copyright

The Commons

admin — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 14:23:30 +0000

Sub-Title

Through a series of distributed events the commons initiates ‘fieldwork’ in Liverpool, 'fieldwork' into the public realm, and issues of ownership, knowledge and creativity

End Date

1 Nov 2004

Start Date

1 Sep 2004

Location

The Liverpool Biennial

Body

Much of Liverpool is built upon a former commons

The commons are resources over which there are no legal right of exclusion; such as the air we breathe, the water we drink, the ideas we share through the languages we speak. Culture, and creativity itself can be thought of as a commons-based peer production.

The commons have been slowly depleted in Europe, since their legal formation in the middle ages. The drive to expropriate the commons, to convert resources into various forms of public or private property has accompanied state democracies as they rolled out ‘public’ projects, or followed the dominance of the ‘market’ as an ideological force.

Simply stated, property is created with the guarantee that an individual -or legally defined body- can exclude others from the use or benefit of that resource. The commons on the other-hand, are a collective resource over which we all have rights of access.

The historic idea of the commons has been re-animated through a recent corporate drive to expropriate knowledge as an intellectual property; throught the development of Free, Libre or Open Source software [FLOSS] to contest proprietory software; the defense of environmental and genetic resources against private interests, in fact through an extraordinary range of otherwise disparate spheres connected to the public domain.

As artists, we are frequently caught-up in processes of public celebration and ‘regeneration’ through the instrumental use of culture; or, encouraged through the traditional structures of arts distribution to restrict access to our ideas and products.

By animating a discussion located in the idea of the commons, we want to explore the structures and forces through which visual art and culture are made legible. The commons are not a universal value, but a contested set of expectations; the commons with its distributed events, are a vehicle for exploring those expectations.

All events start at 2pm. and last approximately one hour.

9th October 2004: 2.pm

The Civil Court in the newly restored St George's Hall (1854)
David Berry and Giles Moss from the Libre Society

St Georges Hall is one of the largest, and finest, neo-classical buildings in Britain; built to promote civic pride in a town (at that time) otherwise dominated by commercial architecture. The building contains Great Halls for meetings, festivals, exhibitions and concerts, but it also houses the magnificent Crown and Civil court.

A Civil Court dispenses justice based on Common Law, a judicial system founded on precedent and common knowledge

In the Libre Society manifesto (Item 4) David Berry and Giles Moss state:

"Unlike physical objects, concepts and ideas can be shared, copied and reused without diminishment. No matter how many people use and interpret a particular concept, the creators' use of that concept is not surrendered or reduced. But, much money is to be made when creative flows of knowledge and ideas become scarce products to be traded in the market place. Thus increasingly, intellectual property law is providing profiteers with vast accumulations of wealth. Indeed, immaterial labour (based on information, knowledge and communication) has now replaced industrial manufacture as the main producer of wealth in the age of technological capitalism."

Assemble at the front entrance near the statue of Lord Beaconsfield and you will be escorted to the Civil Court

St George's Hall is opposite Lime St Station

16th October 2004: 2pm

St John's Gardens (1904)
Jane Longmore, historian.

St John's Gardens is miraculously the only open space to have survived from the Great Heath, part of the extensive Commons which formed the east bank of the former pool, of Liverpool.

Jane Longmore is a historian working on the economic history of Liverpool in the, she has been interested in the ’primitive’ expropriation of common land during the 17th century to the current resurgence in public/private ownership and commons based resources.

How do we keep these forces in balance to ensure a richly creative culture and society?

Assemble around the statue of William Gladstone
St John's Gardens is behind St George's Hall and 3mins walk from Lime St Station

6th November 2004: 2pm

The only registered Commons in Liverpool, at Wavertree.
Activist Mike Lane of Whistleblower, followed by a tour of historic Wavertree by Mike Chitty of the Wavetree Historical Society

Mike Lane is a local activist and campaigner in Kensington one of the poorest areas of Liverpool. Kensington has been designated as a New Deal for Communities (NDC) zone and received £62 million in public money to help economically regenerate the area. Mike feels that this money is being used to slowly decant the working class community to enable the City Council and its private sector partners to complete the intended gentrification of Kensington.

Assemble near the Lock-up on the Common: a traffic island triangle bounded by the High Street, Mill Lane and

from Liverpool Town Centre 15min by bus no.
Information on Wavertree

13th November 2004: 2.pm

The Hornby Room of the Central Library (1875)
Colin Dyas, Development Manager of Liverpool Vision

The Central Library evolved from the Free Public Library established in Liverpool after The Public Libraries Act became law in 1850. The Act enabled local councils to fund a "Public Library or Museum of Art and Science or both" and for the first time, ordinary people could enjoy common rate-paid access to the world's storehouse of knowledge, art and literature.

Colin Dyas is Development Manager of Liverpool Vision an independent company established to bring together key public and private sector agencies to produce a strategy - the Strategic Regeneration Framework (SRF) - that guides the regeneration of Liverpool City Centre.

Assemble in the Hornby Room, off the Picton Reading Room in the Central Library.
The Central Library is on William Brown Street 4 min walk from Lime St Station, between the Walker Art Gallery and Liverpool Museum

The events are archived at the commons, for more information on the Biennial

British Art Show 6

admin — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 14:06:12 +0000

Sub-Title

Commissioned by curators Alex Farquharson and Andrea Schlieker

End Date

17 Sep 2006

Start Date

24 Sep 2005

Location

Gateshead, Manchester, Nottingham and Bristol

Body

Commissioned by curators Alex Farquharson and Andrea Schlieker to make a new work for the British Art Show Six; we collaborated with Eileen Simpson and Ben White.

During our research, we realised that each of the host cities houses a regional Media Archive; The Northern Region Film and Television Archive in Newcastle, The North West Film Archive in Manchester, Moving Image Archive for Central England in Nottingham and the South West Film & Television Archive based in Plymouth. We have been working with these archives on a project that will evolve during the exhibition tour.

All creative work is born into copyright; every image, text or sound is automatically designated as the property of its apparent author. Copyright is founded on the right of exclusion. And even material deposited in Public Archives is considered a property, access to which is subject to the generosity of archivists and keepers; effectively copyright restricts the creative re-use of public resources.

For the British Art Show Six we sourced orphaned, or out-of-copyright material from which to edit four new films - one for each city - while simultaneously searched for copyright expired music in the British Library and Library of Congress sound archives to create appropriate soundtracks. Our intention with the project is to encourage interest and discussion into the nature of film and other public archives, the public domain and the nature of creative practice

A film was added to the exhibition, at each of the host cities during the year long tour

Screen Tests 1-4 Screen Test

Baltic, Gateshead 24 September 2005 – 8 January 2006.

The Northern Television Film Archive declined to participate, so we screened Screen Tests, made for Manchester

While the film was screened silently, Ben White remixed the soundtrack live, at the opening event

Screen Tests 1-4 Screen Test

Urbis, Manchester 28 January – 2 April 2006

Screen Tests unfolds as series of Andy Warhol-like screen tests, slowly revealing the location and the occupation of those before the camera - students and models from the Manchester School of Art.

While the film was screened silently, Ben White remixed the soundtracks live, at the Whitworth Art Gallery Live Art event

Screen Tests 2-4 Dragline

Angel Row Gallery, Nottingham 22 April – 25 June 2006

Dragline stumbles across an autonomous event; and returns the default setting of contemporary digital sampling and looping to its industrial roots, via 1970’s structuralist film.

While the film was screened silently, Ben White remixed the soundtracks live, at the Future Factory Live Art event

Screen Tests 3-4 Broadcast Times: The Birth of Westward

A Bond, Bristol 15 Jul – 17 Sept 2006

As the exhibition train leaves the platform, we are taken on a documentary journey of A happy hunting ground for tycoons the birth of commercial television broadcasting.

Ben White remixed the soundtracks live, at Spike Island on the 15th September 2006, see the British Art Show Live Art link for details

While working with the archives, we negotiated to release the source material - visual and audio- and our new films into the public domain -on a freely available Screen Tests DVD - through a version of the Creative Commons License. The new artwork and its constituent parts become, in perpetuity, a legally protected creative resource. Artists and others will be able to use and re-use the artwork as material for future creative exchange, enriching rather than depleting the public domain.

See the related and evolving Enthusiasts: archive

Eileen Simpson and Ben White have initiated the Open Music Archive

The Archives

The North West Film Archive in Manchester

Moving Image Archive for Central England in Nottingham

South West Film & Television Archive based in Plymouth.

Northern Television Film Archive in Newcastle declined any involvement

The British Library Sound Archive exactly what it says

The Library of Congress Recorded Sound Reference Centre

You could also visit the British Art Show 6 website, or read a Guardian review

Screen Tests - DVD

admin — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 11:49:33 +0000

Sub-Title

In collaboration with Eileen Simpson and Ben White

End Date

Start Date

12 May 2006

Location

A project that evolved from British Art Show 6

Body

There is conflict blossoming at the heart of culture, a conflict convened around the property rights that subsist in materials stored in public archives. Screen Tests explores this conflict, while enriching rather than depleting the public domain

Commissioned as part of the British Art Show Six, we collaborated with artists Eileen Simpson and Ben White to explore public moving image archives in each city of the exhibition's tour; The Northern Region Film and Television Archive in Newcastle, The North West Film Archive in Manchester, Moving Image Archive for Central England in Nottingham and the South West Film & Television Archive based in Plymouth.

So, we sourced orphaned, or out-of-copyright material from which to edit four new films - one for each city - while simultaneously searched for copyright expired music in the British Library and Library of Congress sound archives to create appropriate soundtracks.

A film was added to the exhibition, at each of the host cities during the year long tour.

During the exhibition, we also negotiated with each of the archives to release our new films, along with the original source film and audio material, under a Creative Commons license on a DVD entitled Screen Tests. Our intention is to establish a legally protected resource, as these licences act as an extension to copyright granting rights to others, enabling everybody to use and re-use Screen Tests for future screenings and creative exchange, enriching rather than depleting the public domain.

The DVD's production was generously funded by the Arts Council England and therefore we made it available for Free under a Creative Commons: Attribution ShareAlike v2.5 License.

Screen Test was launched at the Anticipating the Past: Artist: Archive: Film: conference on the 12th-13th May, at Tate Modern . It will be availible at all venues of the British Art Show 6 where Screen Tests will be shown. Or, you could try and mail us if you would like one........

Features

Screen Tests 1/4 Screen Tests - 12.36''
The film unfolds as a series of Andy Warhol-like screen tests, slowly revealing the location and the occupation of those before the camera - students and models from the Manchester School of Art.

Screen Tests 2/4 Dragline - 06.57''
Dragline stumbles across an autonomous event, and echoing 1970â€™s structuralist film, returns the default setting of contemporary digital practice -sampling and looping - to its industrial roots.

Screen Tests 3/4 Broadcast Times: The Birth of Westward - 12.29''
As the exhibition train leaves the platform, we are taken on a documentary journey of ' a happy hunting ground for tycoons' the birth of private television broadcasting.

Screen Tests 4-4 00.00''
The Northern Region Film and Television Archive, based in Newcastle did not respond to several attempts at contact, eventually we spoke over the telephone and they declined any involvement.

Special Features

35 min. of original archival source films
36 min. of original source audio

Screen Tests

will be screened as part of Mimétisme curated by Anselm Franke, at Extra City in Antwerp, 25 Jan 2008 - 30 Mar 2008

Screen Test will be screened outdoors daily at 9:00, 12:00, 17:00, 22:35. Part of a BBC and Cornerhouse collaboration On The Screen: Artists in The Archive, the Bigger Picture in Manchester.

and at the annual Varsalongen [Spring Salon] exhibition, curated by Maria Lindt and Leira Vergara in Liljevalch's Konsthall, Stockholm, Sweden 26 Jan 2007 - 18 Mar 2007

The Archives

Thanks to director James Patterson, and curator Richard Shenton

Moving Image Archive for Central England
The Institute of Film Studies
School of American and Canadian Studies
University of Nottingham
Nottingham NG7 2RD

Thanks to Director Elayne Hoskin and curator Mike Brewis

South West Film & Television Archive
Melville Building
Royal William Yard
Stonehouse
Plymouth
Devon PL1 3RP

The North West Film Archive
Manchester Metropolitan University
Minshull House
47-49 Chorlton Street
Manchester M1 3EU

The Northern Television Film Archive
declined any involvement in the project

The British Library Sound Archive
The British Library
96 Euston Road
London NW1 2DB

The Library of Congress
Recorded Sound Reference Centre

See the related and evolving Enthusiasts: archive

copyright

The Commons

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Related Films

Related Projects

Related Publications

British Art Show 6

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Location

Body

Related Films

Related Projects

Related Publications

Screen Tests - DVD

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Start Date

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Related Films

Related Projects

Related Publications