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Cease and Desist: From the Law Offices of M.C Grosfischerplan

[Back story - Satire Alert set to ON]

The latest dispatch from the copyright wars:

Download C&D for Robert Hovden 2014

________________________________________________

 

 

M.C Grosfischerplan , Esq.

_________________________________________________________________

 

 

From:

The Law Offices of M.C Grosfischerplan

Butch Kills, NY 11101

[email protected]

 

1 December 2014

 

To:

Robert Hovden

School of Applied and Engineering Physics

Cornell University

271 Clark Hall

Ithaca, NY 14853-3501

c. XXX-XXX-XXXX

 

Re: Copyright Infringement

 

Dear Mr. Hovden:

 

I represent Ms. Joy Garnett, award winning painter and appropriation artist in the above captioned matter.

 

Ms. Garnett is the copyright owner of all rights under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976 (17 U.S.C. 101 et seq., hereinafter “the Act”) in and to an image entitled, “Laylah K.” (hereinafter “the Copyrighted Image”). The Copyrighted Image was adapted from a 1969 photograph of the renowned Palestinian Freedom Fighter Laylah Khaled that has been determined to be a public domain image and therefore not protected under U.S. copyright law. Furthermore, Ms. Garnett’s apparent use of a Creative Commons license for the digital reproduction of said Copyrighted Image on her website does not supersede her copyright, nor does it negate Ms. Garnett’s ability to exercise her rights with regard to the Copyrighted Image as enumerated in the Act.

 

The purpose of this letter is to inform you that your nano-etching entitled “Laylah K.” (hereinafter “the Infringing Image”), which is currently being displayed in the exhibition When Art Exceeds Perception hosted by Cornell University’s Jill Stuart Gallery infringes Ms. Garnett’s federal and state intellectual property rights, principally her exclusive rights of display, reproduction and right to make derivative works under Section 106 of the Act, despite the fact that the display of the Infringing Image, which is etched on “industry-standard silicon wafers”, is not remotely perceptible to the human eye, even with the use of conventional visual aids, and is, to all intents and purposes, invisible.

 

Additionally, a portion of the magnified reproduction of the Infringing Image appears on the Cornell Council for the Arts website on the announcement page for Biennial Projects, http://cca.cornell.edu/?p=projects, which lists the exhibition as open to the public through the fifteenth day of the month of December of this year. This use is also an infringement of Ms. Garnett’s rights as reserved under the Act.

 

The Infringing Image, described as a “nano-etching” (or “nano-lithograph”), knowingly infringes and takes as its own the principal figure in the Copyrighted Image, which is referred to in the press material for the exhibition (http://cacm.acm.org/news/180109-cornell-biennial-celebrates-nanotech-as-art/fulltext) as “the original image” and also as one of “several famous works of art”. Furthermore, the Infringing Image replicates the entire composition of the Copyrighted Image, though in a scale and format 500 times smaller than the eye can resolve, and five times smaller than the wavelength of light, and therefore invisible to even the conventionally aided eye under normal daily human circumstances. And yet, the Infringing Image takes too much.

 

It is well recognized that a change in the medium of expression cannot excuse the unauthorized use of a copyrighted image, even if under the circumstances that medium renders the image far from visible, and hence possibly non-existent, except in the mind of the would-be beholder. Where it is reasonable to consider the mind’s eye, (or the “Imagination”) as a “medium”, and memory a recording device, memory can be considered potentially infringing, even where the objects of its attention fly far below the radar of human perception.

 

Similarly, the fact that the unauthorized use of the Copyrighted Image cannot be justified as fair use under Section 107 of the Act, is supported by a long line of cases. Without going into great detail, suffice it to say that in no way can Mr. Hovden’s (hereinafter referred to as the Infringing Artist) use of the Copyrighted Image be considered a “legal” parody of Ms. Garnett’s work. Rather, as the U.S. Supreme Court recently stated in the case of Campbell v. Acuff Rose, “This is not, of course, to say that anyone who calls himself a parodist can skim the cream and get away scot free. In parody, as in news reporting... context is everything, and the question of fairness asks what else the parodist did besides go to the heart of the original.”

 

Whilst one recognizes that artists often pay homage to other artists, copying of this kind constitutes copyright infringement. You are simply sailing under the flag of “piracy”, taking verbatim, protected artistic expression. Making this pirated copy tiny, even utterly imperceptible, or perhaps not even inscribed as described (since there is really no way to know), does not make it okay.

 

Under the Act, Ms. Garnett has the right to request that you cease and desist from any further exhibition, display, sale or reproduction of the Infringing Image. Nevertheless, Ms. Garnett is willing, in this one instance, to forgo her right to an injunction, seizure of the Infringing Image and damages, to permit your creation of a derivative work on acceptance by you of the following terms and conditions in writing:

 

1.      In any and every display and exhibition, visible or otherwise, of the work (hereinafter “the nano-etching”), a credit or nano-credit on or next to the invisible derivative object will be provided as follows:

 

“Based on an original painting by Joy Garnett.

Copyright Joy Garnett, 2003"

 

2.      All other rights in and to the Copyrighted Image are expressly reserved. They may not be reproduced nor derivative works made, whether barely visible, invisible, or otherwise hardly in existence, without the prior written approval of Ms. Garnett.

 

3.      Two slides of the Nano-etching/lithograph, “Laylah K.”, will be provided to Ms. Garnett. If slides cannot be obtained, then miniscule digital files will be acceptable provided that proof is offered to show that these files indeed depict what cannot be seen by ordinary means.

 

In the interim, please see that references to the work and reproductions of it are removed from the Cornell Council of the Arts website and everywhere else.

 

Please note that this letter is without prejudice to Ms. Garnett’s legal and equitable rights and remedies, all of which are expressly reserved, should you fail to agree to the terms and conditions as stated above.

 

Sincerely yours,

 

M.C Grosfischerplan , Esq.

 

The Law Offices of M.C Grosfischerplan

Butch Kills, NY 11101

[email protected]

______________________________________

Addendum: "Rofl"

 via https://www.wired.de/collection/latest/robert-hovden-zeigt-mit-wissenschaft-die-grenzen-des-geistigen-eigentums-auf

Memphis Social (May 10-18) curated by Tom McGlynn

Video and objects from my ongoing unmonumental project will be included in ‘Memphis Social’; an unmonumental book will be made available to coincide with the exhibition, as well as a selection of unmonumental multiples. More info at http://unmonumental.org

 

Memphis Social
an apexart franchise exhibition

organized by Tom McGlynn for the Beautiful Fields collective

Click here to read the brochure. [PDF]
Click here to download map and schedule of events. [PDF]

May 10 - 18, 2013

Participating venues:
Caritas Village, The Cotton Museum, Crosstown Arts, David Lusk Gallery, Earnestine and Hazel's Bar and Grill, Jack Robinson Editions, Leadership Memphis, Memphis College of Art, Marshall Arts, The Russian Cultural Center, and Tops Gallery.

Opening receptions:
Friday, May 10
12-8 pm: South Main and Union Avenue art installations on view
5-8 pm: Memphis Social opening reception, Hyde Gallery at Nesin Graduate School, Memphis College of Art

Saturday, May 11
5-7 pm: Exhibition and reception at Marshall Arts
8-10 pm: U-Dig Dance Company Jookin' dance off and reception at Caritas Village

Sunday, May 12
4-6 pm: Drumline and band presentation at Crosstown Arts

Participating artists:
Merry Alpern, Ryo Arita, Doug Ashford, Joshua Azzarella, Will Boone, Suzanne Broughel, Bullet Space NYC, David Sanchez Burr, Dwayne Butcher, Jose Camacho, Brendan Carroll, Andrew Castrucci, Paul Castrucci, Closet Gallery Stockholm, Mike Cockrill, Lisa Dahl, Alex Dipple, Michelle Doll, Elizabeth Dorbad, William Eggleston, Brigitte Engler, Mitch Epstein, Rev. Howard Finster, Joe Fyfe, Joy Garnett, Matthew Garrison, Glen Garver, Lisa Gideonsson, Leon Golub, Max (Buck) Henri, Tyler Hildebrand, Stewart Home, Erin Jennings, Terri Jones, Jelle Kampen, Richard Kern, Eric Knoote, Alexandra Kostrubala, Scott Lawrence, Anthony Lee, Bachrun LoMele, Gustaf Londre, Jessica Lund, Norma Markley, Taylor Martin, Patrick McNicholas and One None Drums, Lester Merriweather, Christopher Miner, Tracey Moffatt, Haley Morris-Cafiero, Anthony Murrell, Greely Myatt, Laura Napier, Virginia Overton, Terri Phillips, Quimetta Perle, William Pope.L, Gunars Prande, Aviva Rahmani, Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook, Jack Robinson, Alexandra Rojas, Tim Rollins and K.O.S, Denis Romanovski, Kara L. Rooney, David Sandlin, Rob van der Schoor, Babette Shaw, Walter Sipser, Jared Small, Henry Speller, Nancy Spero, Mark Tribe and Chelsea Knight, Anton van Dalen, U-Dig Dance Company, Kara Walker, Martynka Wawrzyniak, Melvin Way, Aaron Williams, and Yurt City: Sheila Ross and Laura Ten Eyck.


A Franchise Program winning exhibition.

Curatorial Statement

Memphis Social draws upon a “social turn” in contemporary art and performance that has influenced curatorial criteria for some time now. In her 2006 essay, “The Social Turn: Collaboration and its Discontents,” art historian Claire Bishop critiques contemporary, “socially engaged” practices as being philosophically based in a neo-Platonic idealism which proposes ideal solutions that don’t reflect contingent reality.  She explains that this attitude generates, “homilies (that) unwittingly push us back towards a platonic regime where art is valued for its truthfulness and educational efficacy—not for inviting us to confront the more complicated considerations of our predicament.” Bishop observes how contemporary artists have responded to this tendency, writing, “Instead of extracting art from the ‘useless’ domain of the aesthetic and fusing it with social praxis, the most interesting art today exists between two vanishing points: “art becoming mere life or art becoming mere art.” While Bishop addresses artists’ strategies for making relevant work, the philosopher and cultural theorist Jacques Ranciere positions both artist and audience as “emancipated spectators” jointly escaping the hypnotic trap of the mediated spectacle. Ranciere suggests that we not merely react to what he calls “partitions of the sensible” that perpetuate a fractured sense of society, and that a refusal to do so might lead to a more profound experience of both aesthetics and ethics. Memphis Social seeks to combine, and critique, both of these ideas in an exhibition that examines how to present artwork that is truly socially engaged with its environment and audience. The project is a temporary intentional community of artists and cultural organizations gathered together to form a contingent society that addresses combined aesthetic and ethical concerns.

My experience curating Memphis Social has placed me unequivocally on the ground, tasked with negotiating both public and private concerns in presenting a show that mixes discrete works of art and social performance with community organizations in both institutional and non-institutional settings. This alternative model for an exhibition creates its own, often unpredictable, dynamic and I have needed to be ready with a contingency plan at every turn of events, often navigating the boundaries between the public and private. Maintaining this permeable grey area between private and public might be seen ineffective when attempting to initiate social movements or galvanize political change, but I have found it to be quite practical and humane in its open-ended and non-ideologically driven way of being. The risk of losing one’s private aesthetic stake is taken on the chance that its public enactment is integrally connected to its share, not in historical time, but in ethical contingency. The actual social can therefore be seen as differentiated and cohesive, not necessarily toward a historically determinist normalization, but toward an awareness of an organic continuum of both liminal and embodied agency.

While the balance between public and private has been important to my personal experience curating the show, it has also been a critical part of how the exhibition has come together in relation to its physical presentation. One of my goals in organizing Memphis Social has been to present a wide array of artists as a group ensemble in gallery spaces at the Memphis College of Art, and also individually in alternative locations and public spaces throughout the city. As curator I have worked to problematize “the partition of the sensible” head on by literally displacing many of the artists and their works to locations less ideologically determined than the typical institutional venues. These diverse locales include Marshall Arts, Caritas Village Community Center, and Crosstown Arts—an art center housed in an old Sears warehouse—and many of these locations feature new, site-specific work. Each of these organizations helps to focus social activity and serve communities in real need of coalescent civic centers. The curatorial intention behind presenting art, dance, and musical performance at these locations has been to augment what already takes place there and to offer an objective acknowledgement of their significance to the Memphis communities that they serve. In addition to these alternative spaces, the exhibition is also sited in specialized institutions such as The Cotton Museum, which was the location of the commodities exchange for the crop that defines the South in its agrarian economy and also links it, inescapably, to the history of slavery. The screening here of Kara Walker’s 2005 video 8 Possible Beginnings, along with a collection intervention by the younger, Memphis artist Lester Merriweather, brings to the fore (in this institutional partition) the explicit and implicit national assumptions of economics, labor, and race.

Other participants in Memphis Social such as Tim Rollins and Doug Ashford, represent artists responsible for setting the standard of socially inclusive presentations of aesthetics and ethics in their work as respective members of Group Material (1979-1996). An older generation of artists in the exhibition—Leon Golub and Nancy Spero—extrapolated idiosyncratic imagery from their social experiences in addressing the Vietnam War, Central American death squads, and contemporary feminism. Their work draws attention to what Ranciere has called “allegories of inequality” in social perception. Singular individual vision in the ensemble is represented by the work of the pioneering photographer William Eggleston, who has created a lyrical documentation of the remnants of the Old South in and around his home in Memphis. Younger artists in the show such as Mark Tribe and Chelsea Knight examine the contemporary social phenomena of militia groups in their collaborative work in progress, Posse Comitatus.

While rooted in Memphis, the exhibition brings together artists from such diverse backgrounds and experiences as Tracey Moffatt from Australia and Alexandra Kostrubula from Sweden, and presents the work of artist collectives such as Bullet Space from Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The nomadic nature of contemporary art is underscored by the inclusion of artists such as Virginia Overton, originally from Tennessee but currently situated in New York City, and William Pope L., born in New Jersey but now living and working in Chicago. For Memphis Social Overton is contributing a large site-specific work, which will be presented on a pair of outdoor billboards located across from Marshall Arts; a selection of Pope L.’s Failure drawings will be presented at the Hyde Gallery at the Memphis College of Art. Aviva Rahmani has charged her art with an environmental awareness in restoring wetlands habitats near her home in Maine. She brings this practice to bear in her participation in Memphis Social with a work that interprets the degradation of the Mississippi watershed. My own orientation in the Northeast has, to a certain degree, effected an itinerant defamiliarization and dislocation in my curatorial perspective in Memphis encounters. Artists based in Memphis such as Greely Myatt, Dwayne Butcher, Anthony Lee, and Haley Morris-Cafiero each in their own way interpret both the universal and specific aspects of the life in the city. Myatt is known for his public works that draw upon the history of art and aspects of folk culture. His Rockers sculpture, presented in Memphis Social at the Hyde Gallery, employs a ubiquitous signifier of Southern culture, the rocking chair, in a way that both charms and undermines viewer expectations. Dwayne Butcher also references Southern social stereotypes in his rhetorically succinct paintings like You Can’t Be The Fat Redneck Forever. Anthony Lee’s work, The Reclamation of Color, addresses shades of perception in skin tone colloquially used in the Black community to designate social status. Morris-Cafiero’s photographs such as Swing Set, also on view at the Hyde Gallery, examine the social dynamic of body image in contemporary culture. These artists’ works speak to the broad aim of the exhibition because of their ability to draw from localized experience without being limited to it. This “de-territorialization” of a sense of place in individual and collective experience is also an important subtext of Memphis Social.

Memphis is a place, which, like many others, becomes universal in its specifics. The city is a locale, vicariously known and practically experienced. It is important to the world at large that Memphis is a birthplace of the Blues, yet more locally, the blues still lives there. Its being the location of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination is significant to the wider public, but in a local context, the struggle for racial and class equality continues. Memphis Social is not ostensibly about Memphis, but the city as a specific environment has proved fertile ground to explore socially engaged artwork. The site of “the social” is a moving target that can pop up in the most unpredictable places. Organizing Memphis Social has taught me to re-orient my own position in ways I couldn’t have rightly mapped. The artists and cultural practitioners I have chosen as my guides to wend my curatorial way through Memphis Social play with sometimes blatant but often subtle relations of the aesthetic and ethical. The meaning of the exhibition is contained in their diverse experiences of these relations.

-Tom McGlynn (Beautiful Fields Collective) © 2013

2012-2013 Franchise Program Winner

Aaron Swartz: The world was a better place with him in it

Here's to Aaron Swartz.

An all-too-brief compendium:

BoingBoing
RIP, Aaron Swartz
Cory Doctorow at 4:53 am Sat, Jan 12

NYTimes
Internet Activist, a Creator of RSS, Is Dead at 26, Apparently a Suicide
By JOHN SCHWARTZ, January 12, 2013

Lessig Blog, v2
Prosecutor as bully
12 January 2013

ARTINFO
Remembering Aaron Swartz's Ethically Engaged Internet Art Collaboration
by Ben Davis, January 15, 2013

The Tech (MIT)
Aaron Swartz found dead Friday
Internet legend faced copyright-related legal issues before death
By Anne Cai and Deborah Chen, January 16, 2013

Time Magazine
Aaron Swartz’s Suicide Triggers Response from Top U.S. Lawmakers
By Sam GustinJan. 16, 2013

Boingboing
2600 radio tribute to Aaron Swartz
Cory Doctorow at 8:49 am Fri, Jan 18

Techdirt
Internet Freedom Day, Watch Aaron Swartz Explain How SOPA Was Stopped
by Mike Masnick, Fri, Jan 18th 2013

 

Support 'Artists in the Kitchen': a project for social change brought to you by With Food in Mind

A letter from Nicole J. Caruth, Founder and Director, With Food in Mind:

Dear family, friends, and colleagues,
 
I hope that those of you who live locally are on the mend from the effects of Hurricane Sandy. I send my thoughts to those throughout the metropolitan region who will be rebuilding for some time ahead. Hurricane Sandy’s destruction in the United States as well as in the Caribbean has shown just how important it is to have strong communities when we face challenges. I am writing today to ask for your help to create a program that serves communities in need.
 
In July, I launched the organization With Food in Mind, which creates projects at the intersection of food, visual culture, and social change. We have already had some exciting moments, including a drop-in workshop for children at Greening the City, an annual eco-art festival in Brooklyn. Artist Jenna Spevack taught children how to make mini arugula farms while community chef Melissa Danielle prepared a healthy and delicious arugula and watermelon salad for the children and their families. This event was a wonderful example of our mission and the types of programs we’ll continue to offer. Through dynamic learning experiences that combine art and food, we aim to cultivate future generations of art enthusiasts and healthier eaters.
 
In the next month I am working to raise $6,000 to pilot Artists in the Kitchen, our afterschool program for youth from low-income communities and communities of color. Statistics show that African American and Latino children not only suffer disproportionate rates of obesity but also lack access to arts education more than other groups. I believe that increased opportunities for food and art education are essential to combating these statistics. Artists in the Kitchen can do this. The program fosters learning and appreciation of the arts through the lens of food. It will teach children about palettes and palates at a crucial time in their lives—when their tastes are still developing. Please consider making a tax-deductible donation to help bring this program to fruition.
 
Donations will support the costs of our pilot program including: stipends for teaching artists, materials for the students, field trips to local museums and farms, and programs for parents. Our pilot will serve middle school students at the School for Democracy and Leadership located in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Crown Heights. Although this school has a kitchen and farm onsite, they lack teachers and funding to make adequate use of these facilities. I see a clear opportunity here for our organization to make positive social change.
 
Artists in the Kitchen is a fiscally sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Fractured Atlas requires me to raise $1,000 from individuals before I can apply for grants; we cannot meet our long-term goals without them. Just ten contributions of $100 can fulfill this prerequisite and allow us to access more funding opportunities. Sixty contributions of $100 will allow us to also launch Artists in the Kitchen. Your generosity can help us make a difference in young people’s lives and set them on the path to better futures. Any and all donations are welcome and greatly appreciated. Supporters will be listed on our website and in all of our materials.
 
Contributions for the purposes of Artists in the Kitchen are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law. Please make a donation here: http://www.fracturedatlas.org/s/campaign/693.
 
In addition to monetary donations, there are other exciting ways to support the project: Like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, and help us spread the word to your friends and colleagues.
 
Thanks so much for your support.
 
Yours,
Nicole

Migration of Objects Exhibition and Sal Randolph's Bureau of Unknown Destinations open 1/12 @ Proteus Gowanus

Alabaster urn (Egypt, ca. 1940s). One of a pair. H: 5-1/2"  W: 3-1/2"

 

Migration of Objects

and

Proteus artist-in-residence Sal Randolph's

Bureau of Unknown Destinations

January 12 - April 7, 2012
Opening reception: Thursday, January 12, 7-9pm

Proteus Gowanus
543 Union Street (at Nevins)
Brooklyn, NY 11215
http://proteusgowanus.org
718.243.1572

Gallery Hours
Thursday & Friday, 3–6 pm
Saturday & Sunday, 12–6 pm

Before Christmas, I received the following invitation from Proteus Gowanus:

Proteus Gowanus would like to invite you to consider submitting an item for our upcoming exhibition, the Migration of Objects opening in mid-January, 2012. Since September, the gallery has been engaging in an exploration of Migration. Art, artifacts and books have been collected that have focused on people and creatures, the mobile inhabitants of the planet. Now, for its second Migration exhibition, we wish to acknowledge the things that drive us onward in our migrations; the materials, tools, products, waste--the expressions of our culture or simply its substrate.

Do you have an object with a migratory story? These stories may intersect with your own or it may be a story of the object’s own history, a story that may have begun before the object’s encounter with you and that will likely continue long after you part. We are especially interested in these latter aspects of the objects’ stories. These stories may migrate into the economic, the industrial, the political, the historical, the geologic, the environmental and so on....

 

Here is my story: 

Alabaster urn (Egypt, ca. 1940s). One of a pair. H: 5-1/2"  W: 3-1/2"

In the house where I grew up there was a pair of alabaster urns from Egypt.  They belonged to my mother, Hoda, who was born and raised in Alexandria. They sat on a bookshelf along with other mementos from my parents' travels. Both urns been badly broken and glued back together....The urns came to New York with Hoda and her family on the SS Vulcania in April 1946, the first ship to sail from Egypt after WWII. Ten years later, Hoda met and married my father, and they traveled to Panama and Puerto Rico in the Navy. The urns traveled with them, packed in a rug. It was during this time that my father broke the urns: he snapped open the rug and they fell, smashing into 100 little pieces. He and my mother glued them back together....I never heard the story until a few months ago, when Hoda died. My father's younger sister came and told the story at the memorial service. She was only fourteen when my parents got married; she said the story of gluing the urns back together instilled in her a love for little things....The next day, I searched my parents' house and found the urns. They were in my old room and filled with pennies. I dusted them off and got rid of the pennies, and brought them home to Brooklyn. Pale and peachy, with spidery veins of dull yellow cement, they now sit on our mantlepiece with some other things, where they catch the midday sun.

More info:

The Bureau of Unknown Destinations is part of a three month artist’s residency by Sal Randolph at Proteus Gowanus, extending through mid-April. Proteus Gowanus is an interdisciplinary gallery and reading room located on the shores of the Gowanus canal in Brooklyn. Their yearlong theme is Migration.

For updates, events, and bureau hours visit unknowndestinations.org or contact bureau [at ] unknowndestinations [dot ] org.