I think the discussion right now is in the wrong arena – copyright or CC, Fair Use or piracy, this is what big companies should worry about, not artists. Artists should raise questions around if you release the full high-resolution or lower-resolution under CC, or whether you allow people to exhibit the video or do you sell the exhibition rights separately - I think these are the models that are different for each and every one of us, potentially for each and every art work. - Nathaniel Stern

The following is the second half of a two-part interview with the iCommons Artist in Residence coordinator, Nathaniel Stern. Read the first part here. In this post we speak specifically about the concerns of professional artists vis-a-vis copyright or CC.

Art Fag City: So we've talked a little bit about the prints. I should note that you also make videos, which are on your site as well, before we move on so readers will know to check that work out. I wondered if you could talk about your connection with Creative Commons.

Nathaniel Stern: Admittedly, it’s by default that I've become a bit of an iCommons activist. I was one of the few people who had a blog in South Africa - now there's many, but I was one of the earliest ones there and certainly the first in the art world - and it was under Creative Commons, so I was contacted by the South African CC team early on. Since then, I've become an impromptu spokesperson for them on some level and I've tried to direct that dialog not only toward my personal interests but also the interests of professional artists more generally.

I guess I have two main themes with regards to Creative Commons: the first is that I want to ensure that we make work that's free and available in the public domain for remixing and playing and generating discussion, but that's not exploitative of artists. And so with this, ideally, I guess I'd like to see Fair Use expanded exponentially and I see various CC licenses as doing exactly that. With issues of distribution I guess I like to differentiate between ‘art’ and the art’s ‘content’ - the former is for collectors and the latter is free: I think it should be available to everyone.

I believe, for example, that you should be allowed to download and play with my video art; I give away files for my prints, they are available on my site - not at super high res, but high res enough that you could print them out or re-mix. I think it’s important that they are out there. That’s the art’s content, not the art itself.

From my perspective, with Walter Benjamin‘s "Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," he was right in saying that potentials for easily copying work changed the relationship we have to art objects, but he was wrong in saying that the more copies, the less the authentic original has value: it's exactly the opposite - the more people that have posters of the Mona Lisa, the more collectors will want the original; the more people that watch my video on their home computers, the more value the signed and numbered DVD will have to the collector.

AFC: Absolutely.

NS: And so I'm trying to find new ways of convincing collectors of that. Because they believe it when it comes to photography, which took a long time, and we need the same understandings for new media. Clive Kellner, the curator who bought "step inside" for the Johannesburg Art Museum, once had a debate about this with me, because he said I couldn't distribute the software once they purchased it; and I said, "they may have the software, but they don't own it" - they can watch it, they can play with it, but you have the rights to it, you have the artwork itself, they only have its content. The more people that have this, the more the piece in the museum increases in value. I want to change that discourse. I want to make sure that we can talk about and remix and distribute art to our heart's content, and still have the ability to see the value of the original (or at least the ‘authenticated’ piece).

AFC: I guess I was just wondering whether you had specific ways of doing that?

NS: Well, you can't really see the direct impact of someone seeing a poster and therefore immediately going and buying a work, but there are implicit connections; I have this blog, I upload my stuff to Flickr under Creative Commons, I write about other people's work as well as my own work - indirectly my name and work has gotten out there, and is being talked about. It's exactly how we met, it's exactly how I met the people at Creative Commons and iCommons, and it's where most of my non-South African exhibitions come from. And none of my work has any less value because I have CC lower resolution versions of it online – I think it’s had quite the opposite effect through that indirect relationship of exposure and dialogue.

I think the discussion right now is in the wrong arena – copyright or CC, Fair Use or piracy, this is what big companies should worry about, not artists. Artists should raise questions around whether you do the full high-resolution or lower-resolution under CC, or do you allow people to exhibit the video or do you sell the exhibition rights separately - I think these are the models that are different for each and every one of us, potentially for each and every art work. For example, I have distributed videos before as a podcast; so obviously that's free. So what I did when someone was interested in purchasing it, I gave them a certificate of authenticity, as well as some prints, and all the videos were pressed, screened and signed.

AFC: And so it's a package that you get, and it's an object.

NS: Exactly. There are still people out there that, believe it or not, buy CDs, because they like to have the packages. You know, there are still people that will spend $300 on a really good ballpoint pen.

AFC: People still buy books!

NS: People still buy books, present company included! And, I think we need to recognize that it's not necessarily at odds to both give away the content and sell the object. Art that is in the public interest can be distributed widely, and the same art can be a luxury item for sale.

AFC: Yes.

NS: I guess my other interest in CC is, going back to my role as an artist rather than as an activist – the particular modes of production. A lot of CC is either about distributing content that is educational, or about re-mixing, which usually defaults to music. And, you know, like MTAA say "we just give our work under CC as a gift;" but I'm also wondering about other uses, other production roles for CC.

Like for example, one of the main projects I'm doing in Croatia is my first in a series of what I call "sentimental constructions," which are abstract buildings made of rope, that are actually performed. So it might be a huge architectural structure, a literal wireframe, held up in the four corners by volunteers, as a public performance or intervention, somewhere outside a gallery space.
So the question might be, What does this have to do with CC?

AFC: Sure.

NS: And for me, obviously, there are aspects and interrogations about construction, architecture, space, and performance - but what changes the meaning of each performance is the site specificity. In Dubrovnik, it could be about facades or emptiness in relation to the tourism industry that’s been burgeoning there. While, when I try to do it in Joburg this September, it could be about disparity, and decay, and the homeless. So if I put the design of the project under open source and CC, and other artists start to perform sentimental constructions in their parts of the world, people might enter a much different kind of dialog, and it gives a shifting context. So, the important thing for iCommons is that it actually invites others to do something to, and with, the ideas, and it's less owned by artists and then remixed, and more of a collaboration between several artists at once.

AFC: Right, it's much more of a conversation.

NS: Yeah. I think the one problems I'm trying to resolve with it, is that a lot of artists, in the age of conceptualism, say, “Well, it’s his idea and that's the way he did, and I have to find a new way of playing with it” - that makes it a collaboration and a dialog instead of, saying, well, “Shit. I'm doing the same work as Nathaniel.” And that's where I'm still struggling – I need to make sure it’s seen as a collaboration, rather than as a call for participation. But, as you say, I want to open this dialog and I want to find other modes of production that say, ‘Why CC?’ that go beyond remix and Fair Use. Not that those aren't important discussions…

AFC: Hah. Those are really interesting questions….

NS: Well I think that's part of what this residency is about for me, and these are the two questions I want to explore most; even if we don't have any answer, I'd like to, as you say, dialog about it and see where it can take us. It’s to the credit of the iCommons organization that they’re giving us the space and support to see where these kinds of questions might lead.

Art Intercom is a six part series conducted by Art Fag City blogger Paddy Johnson, who will be interviewing the iCommons Summit Artists in Residence. In the weeks leading up to the Summit, interviews will be posted once weekly, profiling the artists’ work and describing their approach to Creative Commons licensing. The final artist to be interviewed next week is Kathryn Smith. Interviews include MTAA (part one and two), Joy Garnett, Jaka Zeleznikar, and Ana Husman.

tags: Dubrovnik Croatia culture art-intercom artists-in-residence summit07 nathaniel-stern net-art

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