PARADOXES OF COPYRIGHT

Week 8: 17 - 21 Feburary, 2025

Location: ZT 5. K111

Abstract:

Contemporary art’s relation to copyright is paradoxical. Copyright gives artists a claim of ownership over their own work. Yet, it enforces a type of individual original authorship that poorly fits contemporary artistic practices, which are often collaborative, generative, and building on the works of others. Since Dada, many avant-garde movements intended to undermine the notion of artistic control and originality. At least since the 1960s, numerous artists and activists have explored this paradox in their works, coming into conflict with copyright, exposing the weakness of its conceptual foundations in the digital domain, instigating collective practices and, recently, through blockchain-based mechanisms (NFTs) pioneered notions of “ownership” that seemingly abandons copyright entirely. In this module, we approach copyright not as fixed legal system, but as a contested cultural domain, in which artists play a key role in developing new models for 21st century. We will focus on artists such as Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons, Richard Prince, Cornelia Sollfrank, Elaine Sturtevant, and on movements such as “copy-left”and look into the strange case of the model Emily Ratajkowski who sold ownership rights to an image of herself she probably doesn’t own. We will also look at the rise (and possible fall) of NFTs as the latest incarnation of the paradoxes of copyright.

Course requirements:

Attendance (80%)

Participation in reading & discussions
Creation and presentation of a “work” and a reflective work.
- Create a work (textual, audio-visual) that constist to a large degree of third party material, you consider as a work of your own.
- Write short text about how you made this work and what makes it your own.

https://pad.vmk.zhdk.ch/paradoxes_of_copyright_fs25

Morning

Introduction

Would you sign this letter?

Open Letter: Cancel the Christie's AI Art Auction. 8 February 2025
Christie's: Augmented Intelligence Online Auction. 20 February – 5 March
Christie's: What is AI Art?
Nelson, George. 2025. “Thousands of Artists Demand Christie’s Cancels AI Art Sale: ‘AI Models Exploit Humans.’” ARTnews.Com (blog). February 11, 2025.

Copyright as Idea and Law

Background: History of Copyright Wikipedia

Ulitarian vs author rights argument

ArtI.S8.C8.1 Overview of Congress's Power Over Intellectual Property (1789) (US Congress)
Diderot's Letter on the book trade (1763) (PRIMARY SOURCES ON COPYRIGHT, 1450-1900), Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers (1751–1772)

Swiss Copyright law

Bundesgesetz über das Urheberrecht und verwandte Schutzrechte

Art. 2: “Werke sind, unabhängig von ihrem Wert oder Zweck, geistige Schöpfungen der Literatur und Kunst, die individuellen Charakter haben.”

Art. 6: “Urheber oder Urheberin ist die natürliche Person, die das Werk geschaffen hat.”

Art. 10: “Der Urheber oder die Urheberin hat das ausschliessliche Recht zu bestimmen, ob, wann und wie das Werk verwendet wird.”

Art. 11: Der Urheber oder die Urheberin hat das ausschliessliche Recht zu bestimmen; (a) ob, wann und wie das Werk geändert werden darf.

Afternoon

Defining the edges of copyright: When a photo is not “individual”

Gisela Blau: Bild von Christoph Meili, 1997
Bundesgrichtsurteil: Gisela Blau Guggenheim vs BBC, 19. April 2004
Lichtbildschutz, URG Revision, 1. April 2020 (Artikel 2 Abs. 3bis)

Can a non-human be an author?

Animals

Wikipedia Animal Made Art

The Monkey Selfie (2011-2017) CaseText: Naruto v. Slater, Case No. 15-cv-04324-WHO (N.D. Cal. Jan. 28, 2016)

Fobar, Rachel. „A Person or a Thing? Inside the Fight for Animal Personhood“. National Geographic, 4. August 2021

Grundrechte für Primaten Initiative Basel-Stadt, 02.2022

Machines

Recker, Jane. „U.S. Copyright Office Rules A.I. Art Can’t Be Copyrighted“. Smithsonian Magazine (March 24), 2022.

Künstliche Intelligenz: Können KI-Tools Urheberrecht verletzen? Institut für Geistiges Eigentum, Bern (02.2023)

Wem gehört das Gedicht, das Chat-GPT geschrieben hat? Das sagen die Gesetze, NZZ (29.04.2023)

Bundesministerium der Justiz (DE).Künstliche Intelligenz und Urheberrecht - Fragen und Antworten(März 2024)

The twisted case of Emily Ratajkowski

How many layers of copyright infringement are in Emily Ratajkowski’s new NFT? The Verge, 21.03.2021
Emily Ratajkowski Buying Myself Back When does a model own her own image The Cut, 15.09.2020

Group Reading

Barthes, Roland. 1967. “The Death of the Author.” Aspen, 1967.https://www.ubu.com/aspen/aspen5and6/index.html
Foucault, Michel. 1968. “What Is an Author?” PDF
Woodmansee, Martha. 1992. “On the Author Effect: Recovering Collectivity.” Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal 10: 279–92 PDF
Ortland, Eberhard. 2008. “The Aesthetics of Copyright:” In Proceedings of the XXII World Congress of Philosophy, 227–32. Philosophy Documentation Center. https://doi.org/10.5840/wcp22200811225 PDF

Stalder, Felix. 2014. “Urheberrecht - Wenn das Recht kunstfeindlich wird.” Kunstbulletin, 2014. PDF

Kunstfreiheit.ch

Rethinking Copyright and Authorship under the digital Condition

Free Licenses, Copyleft and Creative Commons

Free Software Foundation. What is Free Software?

GNU General Public License

CreativeCommons

Digital Commons

Creating Commons

Dulong de Rosnay, Melanie, und Felix Stalder. „Digital Commons“. Internet Policy Review 9, Nr. 4 (2020).

Stalder, Felix, und Cornelia Sollfrank. „Introduction“. In Aesthetics of the Commons, herausgegeben von Cornelia Sollfrank, Felix Stalder, und Shusha Niederberger, 11–38. Zurich / Berlin: Diaphanes, 2021.

Blockchain & NFTs

Stalder, Felix. „From Commons to NFTs: Digital Objects and Radical Imagination“. Makery (31.01), 2022.

Jean-Luc Godard: »It’s not where you take things from - it’s where you take them to.« source

The Pictures Generation: Playing with authorship as a post-modern strategy

Crimp, Douglas. 1977. Pictures. New York City: Artists Space. Entry on Monoskop.org read p. 3-5

Elaine Sturtevant (1924 – 2014)

Wikipedia entry
Artnet Entry
Introduction to Elaine Sturtevant, The Museum of Contemporary Art, 2015, 3 Min
“Hans-Ulrich Obrist in Conversation with Elaine Sturtevant.” 2008. https://032c.com/magazine/elaine-sturtevant
Lobel, Michael. „Sturtevant: Inappropriate Appropriation“. Parkett, 2005. [PDF
Heartney, Eleanor, and Eleanor Heartney. 2014. “Re-Creating Sturtevant.” ARTnews.Com (blog). November 1, 2014. https://www.artnews.com/art-in-america/features/re-creating-sturtevant-63492
Phelan, Richard. 2015. “The Counter Feats of Elaine Sturtevant (1924-2014).” E-Rea, no. 13.1 (December). https://doi.org/10.4000/erea.4567

Jack Goldstein

Luise Lawler

Sherry Levine

Richard Prince

Cowboys, 1989, Untitled (Cowboy): Behind Richard Prince's Photographs & Appropriation, Time Magazine, 2016, 14 Min
"Canal Zone." Gagosian Galery, 2008
Patrick Carriou. 2000. Yes Rasta.
1. Trial: Leigh Anne Miller (2011). Judge Rules Against Richard Prince in Appropriation Case Art in America (March 22)
Appeal: Prince vs. Carriou, The question of fair use The ‘Transformation’ of Fair Use After Prince v. Cariou 2014

Goldsmith, Kenneth. 2012. “Richard Prince’s Latest Act of Appropriation: The Catcher in the Rye.” Poetry Foundation

New Portraits Gagosian Gallery 2014
Review of New Portaits. Brooklyn Rail, 2014
Richard Prince Disowns His Ivanka Trump Portrait, Possibly Increasing Its Value. Hyperallergic, Jan. 2017

Prince on Ubu.com

Harrison, Nate. „The Pictures Generation, the Copyright Act of 1976, and the Reassertion of Authorship in Postmodernity“. Art & Education (blog), 2012. (archive.org) PDF

Fair Use (US Copyright)

Copyright and Fair Use (Standford Library): What Is Fair Use? | Measuring Fair Use: The Four Factors

Nate Harrison Can I Get An Amen?, 2004

Further Reading:

Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Pictures Generation, 1974–1984, 2009

Jerry Saltz Great Artists Steal, ArtNet, 2009

Evans, David, ed. 2009. Appropriation. Documents of Contemporary Art. London : Cambridge, Mass: Whitechapel ; MIT Press. Read Isabelle Graw. p.214-218

Replicas. Originality on Trial in and around Olivier Mosset’s Collection. 30.06 –29.10.2017. Musée Des Beaux-Arts, La Chaux-De-Fonds. Catalogue

Afternoon:

Work on Assignement

Cornelia Sollfrank and the net-art Generator

Net.Art Generator

Warhol's Flowers:

Patricia Caulfield Hibiscus Blossoms (1964) – Andy Warhol Flowers (1964) – Elaine Sturtevant Warhol Flowers (1967) – Cornelia Sollfrank. Anonymous Warhol Flowers (2004 -). OG flowers (2010-2021).

Legal Perspective, 2004

I don't know, 1968/2006

Kate Vass, Gallery Zurich

Readings Net.Art Generator:

Sollfrank, Cornelia, and Winnie Soon. 2021. Fix My Code. Berlin: EECLECTIC. Introduction & Chapter 3, Ebook Creative Commons: Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Jacob Lillemose. 2009. Keep on Generating. On Cornelia Sollfrank's Multiple Authorships. In: Himmelsbach, Sabine (ed) Expanded original: Cornelia Sollfrank [anlässlich der Ausstellung “Cornelia Sollfrank. Originale und Andere Fälschungen”, Edith-Ruß-Haus für Medienkunst, Oldenburg, 24. Januar bis 19. April 2009]. Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz.

Sollfrank, Cornelia. 2010. Anonymous Warhol Flowers: Urheberrecht als Material und Gegenstand der Kunst. Irights.Info