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  • From: "Hervé Le Crosnier" <herve AT info.unicaen.fr>
  • To: "Hervé Le Crosnier" <herve AT info.unicaen.fr>
  • Subject: [cc-fr] Culture du mixage et copyright
  • Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2007 23:33:14 +0100






Bonjour,

Un article ironique publié ce jour dans le Guardian
devrait mériter un peu de votre attention.

Cory Doctorow, auteur de science fiction et animateur
du blog Boing-Boing publie une chronique de sa visite
au London's National Portrait Gallery, qui accueille une
exposition sur le Pop art.

Le "gang du cut-up électronique" dont parlait Claude Pélieu
se permettait de réaliser des "oeuvres" en mixant la culture
populaire : collages, détournements, sérigraphie sur des
photos célèbres.... La "culture du mixage" version années 60.
Warhol, Rauschenberg,... toutes oeuvres sous copyright,
interdites de photographie par tous ces amateurs, qui pourraient
rediffuser ces travaux "sous droits", voire pire, les
ré-utiliser pour faire des collages et des détournements.

Mais que vont devenir les droits d'auteurs des musées, des
zayant-droits ou des éditeurs de ces oeuvres de mixage ?
Le "mixage", c'était bon quand il n'y avait que quelques
spécialistes et des galeries d'art avisées. Mais quand tout un
chacun se mèle de détourner, raturer, reconstruire, se
ré-approprier la culture, où va-t-on ?

L'article de Cory Doctorow est ci-après, mais n'hésitez pas
à aller sur l'original, il y a une belle photo de Hergé et
Warhol en prime.

Hervé Le Crosnier

PS : Pour celles et ceux que l'anglais rebutte, j'ai participé
à la traduction d'une nouvelle de Cory doctorow... il n'est pas
trop tard pour en mesurer le sel, le poivre et le piment.
http://cfeditions.com/scroogled


-------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/nov/13/pop.art.copyright

Warhol is turning in his grave
-------------------------------------------------------------------

An exhibition of pop art at London's National Portrait Gallery
unwittingly celebrates a golden age before copyright was king

* Cory Doctorow
* Guardian Unlimited
* Tuesday November 13 2007


The excellent programme for Pop Art Portraits, the current exhibition at
London's National Portrait Gallery, has a lot to say about the pictures
hanging on the walls and the diverse source material the artists used to
produce their provocative works.

Apparently they cut up magazines, copied comic books, drew trademarked
cartoon characters like Minnie Mouse, reproduced covers from Time
magazine, made ironic use of a cartoon Charles Atlas, painted over
iconic photos of James Dean and Elvis Presley - and that's just in the
first of seven rooms.

The programme describes the aesthetic experience conjured up by these
transmogrified icons of high and low culture. Celebrated pop artists
including Larry Poons, Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol created these
images by nicking the work of others, without permission, and
transforming it to make statements and evoke emotions never countenanced
by the original creators.

Despite this, the programme does not say a word about copyright. Can you
blame the authors? A treatise on the way that copyright and trademarks
were - had to be - trammelled to make these works could fill volumes.

Reading the programme, you can only assume that the curators' message
about copyright is that where free expression is concerned, the rights
of the creators of the original source material must take a back seat to
those of the pop artists.

There is, however, another message about copyright in the National
Portrait Gallery: it is implicit in the "No Photography" signs
prominently displayed throughout its rooms, including one by the
entrance to the Pop Art Portraits exhibition.

These signs are not intended to protect the works from the depredations
of camera flashes (otherwise they would read "No Flash Photography").
No, the ban on pictures is meant to safeguard the copyright of the works
hung on the walls - a fact that every member of staff I asked instantly
confirmed.

Indeed, it seems every square centimetre of the National Portrait
Gallery is under some form of copyright. I wasn't even allowed to
photograph the "No Photographs" sign. A member of staff explained that
the typography and layout of the signs was itself copyrighted.

If true, presumably the same rules would prevent anyone from taking any
pictures in any public place - unless you could somehow contrive to get
a shot of Leicester Square without any writing, logos, architectural
facades or images in it. Otherwise I doubt even Warhol could have got
away with it.

So what's the message of the show? Is it a celebration of remix culture,
revelling in the endless possibilities opened up by appropriating and
reusing images without permission?

Or is it the epitaph on the tombstone of the sweet days before the UN
set up the World Intellectual Property Organization and the ensuing
mania for turning everything that can be sensed and recorded into
someone's property?

Does this show - paid for with public money, with some works that are
themselves owned by public institutions - seek to inspire us to become
21st century pop artists, armed with cameraphones, websites and mixers,
or is it supposed to inform us that our chance has passed and we'd best
settle for a life as information serfs who can't even make free use of
what our eyes see and our ears hear?

Perhaps, just perhaps, this is actually a Dadaist show masquerading as a
pop art show. Perhaps the point is to titillate us with the delicious
irony of celebrating copyright infringement while simultaneously taking
the view that even the "No Photography" sign is a form of property not
to be reproduced without the permission that can never be had.

· Cory Doctorow is a digital activist, science fiction author and
co-editor of the popular blog Boing Boing.



  • [cc-fr] Culture du mixage et copyright, Hervé Le Crosnier, 11/13/2007

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