do from notions of a common shared history that should be open and welcoming to all, passing through the idea that as a gendered pastime crafting is regularly devalued – something its practitioners should work against, to more recent arguments that there are lucrative opportunities for professional crafters and designers that need to be protected through the copyrighting, patenting and trademarking of designs and processes. Kirsty Robertson, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Visual Art at UWO invites the audience to consider a series of case studies that examine "embroidery pirates," open source embroidery projects, controversies over trademarked fabrics, and traditional techniques in order to trace changing notions of ownership in crafting communities. The work of both Ben Reeves, painter, and Faith Moosang, photographer, approach abstraction in ways that challenge the legal defintion of similarity. They discuss their work in light of some of these thorny questions.