Damn, it's Parody

DAM! aka Dyke Action Machine! is a public art project founded in 1991 by painter, designer and writer Carrie Moyer and photographer Sue Schaffner. Both Carrie and Sue are working artists who successfully use parody in the political art they create for DAM! From 1991 they postered New York City with culture jammer projects that combined Madison Avenue savvy with Situationist tactics. Their campaigns dissected mainstream media by inserting lesbian images into recognizably commercial contexts.

While questioning, through art, basic assumptions that one cannot be “present” in a capitalist society unless one exists as a consumer group, DAM! subverted the role of the advertiser to change existing mindsets. A typical DAM! campaign was comprised of 5,000 posters wheatpasted over the course of one month. Then as corporations and activists battled for dwindling public outdoor space, DAM! turned to other modes of propaganda (lightboxes, catalogs, matchbooks, buttons and stickers to name but a few) and other distribution channels.

Recent news, Paddy Johnson has given DAM! space for an advertising campaign at Art Fag City, which is one of the best art blogs here in NYC. Check out the "Steal This" part of the DAM! site, they have some great posters to download—and yes, it's legal and it's parody.

Illegal art #3

Here's an artwork where the author/artist used the legal system to create his work. In 1998, Kembrew McLeod trademarked the phrase "Freedom of Expression" and created a magazine with that title. He enlisted a friend, Brendan Love, to pose as the publisher of an imaginary punk rock magazine also called Freedom of Expression, whom he then pretended to sue. McLeod hired a lawyer and didn't let her in on the hoax. The lawyer sent a cease-and-desist letter to Love:

"We represent Kembrew McLeod of Sunderland, Massachusetts, the owner of the federally registered trademark, FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION ... Your company has been using the mark Freedom of Expression ... Such use creates a likelihood of confusion in the market and also creates a substantial risk of harm to the reputation and goodwill of our client. This letter, therefore, constitutes formal notice of your infringement of our client’s trademark rights and a demand that you refrain from all further use of Freedom of Expression."

Shortly thereafter, the Daily Hampshire Gazette ran an interview with McLeod. He played it straight, telling the paper, "I didn't go to the trouble, the expense and the time of trademarking Freedom of Expression just to have someone else come along and think they can use it whenever they want." Two years later, when McLeod asked to reprint the Gazette article in his book Owning Culture: Authorship, Ownership, and Intellectual Property Law. The paper denied him permission.



This recent ad campaign brings up another copyright query. Marilyn Minter on the left, new Lee ad on the right. You decide...

Appropriate Appropriation?

An exhibition I saw recently at Cheim & Read hosts recent work by London-based artist Paul Morrison. Morrison is best known for boldly graphic landscape paintings, wall drawings, sculpture and animations. his work brought up some of the "Fairey Use" issues we've been discussing but is so beautiful I didn't care at all. His work incorporates found imagery culled from various pictorial genres and different time periods; early botanical illustrations, Northern Renaissance woodcuts, and even Disney cartoons (Oh Fairey...) I especially liked the way he uses scale both in the works and in the installation. He also had an elegant blue moulin video, simultaneously soothing and slightly menacing.

Warholize me! Obamicon me! Sue me!

Copyright and Fair Use PARTS 2 and 3




"Steal this blog," or rather "Sue this Blog," might be where we're going next in the continuing saga of Fair Use. Copyright infringement lawsuits directed at bloggers and other online publishers are on the rise. According to the New York Times, the number of suits rose more than 500% in 2007. These legal disputes are symptomatic of the ease of “sharing” and the Internet’s link economy. Many web sites post excerpts from time to time, including this one. At what point does excerpting from an article become illegal copying?

The courts have not provided much of an answer. In the United States, the copyright law provides a four-point definition of fair use, which takes into consideration the purpose (commercial vs. educational) and the substantiality of the excerpt.

As Mr. Ardia, whose Citizen Media Law Project is part of the Berkman Center at Harvard Law School said, “New modes of creation, reuse, mixing and mash-ups made possible by digital technologies and the Internet have made it even more clear that Congress’s attempt to define fair use is woefully inadequate.”

For now, Web sites are defining it themselves. Sites like Alley Insider and The Huffington Post are ad-supported businesses that filter the Web for readers, highlighting what they deem to be the most meaningful parts of newspaper articles and TV segments.

The Huffington Post, co-founded by the author and columnist Arianna Huffington, is perhaps the star of the excerpting debate. Ms. Huffington’s editors are especially adept at optimizing the site for search engine results, so that in a Google search, a Huffington Post summary may appear ahead of the original article.

Read the full article in today’s New York Times, it is our future.

See Yourself as Others Sue You




Adding to this is the current rage for portraits "in the style of" that you can create yourself. There are thousands of sites today where you can have your snaphot turned into a "Warhol" for $69.95 canvas wrapped and like they say in the commercials "sofa-sized. " Or perhaps you would prefer an original "Fairey" courtesy of Pasteboard Magazine. To be continued...