intellectual property

This is a very interesting subject to me, i'm also an artist working with stencils among other things and i too want to make art available to anyone. I'm still in artschool for a few more days and we're having an exhibition with the class at a gallery in town. Whilst most of the others are mostly talking about selling their art or going to other more fancy artschools and making a big career with a nice income of their art i don't really like the idea of that. Sure, if someone wants to pay me to do something that can be awesome but i wonldn't ever either do a job for anyone/-thing i can't stand for.
At this current exhibition most of the class show things they hope to sell, they are very careful with it and don't want anyone to come near (the way it often is) and their work can only be seen when the gallery is open.
Before the exhibition i was thinking a lot about what i wanted to show and i have done some showable stuff like drawings and stencils etc but i felt the drawings doesn't belong in a gallery like that, not the ones i like the most (the ones from Rally that some of you have seen, for others it's around here somewhere) and the stencil work in a gallery instead of on a wall can be cool but it's been done a lot and is already accepted in gallerys but when some gallery visitor then leaves and sees something on a wall they still don't see that as art. Besides i find that most of the people that's interested in streetart stuff is rarely very comfortable in a white cube gallery. What i winded up with is that i did the oposite of showing streetart in a gallery; i took a big canvas (3,5-4 meters) and put it up outside the gallery between two trees. This way it's there all hours and visible to anyone walking by. It's empty, so if someone would want they could easily paint something on it (i'm horribly tempted to but that's not what this piece is about so i can't) but still after four days it hasn't been touched. I find that very interesting and am very curious to what will happen to it.
To make the work more complete i inside the gallery, in a window from where you can see the canvas, put a stack of white stickers. No notes on taking one or not but hopefully some people will dare to take one and place it somewhere. I was also supposed to write a text about my work to publish along with everyone else in a folder and after a lot of thinking i found that i have to leave it blank.
So i have all these thoughts but i doubt a lot of people will understand it and most probably won't even understand that it's part of the exhibition. This might seem strange, to have a message but to not tell about it, but i've been thinking about it a lot and in a real streetart situation there is never a note telling you what it means.
So it's very contemporary and conceptual wich of cause brings me a bit back into the 'real' artworld but i want to open up the artworld and share it with everyone. This way of working will probably never gain me a lot of cash but i've commen to find that i will rather wait tables or something to get some needed money (or rather squat and dumpsterdive, that'd be the best of cause) then to compromise on my art. I know not everyone likes my art but not everyone have to, i will still try to make it available for those who want to take part of it.
And if anyone wants to take part of it i can push for you to buy an anarcho-punk t-shirt! No money for me but for AP
Sorry about the long post, can't keep it any shorter then this since it's something i'm currently thinking about all the time, trying to find my place in the world of art. Maybe i can sum it up in that i don't like it when someone has used my tag but they can go ahead and write their own tags on my canvas that i provide for all and if i put something out there anyone can take part of it for free. If anyone would want to use my stencils it could be cool depending on wich ones i think, some i would be not so comfortable with others using but the very same ones i have painted on paper and given away to others to put up where they want, if they want so i don't keep it to myself. Ask me and you will get a few but don't make lousy copys. Hope this answers your questions a bit about my thoughts on the subject, curious to hear from others too.

 

"Yes this painting is valued at 22 million euros"
"What exactly is it?" asks the potential customer staring at a very very large blank canvas
"Well this is my interpretation of a huge pile of hay that has been sowed and reaped by a peasants anarchist collective with the sweat of their brows and the strength of their hearts" says the artist in his most passionate speel
"Well I don't see anything....." the patron states bewildered
"Thats because a Burgouisie herd of cattle has devoured it unto themselves!!" he cries with indignation
"Sold......" whispers the patron, still staring at the blank canvas

 

Haha yeah well if i get more questions about my blank canvas then i want to answer i can always tell them that's what it is

 

good then use it as a stepping stone towards quitting.

 

It's a folkhögskola, a sort of public school without any grades, not very fancy but more for preparing for higher art educations. Can't be kicked out for bad grades when there are none Could get kicked out for not being there enough but for that it takes a lot, or for druguse at school (but what they don't see is obviously not a problem). Got a warning that they might kick me out and file a police report cos i got fucking mad at some students trying to be so highclass cultural and dissed me so bad, screamed a bit and threw a cup but i guess that wasn't really punk enough, only almost

Glad you like it! It has messed with people's perception and i hope there are people having gotten something to wonder about. I'm taking pictures almost every day so when the project is done i'll put some up here to show what happened.

I know the feeling of being fucking broke, good for me i don't smoke!

 

Wow that sucks! At least we don't have any campus to live on so i don't have room mates to rat me out. I've heard people say i've changed a lot this year from the first (it's two years) but i think the difference lies in that i the first year was completely stoned every day...
Yeah we have free universitys but i have to take students loans to pay my rent and food and stuff so it's still a bit costfull to study when not having money, but it's ok. If i would have to pay to study too, that'd be impossible.
Really nice stencil drawings! Have you cutten them out and sprayed them?
There's a couple of pictures of mine in the creative section, the one i like best isn't there anymore tho since it apparently was censured from photobucket.

 

Uhm getting back to intellectual property and the free spreading of said property, check out the CC-license. I think the URL was something like www.creativecommons.com or something. An example of what a CC-license is can be found on this very site: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3211
And yes that was a shameless plug for 'Rally' as well

 

I know! No shame here...

 

How do you own an idea? How to you own knowledge? I actually saw a sign yesterday at a church with a quote that explains intellectual property perfectly. "A flame does not dim when it lights another candle"

You loose nothing if someone reproduces something you just happened to come up with first. You may loose a monopoly on selling what you can create from that monopoly, buy you have no right to limit the other persons labor to create what they want from the idea or knowledge they obtained from what you created.

 

I think that is the crux of the problem. Current society values the intellectual rights as such because it is based on monetary recompense for use of the intellectual property. If you designed something (and it was your means of survival/life/income) how would it be if someone came along and didn't pay you, so you essentially went without a wage. I am all for paying the artist (whether it be fine art/music/literature/engineerng etc for what they have created) what I object to is the coporate robbery that happens, where corporations don't pay the artist truly what they are entitled to.

 

CCL offers an alternative. You hold all rights and can still sell those rights separately to say... Fox Films, while a site like this can use the Creative Commons License to just credit you and distribute it for free and freely. You OWN the rights, but give other people the chance to escape the trappings of copyright.