The Poverty of the Small Author

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In the age of digital reproduction, the problem of the “small author” remains: as the problem of the Intellectual Proprietor and his or her material reproduction, but also, and more importantly, as a problem of a specific political mentality. Among the many possible modes of production and subjectivation, the figure of the “small author” - who is always already deprived from the fruits of his hard labor, either by “the industry” or by “the pirates” - may be the most unfortunate one. But for the masses who know that they will never be part of a thriving global middle class of Intellectual Proprietors, there are other options. Not to entrench themselves against technological progress, but to radically embrace it: to explore new forms of collaboration and production beyond traditional authorship, to employ the most advanced methods of digital reproduction, and to reaffirm the instability of property relations.

And I just say, no, I'm not going to walk. But I just say what we said. We are more or less making some sort of introductory statements. And then afterwards, we would like to open up the discussion. And this was also why we wanted to move at first over here, so that we are a little bit more approachable.

Because also, we can see each other that good here now. And we can't see a really good view. But we will see. So after these small introductions, which will be given by all of us, then afterwards, I hope there are some questions. And then we would like to discuss this, what we have said, and what you will say.

Should I start? Yeah, you are the one who starts. OK. In the last panels, the discussions were much more about wider scale organization of copyright-related matters. And I think some of the people here on the panel might go more deeper into their own work and into

questions that arise with copyright infringement and artist practices. And I would like to start telling you about something that I experienced this summer. I was invited with two other people to do a performance at the Documenta exhibition in Kassel. And it was a performance that we planned in a

shopping mall that was dealing with the fact of public space and private public space. That is what the piece was about. And it was a musical theater intervention performance, which was something that was aimed against the shopping mall quite drastically. For example, we were buying Victoria Barsch

filets in the shop and using them as percussive instruments, the deep frozen Victoria Barsch filets. And I put together the music. The question was not clear. Am I a composer? Am I an arranger? What is actually what I'm doing? Because I'm not composing music in the sense of sitting in front of an

empty page of music with a glass of red wine and thinking of what might be the first note. I would rather say there's an extremely broad repertoire of musical expression and styles and references in history and present times. And the question is, how can that be appropriated? How can that be used?

How can that become something else? Referring, for example, to a famous quote that I found with Igor Stravinsky, one of the biggest copyright protected composers in 20th century music, which is still copyright protected because he's not dead over 70 years, which would mean then the copyright would

be not valid anymore. He said, a good composer doesn't imitate. He steals. That's actually quite true. But he wouldn't refer it to his own work. There we have already the problem. So the music that I used is all, on a legal basis, copyright protected. For example, a piece which is a Baroque music

piece and another composer whose work is still copyright protected, Luciano Berio, an Italian composer. So I used that. And the question for me was, putting up a repertoire of pieces that are copyright protected, how can I deal with that? On one hand, I could just play them and say, it's my work,

which is probably something that's rather boring. So I was trying to find different methods of how to make those samples of the existing repertoire of music as a whole to make them appropriate

to the specific circumstances of that performance, dealing with a shopping mall, being presented in a shopping mall, and so forth. For example, just to show you some examples of what we did, we used the software that one can get easily, which you can make

a digital copy of printed music. The software will not work well, because it's a very difficult task for software, and the software is not good yet. So what we get is an artifact, which is not the actual copy, but it's a derivative of the actual copy. One way to get something. And the question that

arises, which I will not answer, because I think it's not interesting to answer it, is it's still the same thing? And who is the author? Is the person who programmed the software the author? Am I the author, because I choose that piece? Referring to a quote of Richard Prince, the choice is the act,

nothing else but the choice. One way to deal with it. Another way, if I refer to music that's not written in scores, like pop music, I could get a sound file and try to find the music which I can put in a score, and I could play it with a different instrumental set. Another way. A third one was, I

developed with a friend a software which is called Soundalike, which is referring to a term of the music industry. They are making Soundalikes to avoid copyright questions for commercial music. Something that sounds like something that's copyrighted, as close as possible, so that it's recognizable,

but as far away of the original that they will not get into copyright infringement problems. We use the term differently. We developed a software where you can read in any given sound file, and the software makes a score out of it, which can be played by, let's say, whatever kind of group of

musicians. And I will play you the repertoire of that performance,

so all the music that was actually used in the performance. It's a two-minute sample. Before I do that, I will tell you about another problem that occurs. I wanted to put this repertoire, this two-minute section of this piece, onto a CD in a German pop music journal, which is called Spex. So it's on

this CD right now, out in the shops. Problem was that they have to sign a contract with GEMA, GEMA, the copyright music company who is extremely influential and powerful in Germany. For example, there is a law that you have to sign a GEMA.

Well, you have to fill out a form for the GEMA. You are obliged to do that for any public performance of music, and especially any publication on a CD, on any digital media. Question is, if I put on music that is derived from copyrighted music, they would always say, and I had big fights with them,

they would always say, you have to clear the rights with the original copyright holder. I would always argue against it. That's not cultural practice. Cultural practice is to not imitate, but to steal. That's a long practice in most cultures in the world. Now, I'm talking about European culture.

They would say, but that's not the rules of our members. We are dealing with it differently. And there is no solution to that. So I have to fill out a form for the GEMA, say it's my piece of work. They would not agree with it. And it's sort of a one-to-one, not dissolvable situation that occurs.

Interestingly, having done this piece with the Documenta, which is a very powerful and prestigious art exhibition and organization, they forced me to sign a contract with them so that they would be out of any trouble legally with what I did here. So I had to sign a contract, which is a wrong

contract with the GEMA. I had to sign a contract with the Documenta so that they are out of any legal problems. We did the performance. The performance was filmed also by television. I have always to say it's my piece of work, but I'm not interested in it to say that it's my piece of work. What I'm

basically saying is, as a cultural practice, one way to get around all those problems which are, on one hand, artistic problems which have a history of referring to Benjamin and others, and the other one is a very brutal day-to-day problem which is dealing with laws and legal practices, which, for

example, in Germany include what is protected in music. There's a specific paragraph in the law which says, protected is everything is the melody, and the melody is the thing that is recognizable. That's a very weak term, and it's a good term because it's so weak. What does it mean if it's

recognizable? If it's just noise, is that recognizable? On the other hand, a band like Kraftwerk is employing five lawyers full time to track down samples for copyright infringement in other music. When we come to, for example, the history of hip hop, there's a very interesting interview, actually,

with Chuck D on the Public Enemy website, and he says and makes it clear that from the early days of hip hop, the music itself changed drastically because sampling in hip hop until the mid-'90s was not possible anymore because it led to big legal fights, and so they couldn't use that anymore,

despite the fact that within hip hop culture, quoting was a matter of reference, of respect, of making clear where you come from musically. That's not interesting for copyright holders. For copyright holders, it's a matter of, we want money from you, it's a deal, which basically, I would say, that's

censorship, you know? It's true, I could possibly use anything, but if they say it costs that much, it's very clear they can just raise the price. There is no law for, okay, what does that mean? They raise the price, which basically means you can't use it. So on the scale I'm working on, as long as

you do a live performance, as long as you put it on a CD in this scale, you don't get into big problems. We will discuss probably later what that means. We also have to talk about the small author. I'm playing now this two-minute sample of all copyrighted music, which on this CD, again, another

problem was filling out the GEMA form. You are not allowed to say that it's copyright-free, that there are no rights reserved, and I got the publisher, they actually didn't realize what they put on, so that's the only track that doesn't have a copyright on a totally copyrighted CD.

So, this is called Late Life.

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Yeah, and I got one of these legal letters from a Swedish film industry that owned the rights to these works, telling me to stop all the activities and return the work, or they would face me with a very expensive trial. And in the end, a settlement was made, and all the copies of this video were

destroyed. This is not something that I'm very sorry about, but it came apparent to me, and it had been for a very long time, that many questions and strategy was lacking for me as being an artist and as also part of the art world. And I didn't find very much debate or talking around these questions

in a really creative way. I was really lacking this. And in 2004, I met people from the Pirate Agency, and there I found both a conversation and a strategy that I was missing. And what I found important with this is not only the conversation that fundamentally questions the copyright law and its

universality claims, but also the factual distribution channels of the Pirate Bay beyond the copyright networks, and even more the performative fuck-you attitude in the numbers of projects, which the spirit of the conversation of the legal letters of the Pirate Bay is a very, very good example. So I

think a little like this. Until I, as an artist, can make similar impact as these letters from the Pirate Bay, I must reconsider my position as an artist. Reproducing the role as an artist is something I'm not really interested in, and I don't have any direct answer to go on other than to be part of

this happy pirate cannibal. Thank you.

I was

also introduced as an artist for this UN Habitat function that I have, which is actually not based in Vienna, but in Nairobi. So I'm working for a Nairobi-based agency, which is the United Nations Organization on City Development and Human Settlement. But this doesn't really relate to this topic,

but has perhaps a little bit to do with this universalism discussion that we started in the last panel. As an artist, I can also not really talk about, how to say, private examples of copyright infringements. I've never been really, this was not my topic, this is not what I have been working on. But

I've been working also as a curator, and three years ago we have been conceiving a biennial in Eastern Germany, which is called Werkleitsbiennial, it's a sort of festival. So we had been working for this festival, which started with copyright, and then afterwards we expanded these terms into common

property, it was called Common Property, allgemein gut. And we had been working on this for a year, in a group of people, and we had been conceiving this, and naturally all of these arguments, they shifted all of the time between, as an artist, do we have to take the position of the small author, or

do we have to do it for our artists, do we have to invite only these people who are dealing with these things like this. But I'm not going to talk about this neither. Actually I wanted to make something like, when I was invited, I normally like to do something like make these first three questions,

that perhaps are in the beginning of any analysis, that you say, do we or do I have a problem, the second would be, what is the problem, and the third one would then afterwards be, do I, do we have a methodology to address this problem somehow. So I started with this, and actually at the moment, I

see problems in other people perhaps, or I see problems in groups and in representation of groups, but as an artist in the moment, I don't have a problem, I have to say. But this doesn't mean that the problem doesn't exist. And then the next thing that you have to do is trying to solve a little bit,

perhaps it is because it's not clarified enough, who is the we, who is the person who is speaking, what are the roles in this discussion, and perhaps you should start and question all of these words that I used. So I started in this invitation with this question of the small author. And I was a

little bit troubled about this question of, about the first term in the small author, which is not there, but small. What is the small in the small author? And then I was thinking about it, and actually this is now perhaps a little bit a German example, because I was trying yesterday to discuss this

in English, and actually in English this doesn't really exist like this. So you have the small author, which would be the kleine autor, which somehow relates to another term which is used very often in politics, which is called the kleine man. This is something which is called the small man, but it

doesn't exist in politics, it's called in America, it's called the average American. The average American doesn't really correspond to the small man, because the small man is not the average man, it's somehow like the man below the average man. So it's just, it's the small man, it is a term, I'm

coming from Austria, and we had a really right-wing shift in politics in the last, let's say perhaps we are over this, we will see, but it changed a lot in the people, and it changed a lot in the terminology. And what happened was that this term, the small man, was re-established in society. There's

a funny sort of link that also came up when I was thinking about it, because actually, which is just a small side note or so, we never had in Germany and in Austria, and I guess in middle Europe altogether, paperback books didn't exist until 1945, because actually books were always very expensive,

and it was not really meant to be delivered to the masses. There were printing agencies, small printing agencies, that tried to make something like leaflets or booklets, but this normal mass production in books actually started in America. So there was one guy who was actually also the heir of a big

publishing house, and he as a German soldier was in American imprisonment, and through this prison library that he had access to, had the first possibility of seeing paperback books. And then he came back to Germany, and then he started something which was a revolution in publishing, which was

called Ro-Ro-Ro, which means Rowolf's Rotationsromane, and this was the first, this was a series of books to be published in high copies, in high numbers of copies. And funnily enough, the first novel that was printed in Ro-Ro-Ro, this is Ro-Ro-Ro number one, is called Kleiner Mann, was nun, which

is an essay by Hans Fallerlach, who by the way is one of the biggest drug addicts in German literature, and this book could be translated perhaps in small man, what are you going to do, and it is about someone in Berlin who is living a very average life, and five years becomes unemployed in Berlin.

So this is already like the definition of the small man, the Kleiner Mann. So how is he used normally in politics? Normally in politics he is used in Austria very much, and also here, from right-wing politics, to describe someone who is not represented. There is also something in it, the Kleiner

Mann is also someone who is not only not represented, but also a little bit offended because he is not represented, because he thinks he is actually in the majority, but nobody knows it, because there is no representation of his. So there is this small person, and then I thought in this case, as

this is coming from this right-wing politics, to describe someone, a sort of subject, that is somehow offended, not represented, and you have to sweat the most possible things from him, because if he uprises, it's not something nice, it's not revolutionary or something, it always means something

like common sense will come out. It's the big threat in politics, that these people are going to rise, and they are going to take over power, or it's from the right-wing side, it's their clientele, who, if they would make politics, would change everything, which is like liberation, somehow like all

of the things that are trying to make society more equal. So this is the Kleiner Mann. This was the first thing that I somehow wanted to question.

Then there is another thing that came to my mind when I was thinking about it, and this is another terminology that we can perhaps use if we talk about art. It's a funny thing, because artists are normally also described as bohemian, or the social field that artists form is bohemian, and when I was

in Paris, I was living in Paris a year ago, and then I was somehow researching on barricades and on these things, so I started to read, how is it in English, the 18th premiere of Louis Bonaparte, this one Marx quote about who is the revolutionary subject, more or less, so talking about the

revolution and the Second Republic in France, also talking a lot about barricades, a lot about spies and things like this. So he uses this word bohemia as well, he needs it, and it's funny to see how this group bohemia is described in the Marx terminology, because he's not using it like we are using

it, he's also not using it in the way what it means, which means more or less the people who are coming from Czech Republic, but he's using it for a group of people, and he says mostly they are, they're either spies, because there was lots of spies in the Second Republic in Paris, basically before

electronic supervision, surveillance, you needed spies, so there were spies, this was prostitutes, this was thieves, and this was also the small author, which was the small writer, which was also a class of people that is very much described in the 19th century. So, why does he need this group of

people, or why is he defining this group of people? He says this is a group of people that cannot be revolutionized, they cannot be brought to uprising, and why can they not be brought to uprising? Because they are too tightly bound to the ruling class. They need that everything stays as it is,

because they are directly paid by them. So they are not about changing things, because they are just far too near to the power system, because they are directly paid by them, and they don't have all of these intermediary organizations in between, they can't organize, because they are all doing

something like clandestine things, things that are bound to someone who is giving them, who is saying them to do that. And then when I was thinking about this Bohemia aspect, I was thinking, okay, and then this Bohemia terminology somehow changed to artists, but does the description of the Bohemia

also change to artists? Does it mean that also artists can never be seen as a revolutionary subject, because they are far too tightly bound so that everything stays as it is, because they need, this is what I think, and as a professional artist, and art in itself, if you see it as a profession, the

way it is set up now, it's far too much bound to the, how would you say that, so that the situation stays as it is. This doesn't mean that artists cannot also be political subjects and can have different wishes and can have different means of organization, but in itself, it doesn't say anything, it

just says, actually, it's not possible to raise them to revolution against the system. Okay, and then the third, am I too long? And the third thing which I wanted to talk about, because it's actually, it came up and I have been listening to all of this, actually I have not heard the discussion

yesterday, so it's more about the discussion today, there's something, there's this terminology, cultural industry, cultural production, cultural industry, and when I've been, while I've been listening to these other presentations, more or less when we are talking about knowledge production,

cultural production, what we have been doing here, all of these examples that we are using, or that had been used on these tables here, was actually products that had been coming out of cultural industry, films and music. These are mostly the two examples that are used when you are talking about

infringement of copyright, and all of these things. So if you now think, I mean, films and music, it's not about all films, and it's also not about all music that we are talking. We are actually talking about all of these sorts of cultural products that are coming out of industrial production, that

are done in high copies, that have all of this sort of industry behind them to be produced, and they are pirated and they are redistributed. But does this really make them to cultural, does this really make a form to cultural production in a whole, or does it make more of a form into all sorts of

industrial production? I mean, actually, if you are looking at most of the industrial products that are produced, clothes, let's say, medicine, all of these other things that are produced in factories and in high things, in high copies, or let's say, crops, for example, all of these things where

money is involved, in most of these cases you find piracy, or you find it in all of these cases. Where industrial production, where there is a high level of how much money you can make within the production. And there you find all of these copies. You find copies of clothes, you find copies of

crops, you find copies of medicine, all of this generic that are produced, also illegally. Alcohol is another thing. I mean, depending on illegal alcohol that is produced, also using labels. Now you can think, which is actually interesting, is what makes all of these things that we are talking about

that are actually pirated one one

form of product, or one group of product. So if you think about it, actually these are all products that are not demand driven. This means it's not that people need them. These are all products that have a high level of advertisement behind them, a high level of propaganda. Where years and years and

tons of money has been spent to make them desirable. To make people want them. And these are the products that are actually copied and redistributed and they have these big copyright cases. If you would say it is cultural production, then I mean, a philosophical essay is actually cultural production

as well. And nobody is really ever doing any sort of court case because someone has redistributed a philosophical essay that has not been published. And nobody is even thinking about it. And also artworks. Only then, if there is all of this sort of money involved and also this sort of building up a

desire for this product so that many people want it, and then it's about redistribution. We cannot really talk about cultural production. We cannot take this together and talk about pirated films, pirated music, and then talk about cultural production. It's just not the same.

What else? Yeah, mainly these three sort of clarifications in terminology that I wanted to make. And I guess that afterwards, then in discussion we can perhaps somehow talk about this a little bit more deeply. Okay, thank you. So, I go more back to the actual art production because this is the field

of my own practice.

I was a bit suspicious about this idea to have another discussion about authorship in this environment because my experience is not the one that Pala has. I think that there is no discussion about these questions in the art world, but I think there has been a discussion for a long time, and I have

the feeling that this discussion is going in circles. So for me, we are always addressing the same text, the same authors. I think that the theory is very developed in this field. We have a very good theory, but on the other side, we have an everyday life and practice as artists. We are involved in

a certain economy, and I have a real problem to bring this sophisticated theory together with my personal practice. So I take a look to the art world, and I think it has become very common that artists do no longer create their own images, or they don't have anymore the idea to develop works really

from scratch. But a huge number of visual artists, they make use of existing images and material. They rework and they recontextualize pre-existing material. What might have been radical, this approach has been radical, and the provocation for the bourgeois art world, when it has been first

practiced, and now I think it really has become a legitimate artistic way of production. If we look back in history, just to briefly mention, I would say that probably the Dadaists were the first ones who tried to make this provocation, but the movements, the art movements of the 60s and the 70s, to

name first of all pop art, I think were very successful in really implementing and establishing this kind of artistic practices. If you go to an art school today and look at what young artists do, you'll find that they all, in one way or another, they rework and they rearrange pre-existing material,

and they hardly do care anymore about creating original images. So this is no longer a category which I think has any relevance. If you look, if you turn around and look at the international art market, you find the big heroes of the art market, of contemporary art, as examples. I would like to name

Olafur Eliasson, or Damien Hirst, and there you can also clearly see that they left this notion of being original creators behind, or creators of images behind, and use a whole range of different techniques of appropriation and modes of production which are no longer individual, but I would call it

over individual, like using assistants, using machines, etc. So to summarize this, I would say that we can clearly observe a shift of the artistic creation towards collecting material. I think this is a serious, has become a serious artistic practice, building archives to analyze material and

administrate material, then something I would call selection of material, so if you have made a collection of whatever, and you make a certain selection and rearrange or arrangement of these things is an artistic concept, and of course all kinds of reworking and rearranging. So, I think in that

sense, if you look what the current situation is, we do not anymore have to proclaim the death of the author like in 68.

The ways of contemporary art production does not have much for a contemporary art production, this concept of the original author really has no relevance anymore. So, following that finding, one might quote Foucault, who writes, and here comes the quote, the author is not the owner of his text, nor

is he responsible for them, nor is he neither a producer nor an inventor, end of quote. So consequently, we state that the author has become a medium, himself or herself, through which a cultural tradition is expressed. And the author is nothing but a knot in a net of endless influences, and he or

she is far from being the origin or the source. So, of course, this is post-structuralist philosophy, and it became very popular, as I said before, it's always the same quotes are made, but this theory also had an enormous influence on many artists who reflected this theory and tried to experiment

and implement it in their own practice. And, which means, in the end, that the artists started to try to experiment with denying the concepts of originality, of autonomy, of individuality, of authenticity.

Just to give you two brief examples, probably the most popular examples for this kind of practices, which also started around the time in the 60s, one of them is Warhol, who started his serial productions in his factory, and another to mention would be Gerhard Richter with his mechanical paintings,

and of course also in this spirit are all the machines created by artists who make art, art-making machines. So, at this point I would like to introduce another perspective on contemporary art production formulated by Boris Groys in his essay Art as Avant-Garde of Economy. There he says, the

paradigmatic artist of today is not so much a producer anymore, but an exclusive and exemplary consumer of the anonymously produced and circulating cultural goods. One might say that the outcomes of today's art world are no longer products, but attitudes, patterns of consumption, and desires. The

artistic act no longer is in the beginning of a work, but at its end. The signature of an artist no longer means that an artist has produced a certain thing, but that the artist has used that thing in a particularly interesting way. End of quote. So, this all sounds very nice and interesting and

probably familiar, but if you have a take, if you take a closer look onto this concept of originality, individuality, creativity, etc., which of course all are very closely associated with the concept of authorship. They are far from being outdated and they are still I think the basis of the art

world and of most cultural productions and if you look back to these examples I have mentioned earlier like Warhol or Gerhard Richter, their attitude has turned into an identifiable style and additionally these artists have been considered as particularly creative for being the first ones to break

with certain traditions. And this paradox I think is still there. The more radical an artist's attempt is to refuse originality, the more likely it becomes that this artist gains a reputation as being particularly original. And of course this dynamics only function on the background of a long

standing tradition of celebrating the original. I think in different cultures where this notion never had the strength, of course these attitudes also would not become so important. So I think this is basically what I wanted to say and what I experience in my daily practice is this conflict of the

theory of course of the denial of all these concepts because also we know about their implications. Coming back to your question, is there a revolutionary potential in the artist? It's a very difficult, a very delicate question.

We should discuss it I think of course and one thing or two things I want to say is that one thing is I think we have to be very careful not to think about anti-authorship, anti-copyright, etc. all these things we are discussing here as a content only, but we have to be careful about where we

address it, how we address it, about the form that this work or this discourse about these themes the form that it finds. So how does it actually take place and we should be really careful in feeding this discourse into the art world. This is definitely there because it has become a kind of fashion

discourse and you can see that the bigger museums are now starting to organize panels and conferences about this and it again becomes I think a question of presentation and representation where this kind of actually content which has a revolutionary potential I think is being feeded into the systems

and kind of eliminated also. So this is something I want to kind of this is a question or whatever observation I would like to share with you and also coming with the question of thinking about forms how, what can we do, what techniques what formats can we think of for this discourse and just to

answer or the answer that I find or found for my everyday practice to deal with this paradox that I have described before is that I found feminist theory very helpful, the notion of performativity so that I take the concept of an author as a performance, as a performative concept and not as an

essential essentialist concept so that I'm playing with it, I'm going into the art world, I'm performing as an author but I'm also going away doing other things so this is a kind of for me this concept or this model helps me to deal with this paradox in my practice so that was basically what I

wanted to share the last thing I think is very interesting because we will talk now about what is the author and what is the small author and so but as a practice of what Cornelia said, to un-clarify what the function of the author is as a method, as a strategy I think is very important in a

political sense also because it un-clarifies our position towards legal action as well and so that one can make that and that's also something that you do in some of your works it becomes the work itself the un-clarification of the author function. But may I just very shortly what I heard out of

your experiences and also what I said is that it seems that like the artist in itself of how we are, where we are standing now in contemporary art practices there is not a problem but the thing is to be addressed as an author because in your case it was addressed by the law as being an author which

you didn't even claim but they wanted you to be the author to have your legally bound. In these other cases you have this author, I mean this is more or less something that is addressed or you are used as this figure of the small author to actually afterwards make consequences that are not in your

that you never wanted or so even when you would be this small author but you are used as a figure. So I mean this is that art and we are working in this field is very much used to further discourses that are actually not discourses we want but we are used as figures in it. And actually I don't know

many artists who ever went into these court cases but it's mostly it's only like music people who are actually have this big industry thing behind them and then it's their big companies that are actually going into these lawsuits but it's not people that are really producing, it's just these people

people that are produced but they are always used as figures that actually would be us people that are doing things so the question would be do we have to talk about this? Do we have to say we are not these people you want us to be as? That's exactly one of my questions also what is the moment or

the situation where I have to deal with this concept because actually it would be a strategy just to ignore it and just do what you want to do. Unless I think unless I think part of my practice and my work is that I'm really addressing this problem as a problem in my art so I'm kind of building test

cases to experiment with the limits also. So this is a different story than just doing what you want to do because I consciously go into the situation and to test it Are you taking other people's work? Yeah, the work I did in the last years was mainly about the Warhol flowers and I think I did

everything you can do with the Warhol flowers for two years I worked it through from all sides of legal perspectives and other perspectives and when I got tired of well actually in the beginning I said I ran into this randomly and then I found it really interesting to find the absurdity of the law

being confronted with my own artistic logic and I made this the topic of my work to confront to let the two worlds clash and made this an art piece again to show the absurdity Yeah,

but it was not my intention to yeah to infringe copyright in the beginning it just happened or somebody thought it happened and so the question was raised and I think this was also what I heard from what you were saying or introducing and also what Palle I think it has also a lot to do with the

concept of artistic freedom where is this really limited through the notion or through copyright law actually I think this is an interesting way It comes as a surprise in a way and it seems to be that similar because what Palle said was also he used that because there was probably a reason why you

liked to work on that and then suddenly you were confronted with a legal matter. It's also how it started with me. I got a letter from Karlheinz Stockhausen because someone else said that I was going to use a sample of him and I actually did use the sample but I denied it so that's how the thing

came and he was threatening me big time he said I'm going to send a letter to the GEMA boss and they are going to sue you big time okay so suddenly here you are you thought you did something that was a totally normal thing and it was not and then the question is that's kind of similar what you were

describing and also with the Warhol Foundation so suddenly you are into something and the question is how do you react on it and the last point I want to make is it is not something that is individual and might be funny or not or a nice story to tell because it goes to a core problem of our society

it is about things

that have to do with what belongs to whom it's about property and when it's about property the fun stops in our societies and we have to be aware of that I mean I think actually in art the question of property was that artists always tried to find out some other ways of how art could be distributed

besides of the single piece and this is really a long story of artists trying to find it out I was not talking about distribution but it is about distribution because if it's a single piece about ownership then I mean it's just not I think the problem is then just a normal it's not a social problem

then for me because it's just this personal relation that art always makes out of these property cases because you can not really distribute it and actually everyone wanted always to have more people to get that most of the artists always were looking for ways of how they could distribute it better

but actually the internet is not a place where you can distribute art you can distribute information about art but it's not really art what you're distributing you don't know about net art I know yeah but I'm a big critique of net art yeah because I think no because I think that in net art more or

less all of the problems of the other things stayed the same, it didn't solve anything no of course it didn't solve anything it always did, as if this was now a totally new structure it was more conservative even than painting it was a new oh I wouldn't say that it was a new I think it was a new

chance, it was a new medium there was a new utopia of course of reinventing art and I think what was really new and what had not been there before was that it had included its means of distribution already for the first time this was the first time in history so there was a different copy shops,

they also tried it, I mean there were lots of things I mean there was even I think we shouldn't go too much into this but there was a potential yeah there was a potential I think because of this distribution means of distribution of this ability to be copied without less of quality I think there was

a paradigm shift but of course the moment when this art entered the system and that's what I was trying to say before, of course then the net artists were addressed in the same way like a painter or whatever and the moment when you are asked and this constantly happens to me that people they use my

net art generators to make collages, they make even the collages and then they get it printed and they want me to sign them no I don't do that, I refuse I still refuse it so I'm thinking of this is the moment or this whole ridiculous idea in the art of limited editions yeah but the funny thing, even

with videos I mean you would say okay people are producing videos artists are producing videos and this could be always like distributed now for 15 or 20 years, but basically I mean if you get a video like this, this is not worth anything on the market because videos are totally otherwise

distributed not just the media it's actually an edition, it has all of these numbers, it has the signature of the artist so it's not reproducible all of the time it's not about that this video shows up somewhere in the internet, this doesn't mean that this is the video of this guy of this artist and

actually nobody has anything against it that it shows up in the internet in millions and millions of copies because they have their own sort of distribution rate which is in case of video like this it's one of five DVDs but this is also an illusion I think that collectors want but I just mean it's

always taking it out of this sort of it depends really I think I'm not really decided yet how to deal with it until now I refused or the only case where I sold a piece of net art was a piece of code where I had in the contract that the code has to stay free so it's on a GPL and the collector agreed

that it stays a free code so I don't know what he paid for he just paid because he liked the concept but he had the contract you made a contract a contract of course lots of art is now related to contract I mean all of these installation arts what do you mean with this contract of course you have if

you sell something it's not a piece but it also comes with a social contract it's not a social contract it's actually a legal it's a legal contract but it's also about where you can how you have to install it if it's an installation piece for example then you cannot just put the pieces somehow else

together so you get all of these notions about which makes it an authorized piece it's a bit different because it is code and it's running on the internet it's there but I think that was the only way but I still think because it's not possible it makes not sense to have limited edition for example

of a piece of software it's the most stupid thing you can think of but of course it will take place wait 5 years or something it will be in the art fair so 10 years but the question that I think is more interesting what we are talking about is the difference between cultural production and

industrial production because that makes it sort of something like an exclusive industrial production related that creates a value maybe we have to talk about cultural production I would agree too in a different way we are making prototypes that are prototypes for society how to deal with property

content and then it becomes interesting so I would again try to make a statement about property about all what we are talking about here because when it's a property question then the problems start that's very abstract what would that be in a practical example? as long as as soon as the society and

it might be like in Richard Prince's case Philip Morris or it might be the GEMA in Germany or it might be the movie association in the United States as long as they see that it has a value and that they might get they might be able to get money out of it then we have a problem or the copyright

holder of people long... but it's a fun thing as well because actually if you sell art the one who is actually only interested that the value stays in this piece is not the one who did it but it's only the one who owns it so it's only the collector actually and it's just the opposite of what it is

normally because normally the people who have it they have it or they do it so if you have a film you just want to have the film but it's not about that this film is always worth millions of dollars you're normally not interested you want to see this film but in this case he will do whatever lots of

things so that this value stays in this one piece so this is somehow like the value is done by the owner and not by the one who is producing it actually so this is completely the contrary to cultural productions that are done in mass production

I think it's just that maybe the aura of the individual piece is replaced by a certificate of ownership but that's really a concept that already was seen in 60s it's amazing

when you see that for example Warhol's factory that produced I mean he tried to undermine this notion of being limited by his kind of unlimited production that all kinds of people did for him and nowadays you have court cases about the originality of these pieces which I think it's really absurd but

it very nicely shows the paradox of this system how it works but the question really is we are related we are related to this we artists are related to this we are the little man we are related to this bourgeois artist somehow the question is what concept can you find to escape this kind of logic

and economy but you have the biggest liberty of all people that are actually using material because you have this artistic right to that goes far beyond industrial reproduction and this fuck you attitude that is now also in the copyright of file sharing actually is the old thing of the artist it was

always the fuck you thing I take it I mean I just bought this picture of Gerhard Richter and built a table out of it come on I mean this was the old attitude of artists anyway dealing with things that were coming from other parts yeah but it's also a question of power I think because not any artist

can buy a picture of Gerhard Richter can buy a picture of Gerhard Richter for example and also coming back to this notion or also to this maybe this essay of Kafka that has been mentioned in the beginning this totally paranoid character who opens the newspaper and reads is happy because he reads an

article or text he has written and in the next minutes or hours it becomes evident that he is just hallucinating and that somebody has he thinks that somebody has stolen his text and so on and so forth so I think this paranoid structure is still inbuilt somehow in the artist I think the art schools

play an important role in this in this education educating artists not to share, not to open up their sources but to become paranoid but at the same time I think what we should not neglect is the fact there is people who are in the situation that they can exploit your ideas and when you don't have

the power and the resources for example to implement, to produce, to whatever I think this is the other side which also exists. Yeah but getting back to this Kafka case, I think the thing which is really important in the Kafka case is that he wants the recognition for the text and there are so many

people who are producing all of the time but they are not getting any recognition for what they are doing, this is actually also what Benjamin is talking about, he says far more people should be accepted as authors actually everyone for all of the things he does and how can we do that in showing all

of this showing all of the things that are produced all of the time and film could be the medium that could show what all of the people are doing because it can reproduce everyday life of all of the people so they can all become producers and can be reproduced in films so that they can see each

other themselves producing and actually this is also this big potential of the internet that so many people become some sort of recognition because they can see their pictures that have been taken on a potentially millions of people network or so potentially millions of people can see their pictures

what they have produced and read the text that they had written into blogs and what this small author is looking for was this recognition because there is also this thing that he comes to his mother and he says here my article and she is so proud now because he is really now an author because it is

published and this recognition which artists have fought for in saying if I am doing it and if I am doing something that is totally for everyone totally stupid but I say this is production this is also what art has been doing in the last 10-20 years or so widening the field of what you could do and

say it is art and there is always the art historians and the art market who always tries to make it smaller and say no this is not art because it is not producing a product and things like this but in doing all of this like including performativity including writing again into visual art including

lots of things such as the gestures what boys have been doing into this field of art just makes far more things where people could think of themselves as producers and not only as consumers I put a video on YouTube without my name on it and it got like 200 200,000 hits and I am very satisfied with

that and I don't care about my authorship or artistry but the question is do we need to be authors at all I think can we deconstruct totally or just forget about being artists can we stop being artists if you want to I am trying but it is hard the funny thing is if there is a field where people have

fought already so much to have this recognition of doing things that are actually for most of for very many people just absurd but they think that this is something that they should do and they can do without thinking about it most of the people would not do because they think ah but then I am not

really working if I am just for example researching but there is one group of people that has fought for lots of things to be recognized as doing so I don't think you should really give that up yeah but it was only luck that I started with art, I mean it could be anyone I mean it is just stupid that

I am the one who says that I am an artist I do the same thing as people who are not artists yeah but they should also do that or we should not do it at all or we should not do it at all but why I mean it is fun to say that you are an artist to do what you do no to do what you do no exactly that is

the fun part exactly but it is hard work to say that you are an artist because somehow you have to prove it you have to prove it against yourself as well because sometimes you look like everything how can you not when you have once been an artist how can you forget to be an artist there are people

who really recite that I am not going to do any art anymore but I don't know if this is an idea perhaps there is other discussion points than who is I think it is time yeah for

comments I come on the last I think the point here is can we stop being art as an artist because if you look at the history of doctor art a good point can be made but of course art has a lot of problems because if anyone could keep his ego centered and then use the arts as a prime case if you look

at the history of copyright a strong case can be made that the emergence of copyright has an intimate link to the emergence of individuality and to the development of capitalism pretty much so a strong case can be made it is not just about the legality or the illegality of intellectual property but

the state voice or of course the question of copyright regime but through the whole mind show style or the whole act does the aura move from the artwork to the artist and so it is reproduced on a different level so I think the question is very direct if you want to question copyright radically you

are going to have to question some of the basic assumptions of individuality if artists are willing to do that I am not so sure anything else?

something we didn't talk about yet the relation of authorship and copyright I don't know if we have to start this now but where is actually the link because I mean you gave this example of this performativity which is some sort of excuse me could you speak up a little too loud back here can you put

up the microphone maybe no

just Cornelia had been showing this one thing of this concept of performativity as taking up the author as a performative concept which is actually which means that you constantly have to be an author to be an author how would you describe this performativity concept I mean because it's related to

you said it could be some way out I think that's really complicated to describe in one sentence but it's a reenactment of an identity that you are all of the time enacting not all of the time sometimes yeah but while you are taking it up you have to enact it it's not a silent identity that is always

there no yeah but why can you label it sort of the performance as author that's the whole thing you do the performance anyway but when you label it author no I don't do it anyway no but anyone that labels it author labels this performance the author yeah I'm not sure if this is I think it for many

people also has an essentialist notion you know they really think that they are authors and nothing else they cannot go beyond this I think I enjoy playing with it especially also because the concept of authorship always used to be a male concept you know associated with male subjectivity so of

course for being a female author has again a totally different history and notion but I think the term author became so interesting because now one can use it as a strategic point which one can move around and what I'm much more interested in is how it relates to society how a capitalist system is

reacting to that just one example where it's dealt with totally different I was last year in North Korea and we were visiting museums which were all Kim Il Sung museums and all the stuff that we were shown if it was advertising or films or artworks they were all done by the president or his son so

they were all which is interesting because basically the author disappeared because it was all put into this one corner of authorship which in a way is something that's relaxing but on the other hand we would probably argue that they could just get rid of this notion of author as well the

interesting part is what is the author towards the society which is as we try to point out in the different samples which is attacking problems so I would always say what we are making is prototypes and by moving around the notion of author and by devaluating it at the same time by not being clear

with it, being unclear is a I don't know if Cornelia would agree but it's a political strategy The thing is we shifted a little bit for example Jonathan Meese, a German artist is now really he's earning a lot of money but basically he's a maniac and a scribbler so he would all of the time do

drawings What does it have to do with it? I just wanted to explain and so basically he would produce all of the time but his gallerists forbid him to give them away so he's not even authorized to authorize as an artist which means normally the thing that we are, because then it would decrease in

value because it's just too much and everyone would have Jonathan Meese but they have to be kept on this level so what we are normally doing is saying we don't have a problem with artists but actually it's the second thing, the second step, the gallerist or the person or the collectors who are

having these problems and so we somehow arrange with them But still he has to be held accountable for submitting under the orders of the gallerist Sorry? Still he has to be held accountable for submitting under the orders of the gallerist I don't have a gallerist I don't have a contract with the

gallerist It's a decision I think it's very very difficult to deal with this kind of thing I'm interested and I'm always looking at it and trying also to experiment and find ways of playful ways to undermine it but you have to be really careful and I think Jonathan Meese is a perfect example for for

an artist which I think does not know what he is doing so he is for me not representing like an emancipatory model of the artist It's totally uninteresting what he is doing He is just serving the need of a bourgeois art market He can go ahead, he is not I don't, he is not an example for anything

uninteresting He is an example He is an anti-example I mean this is for the shifting that you say it's not the artist who is responsible but it's the system in this case But still what he said is very good because it was his decision to submit himself He is actually helpless in this system Of course

you have to I mean I don't have a problem with the collector or with the gallerist but sometimes I would like to have a gallerist who does some of the work I have to do myself administration and blah blah blah So it's this it's a difficult decision to make how, you know what do you want to keep the

control of It's also a lot of It's really difficult And I think the point or the relation or the answer or the question of authorship is very close to the question of economy And it's not necessarily the art piece but it's other things that are also part of a different kind of economy reputation and

so on I mean when I was thinking of the author it almost surprised me now even though it's so evident that you talk about the stuff that the authors produce their work when I was thinking about the author before I had never actually thought about their art or about their work but actually on the I

was thinking and I think it's a good example I can say of what a three-year-old or a demi-nurse or any artist like me is saying and it's correct the work is no longer necessarily original there's even a trend of appreciation for non-original work and also an important point is that people don't do

their work it's very simple to produce a work the authorship is more like maybe not even the idea it's something magical but I think for me it doesn't solve the problem or the question of the author at all because this person who's name I don't have to repeat it's like if I don't want to write about

this, want to have a page read about the work of this person it's still this one person who brings the interview and like if this one artist person has his own monologue that sounds a bit like Odysseus or Orpheus or Angela Merkel or something, then it's still printed because he is the one person or

Taijus Vandekar Vandekar is complex and there's other people taking care of it successful artists take care of their Vandekars something is then always tied back to this one person it's not in the work but it's in the author's function and that desire to identify and isolate that one specific

individual and in many cases that's exactly the problem for these persons the other question or the other remark really is about the definition of small and there are kind of the small is the thing that is just a bit below the average size and these artists that were mentioned are not really famous

that's not the problem of small it's exactly the pretty bourgeois the pretty bourgeois author the one that is not middle class but would like to be middle class and in that sense I think you can't limit the question of the author to a European artist because everyone as was also mentioned everyone's

right to do stuff be recognized if you want to produce, be recognized and there I think the question of the author is very much and I don't know if you want to address this that there will not be a drop in middle class this is the actual question of the small author if there is a way in which a

small author a person wants to be middle class this option is there and what then happens is that it's bigger it's

not a just to add one sentence it's not a question of it's not a romantic question of society might be a better society if we follow Joseph Beuys and everybody becomes an artist the society would be a better society because that's not going to happen anyway why

not? because that's a dream so let's talk about reality I

have

a bit of a problem with this small author thing I have it all the time because I think also in the way you use it it's very polemic and you put yourself in a superior position to this stupid little poor thingy there that's what I dislike about it because I think you never really recognize the

offended person I don't know if it exists I don't know if you do have to make all of these sort of groups I mean I have to agree with you when you said that perhaps out of a feminist perspective having to fight so very long in working groups that you are anyway mentioned if you work in it because

normally you always have the names of the men standing in things in scientific working groups for example if you see Bourdieu the misery of the world I mean it was actually done by a whole working group of women and it's only his name on it so there is something else there comes in some other sort

of history about getting recognized for what you are doing which is not the author it's just about who is distributing recognition and I mean this is what Benjamin says if more of the things that are produced like everyday life is produced all of these different what we are doing if more of this

gets visualized and free reproduced by technical means or by the internet now and it is now getting reproduced by the internet so more things are accepted as things that are done so more people get the recognition that they are doing something and not just the masses There is a big distinction

because what you said before about making videos expressing of course this is what happens on YouTube everyday one million new videos but professional

artists professional authors they don't touch YouTube because this is an amateur environment it's bad for their reputation it's very obvious but for example there is no way but I know it from artists I just did it I just put this thing out there yeah but I know they are using this it's funny

naturally not all of them because naturally some of them just want to make lots of money but I mean most of the people just want to make lots of money and they are going to do it however so why should artists be otherwise but these artists who are dealing with this subject they are naturally on

YouTube or they are selling on Ebay or they are doing all of these sort of things using it, also artists as all of the other people I didn't find any I was actually looking for it in YouTube how artists use MySpace it's very great lots of artists are in MySpace actually when I'm looking up someone

because I just hear the name the first time and if they are American they are always in MySpace do they put their work there or just the video of the opening of the Vernissage no they put the work they put the work very much but it's still bad quality it doesn't it's not there is a question ok yeah

ok one of the problems from copyright is that one universal notion of authorship upon totally different kinds of human activities if we agree that we can't abolish voluntarily abolish authorship completely and we can't universalize it we can maybe try to demystify it or differentiate it or something

so as to more be tuned to the data reality we experience so the question I would pose is what use could there be in metaphorically high concepts from one theme to another from one artistic theme to another like one obvious example which is probably trivial is if you take Nicolas probably in his book

Post-Production he takes the concepts of the DJ contemporary artists are like DJs they are taking something there and remixing it it probably describes some activities quite well ok but on the other hand these kinds of metaphorical shifting of concepts could maybe not the heterogeneous be together

to become a monolithic discourse about authorship and well I would like to pose this question to Christian because I think it's interesting that you have the title compulsive I'm especially interested by the notion of the small composer that's a character which always comes up when discussing music

and copyright you know it's quite clear to people even in like people deep inside music, copyright institutions and everything that music economy is somehow shifting generally more towards the performative aspect record sales are down performances are up it's an interesting shift, it's a good shift

but then always someone comes but what about the small composer they are maybe just composers they don't want to perform they don't want to arrange things they just want to sit home and compose stuff or write songs and that's an interesting thing maybe metaphorically

applying concepts from the art world onto the music world could make some sense because in the art world no one would say to a contemporary artist or no contemporary artist I just want to sit home and produce art I don't want to network in the art world I don't want to take part in events and

performances because it's totally clear that you can't be part of the art world without somehow performing yourself as an artist that's totally clear applying that concept from the art world to the music world could make sense but on the other hand there is some problem not saying heterogeneous

authorships together because it might strengthen the monolithic notion of authorship do you understand me? the problem that I have sometimes is people try to label the profession and I would always say and I found out that it makes sense whatever you label it, that's what it's going to be because

that's anyway what I also would refer to with the material that I'm using so it's as easy as that if they say that's composition I wouldn't call it like that but how would I call it and I'm sometimes in this situation where I have to make a decision for example with this documenter piece they wanted

to know what is it that you do and I said I provided the score to leave it open, to make it unclear people might recognize something there might be a review and they say they used that and that music, I get a letter from the game I used that and that music you did, you clear the rights, blah blah

blah all this boring stuff that's happening so it's rather as a strategy and I would say it's only a strategic point to keep it totally unclear is the best way to do it and I didn't answer the question about the small composer who is sitting in his room who just wants to compose because I don't know

what that is supposed to mean anyway so I

have a question which is I'm curious as to what you're thinking about the model which is now used in a lot of areas of science actually in terms of dealing with the question of authorship I can identify in one way with what Pala is suggesting that the state of abandon of individuality connected to

whatever piece it is altogether, which certainly has the advantage of liberation, pretty much entirely from the legal complaint of what views the actual notion were but in several sections of the science world there's a totally different attitude which is taken towards this problem which for example

at the CERN laboratory in Switzerland everybody who worked there for I think it's more than nine months automatically becomes an author of all of the papers which are produced from CERN and this is both a recognition of the fact that these are complex highly collectivized scientific processes in

which everybody is making a contribution and in which interesting discoveries can be made under almost anybody's supervision, but you start from a position whereby everybody is in, so there rather than having to deny authorship in the name of collectivity, you have this huge surplus of authors,

hundreds of authors, and articles in fact where the list of authors is longer than the article and that's serious and then another interesting thing which is that starting from this kind of aspect of collective production at the beginning people who are within CERN are then offered the opportunity

to remove their name from the list if they disagree with the conclusions which are being proposed but it seems to me that you know in science whether all of these things exist in specific economies and science like the art world also has a particular non-monetary form of circulation of prestige and

status and so it's very important there for people who are still to be able to demonstrate that they have been producing things with this because this publication may function there as a way of creating mobility and recognition but in a completely redimensioned sort of a way it's become part of kind

of like what Felix was talking about yesterday evening in terms of people who make small changes to Wikipedia and you go and you look at people who have been making small changes and you discover that they've done a thousand small things and what it demonstrates is the fact that they're serious,

that they dedicate a significant amount of time but I wonder, I mean, it's a subject that the whole individualizing economy of the art world makes it why not try to drive the art world in this extent of collective ownership I would like to say something I had a talk with Isabel Stengers, I don't

know if you know her, she has been working with Ilya Prigozhin and Isabel Stengers is a Belgian artist and she won together with Ilya Prigozhin in 1992 the Nobel Prize for Chemistry and it's basically dissipative chemistry but she's also a big she's also been working together with Kober and she's

also a big defender on free copyright issues so I came to know her and Isabel Stengers she's a fabulous scientist, well she was telling me about science, because we were talking about science, basically there are two things that are called science and she says one thing is called science and this is

the thing that wins the Nobel Prize this is where she is and then there's another thing that is called science and this is the one where the industry is into and where there's all of the huge money into she doesn't have any money and she's not publishing very much because she's only doing some sort

of research that cannot be applied to industrial production to any sort of, it's another sort of research, this is also science so it's the same now, it's the same like with music it's the same like with art I think the main diversification is between if it is industrially produced and if the demand

for it is driven by a lot of advertisement and a lot of money that is put into it and the other thing is the thing that is produced because the society needs it, actually, but nobody wants it, who has money and these are the two things so you cannot say science does this and art does this it's the

diversification basically between these two things and this is what she had been telling me about science I'm not a scientist but I know that they have the same problem, they also have these two fields and this is the same in art, it's the same in music so I don't think that you can it makes no

sense to put brackets on things that actually don't even play in the same system they don't play in the same system they are just used by these people who have to defend their privileges and they use these other people but for us it makes no sense even using these other groups because this is

producing in such other ways a music piece by Madonna is not produced in the same way as Christian is producing it, but it's far more produced in the same way like the shoes from Bata are produced, things like this so these are the groups and not music and science but I wouldn't make the difference

between, ok, that's the big thing, there's the demand there's the market no, there is no demand, I say it's not demand the demand is created and I think I'm talking about the thing no, it was just a clarification I'm not talking about that there is a demand for these other things I say there is a

demand to make a demand these are the things that have huge lots of advertisements so that everyone thinks he or she needs it and these are the huge industrial productions I understood that I think one has to differentiate between not between the size basically but between maybe on one end of

artistic or industrial production it's prototypes that are made that's probably something that is also similar to what CERN does and so that's basically the label and even if it's not the single scientist whose name is up there it's on the list but it's CERN and that's something that artists don't

have and it doesn't matter how big in the business they are I think that's why there is an alternative model and that's why I'm very much sympathetic with what you said but do you have an idea how that would be possible? we are living in a world where an artist is recognized by must be recognized by

something in the science world as I understood you CERN is putting out certain results which are long term researches and then people get into their organization for a certain time so they are being recognized and they can always say I'm a CERN artist we can't really do that or how could that be

organized? just practically nice

wish but how? I don't know you can say you are a Sony music artist it's the same that's

this electron yeah

we are working on future energy systems so there are lots of companies so it's the same as if you say you are a Sony music artist so you can say you are a scientist but if you say you are a Sony music artist you are not there

it's all done over you know Madonna puts a record out there are hundreds of people involved in that they need a label and to put Madonna on it is the same thing as putting on Pfizer is putting out a new medication against this and this or CERN is putting out a new result on this and this yeah, this

is the same and

it's basically the same as if Cornelia says it's Cornelia Zollfrank who developed that or it's not her scale wise it's a difference but that's all why do you need recognition?

what I meant was something to be to be identified with otherwise it's not it would be my private thing that I could you know, then I would be the composer who is sitting in the room and who is saying I want to compose for myself and it's disappearing in the no, the work doesn't disappear but you

disappear the

work disappears the work is still there yeah, I agree at least in order to make it possible to talk about it that's for me actually one of the basic ideas why I tend to love to have an author if it's a group of people which is also interesting in an art group there are groups of people who are doing

production at a given level and then at least you have somebody you can ask like, why are you doing it? what are you doing? is it development? or does it just stay I think the biggest thing is to connect it to ownership I mean, there's no need to connect authorship to ownership it's just something

which happens quite often but not necessarily and I think this sort of brings up a little bit but you said that you need you want an index of something does it have to be no, I want a person but that's an index to the work that's an index to the work does it mean recognition to the artist? it means

recognition in a way that somebody is asking me what I'm doing I'm

in the need of expressing myself and I'm in the need of thinking over what I do that's a good question that's a good question just

being addressable last night we were talking about the case about a case that happened to NetHive so somebody wrote a script taking the NetHive hostings the main list, NetHive and putting them on the blog an anonymous person on an anonymous I mean, you can't look up the URL who owns the domain and

find out that an anonymous person great service, beautiful they wanted to talk to that person and just say thank you and could you please change it a little bit it wasn't possible because the person wasn't there the person is not addressable and that's the thing with being able to ask why did you do

it? can I learn from you? where are you situated? in science there's a system of having footnotes where you get your sources from that's not for commercial reasons so people who are mentioning the footnotes get a raise in the salary but it's to make them addressable you can go to the sources that

you're currently reading down all the way as far as you like and it creates a knowledge space a space of reference a network of things built on top of each other and I agree it doesn't have to be connected to control over the work to being able to exclude others from using the work all the things

that are connected to attribution of authorship in the current system of the intellectual property that can be disconnected in authorship there are meaningful functions for the system of reference I

think

it's time to end are you bored already? no? ok, shall we go on?

questions questions

questions

questions Hollywood films that are now, in the moment, advertised for. So these are always also the movies that are the 10 most demanded. This is what you said yesterday. Not just about the mainstream movie or not. Why is that movie and not just other mainstream movies? I think that all of these

problems that we have in copying or not copying or piracy or things like this would be easily solved if there would be no advertisement at all. I guess this is really, and that's one big step, and if I would talk about Brazil and I would talk about this new thing that Sao Paulo had been doing, and

they had been banning all of the advertisements from the street. This is the first good step to do. But, I mean, afterwards, and if you are there now, you see all of these empty billboards, yes? Just a month ago, they banned advertisements in the street. They have these huge billboards, you know,

they always had these huge billboards where there was all of these things, and now they are empty. It looks so fun. And they just banned it because they said it's for traffic reasons, for traffic security. So this was the argument. But actually, it's the first step. I think it's closed communication

in a way. It would be cool to make our own information, our own logins, and say something that is really interesting. Yeah, but then we can use... Yeah,

for example. And if there's no law, which is actually then afterwards hindering you, then all of these sort of things would start, which were already in Rome, like making these sort of things on the wall where you say, I'm here. But now it is controlled, now it is sorted, all of these

advertisements. I mean, I don't know how much in a Hollywood movie it really goes into advertisements, but it's really a percentage of the whole movie. So I mean, all of this, and the same with music. It's really money. And it's the same with all of the clothes. I mean, you don't have to only talk

about the things that can be downloaded and burned onto CDs, because it's the same with designer clothes. I mean, basically nobody would need them, but naturally if you give someone a Grameen Bank grant, he could either buy a CD burner, he could also buy a sewing machine, and could sew all of these

illegally produced things that ask, like all of these T-shirts with Lacoste or Benetton on it or so. And this also makes the same profit. But it only makes the profit because between the real value of the thing and the estimated value, because all of these advertisements, it makes it totally

special. It's such a high thing. The funny thing is the only thing in all of these things that are also produced illegally, but don't need any advertisement, is drugs. This is really funny, because drugs is really the thing that without advertisement is somehow socially needed, I think. But all of

the other things are not really socially needed, because actually nobody needs a Benetton shirt more than a shirt without a Benetton on it. But you just pay more for it, so you would either produce this, and this is the same with all of these music films and things. So actually... Yeah,

but the funny thing is this somehow seems to function in the Internet a little bit, because they already built up some of these stars. This seems to function somehow in the Internet, because there are some of these stars already built up in the Internet that somehow just came out. Also street styles

and things are a little bit more spreading. It seems to function more than in other media, and more than in other, because it's so cheap, and you reach so many people. Before, when you had to print a magazine to make demand for something, this was really expensive. I mean, I'm printing a magazine

still, because I like everything that is touchable, but still I see that there is a possibility.

I don't know. No.

I'll pose the question again. The idea is that there are these demands which are totally built from mainstream media, because our industry is... Do you think that artists can work on demand as well, so not working anymore on creativity, which we don't know what that is. These are the demands.

Thinking how to...

This

is the need for people to talk about some issues. Maybe also the conference we are discussing right now.

Maybe piracy and piracy are working creatively and collectively.

The whole piracy is not just one way of maintaining the market. They are, in a way, dealing creatively with the demands. Yes, I think so. I hope that will be done a lot in the future. Definitely. There should be a lot of initiatives in that direction.

Because that's the focus of the media. If you can work on demand, or what people want, you are no longer a small author, but a big author, because you are, in a way, in the hooks of this world.

Thank you. So we all need a beer now. Yes, we need a beer.

Thank you.

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