Joined at the Hip? Context + Appropriation Revisited in Harper's

 
Above: Joined at the hip?

UPDATE, 1/26/07:
an interesting take by David Bollier in OnTheCommons.org, 1/25/07:
Authorship as a Collective Endeavor {scroll down to see excerpt}

Dear Readers,
The February issue of Harper's contains several articles that, taken together, stand as a fair use + creativity "package" or primer. It's not just the images above that are joined at the hip, but the equally defensible and conflicting positions maintained by their respective authors (full disclosure for those not in the know: that would be me and the photographer Susan Meiselas).

During the course of this morning, several blog posts have popped up with useful ruminations and recaps of the "Molotov" affair (scroll down).

Here are the three Harper's articles about context, creativity, and "plagiarism":

HARPER'S, February 2007 

p.53
Portfolio
"On The Rights of Molotov Man: Appropriation and the art of context" [PDF]
By Joy Garnett and Susan Meiselas 

{...This portfolio is drawn from their conversation at the New York Institute for the Humanities' "Comedies of Fair U$se" symposium, which took place last year at New York University.}

p.59
Criticism
"The Ecstasy of Influence: A plagiarism"
By Jonathan Lethem {Listen to interview on WNYC}

{Jonathan Lethem is the author of seven novels, including Motherless Brooklyn and You Don't love Me Yet, which will be published in March.}

a recap of Joywar via Rhizome.org :

Joywar in Harpers

Hey Rhizers.

Yup, check out the Feb 07 issue of Harper’s for a brief overview of "Joywar" from both Joy Garnett and Susan Meiselas's sides of the coin. Joy gives a big shout out to the list. (I'd post a link but it's not up yet.)

Also, the issue has a great article on "plagiarism" by Jonathan Lethem.

…old media thinking about new media ideas? rock.

For those unfamiliar, Joywar was a situation in which the artist Joy Garnett received a cease and desist letter accusing her of copyright infringement for a painting she had made based on a photograph she found on the Internet. Throughout the back and forth negotiations with the lawyer that followed, Joy was supported by the Rhizome community, who advocated on her behalf. Images that illustrate Joywar can be found at the following link:

http://www.newsgrist.net/joywar-index.html

Originally by M. River from Rhizome.org Raw at January 17, 2007, 07:38, published by Lauren Cornell

Posted on Thursday, January 18th, 2007, 8:37 am

Ruminations via Hungry Hyaena:

Creative Restraint and Responsibility: Artists, Documentarians and Copyright

Artist/writer/blogger par excellence, Christopher Reiger, whose blog, "Hungry Hyaena," is a staple on many art-blogrolls, emailed me earlier this week for permission (!) to use the Molotov image in a write-up of the Harper's piece...

I checked out his post this morning. He does a bang-up job of parsing the article and discussing the issues at hand. He quotes liberally from both the Joy/Susan piece and the Jonathan Lethem "plagiarism" piece, which is probably the funniest, most brilliant thing I've ever read (ever!).

Christopher also goes on to make connections that many people just can't manage to make. Of course, I agree with his conclusions: that not only is there room in the world for originals and appropriated works, and it is actually "our responsibility to honor both incarnations" -- this is important; but also the fact that we will also be responsible for context over time, and must become vigilant in that regard while remaining as open as possible to "transformative" uses, creative tangents, innovative twists, and emergent meanings.

Once again, props to Rhizomers, Joywar perps, etc., for there ain't no story here without them.

cheers,
Joy
NEWSgrist

...more from edward_winklman blogspot, 1/23/07:

Appropriate Appropriation

{check out the comments section...}

...and more from David Bollier's OnTheCommons.org, 1/25/07:

 
Authorship as a Collective Endeavor {excerpt}

[...]The core question for Garnett is "Who owns the rights to this man's struggle?" She writes:

Does the author of a documentary photograph – a document whose mission is, in part, to provide the public with a record of events of social and historical value – have the right to control the content of this document for all time. Should artists be allowed to decide who can comment on their work and how? Can copyright law, as it stands, function in any way except as a gag order?

Meiselas takes issue with Garnett, however, claiming that Garnett’s "practice of decontextualizing an image as a painter is precisely the opposite of my own hope as a photographer to contextualize an image…." Meiselas:

There is no denying in this digital age that images are increasingly dislocated and far more easily decontextualized. Technology allows us to do many things, but that does not mean we must do them. Indeed, it seems to me that if history is working against context, then we must, as artists, work all the harder to reclaim that context. We owe this debt of specificity not just to one another but to our subjects, with whom we have an implicit contract.

It's a fair enough response, as far as it goes.  But really – isn't a photograph, any photograph, itself a radical de-contextualization of its subject matter?  Can a photographer really believe that the context of his or her work can be preserved?  Doesn't the act of introducing something to the culture require a certain loss of control, and thus an acceptance of re-contextualizations?

It sounds to me as if Meiselas is belatedly trying to scramble to the moral high ground after her litigation gambit proved too incendiary.  Her copyright claims were trumped by the spontaneous acts of artists and revolutionaries everywhere.