Find an event
All rights deserved?
Info sharing-or piracy-is artists' and designers' bag.
In case you’re wondering, the bag pictured above, which was modified by Brazilian-born designer Bea Correa, isn’t a real Louis Vuitton. Correa “finds these bootleg purses in markets around the world and stencils on them to emphasize that they’re bootlegged,” explains Brandon Alvendia, who includes one of her Fakewear bags in “Fair Use: Information Piracy and Creative Commons in Contemporary Art and Design.” Alvendia curated the show for Columbia College’s Glass Curtain Gallery, where it opens Monday 1.
If you recall recent copyright disputes such as the U.S. Olympic Committee’s 2005 tussle with Improv Olympic—which was forced to change its name to iO—you can guess the consequences of Correa’s actions. Louis Vuitton sent her a cease-and-desist letter, ordering her to stop selling the knockoffs she’d labeled FAKE. “It’s funny because she’s not trying to pretend they’re [real Louis Vuitton] bags,” Alvendia says. “They’re totally, obviously not the bags.”
Alvendia, a Chicago artist who grew up on the North Side, sympathizes with those who criticize corporations going to ludicrous extremes in their fight against piracy. His Silver Galleon Press publishes texts with a “fuzzy” legal status, Alvendia tells us, as well as those clearly in the public domain. Alvendia also collects knockoffs, a few of which he displays in “Fair Use.”
But the show isn’t a protest against, say, the Recording Industry Association of America or Monsanto, which patents seeds. As viewers interact with art and design inspired by the conflict between authors’ and users’ rights, Alvendia prompts them to consider what happens “if ideas can be owned” and monetized. “At what point does that become detrimental to society?” he asks.
The curator, who cofounded the artist-run gallery artLedge while earning his M.F.A. at UIC, has compiled an impressive roster of artists—including Guy Ben-Ner, Seth Price and Siebren Versteeg—who address these issues. One of the most significant pieces in “Fair Use” might be the least prepossessing: Pratchaya Phinthong’s poster on blueprint paper, which bears only the text NO PATENT ON IDEAS. The Thai artist took the phrase from the title of a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote while serving on the U.S. Patent Board. “The whole premise of the show is embedded in this quote,” Alvendia says. In his letter, Jefferson disputes the notion that an idea can be “exclusive property,” portraying freedom of information as inseparable from “the fundamental right of education,” the curator adds. He finds it particularly appropriate that Phinthong’s text fades when it’s exposed to light, eventually vanishing. The poster itself is “just an idea; it’s not this thing that’s ownable.”
“Fair use” refers to situations when works may be reproduced legally. Alvendia’s also fascinated by “open source” strategies, which make a product’s plans or code available to anyone. (The term often refers to software; Mozilla’s Firefox browser is an example of open-source development.) Though Columbia balked at serving Superflex’s open-source beer, the college let students help the Danish collective construct its Copy Light lamps. The pieces, which illuminate the Glass Curtain Gallery, are made up of transparencies printed with photos of famous midcentury modernist lighting designs. Copy Light “empowers the user to make their own version,” says Alvendia, even though most modernist pieces created to make good design widely accessible now command prices few can afford. Columbia students also collaborated with Danish design firm TotemCollective on additions to the Original C Plus System, its open-source shelving and seating, which visitors can try out in the gallery.
While Alvendia acknowledges that having “open-source solutions to everything…might remove financial incentives” to develop new products, he cites Price’s and TotemCollective’s careers as evidence that free, easily shared products can promote an artist or designer’s more conventional commercial practice. So use closed-source Internet Explorer if you insist—Alvendia just hopes “Fair Use” keeps you from being a “passive consumer.”
Fair Use” runs through April 30 at Columbia’s Glass Curtain Gallery.
