Auteurs du futur
Re-imaginer le Copyleft

http://constantvzw.org/site/Auteurs-du-futur-Re-imaginer-le-Copyleft.html

10:00 Introduction and welcome (Laurent Courtens, Femke Snelting) * <->
10:30 Severine Dusollier: Inclusive Copyright * <->
10:50 Daniel Blanga Gubbay: Potential Authorship * <->
11:10 Eva Weinmayr: Situated collective authorship * <->
11:30 Aymeric Mansoux: Free Only-if * <->
11:50 Discussion * <->
12:30 Lunch by Fred Cyrilla (a.o. Les Tanneurs)
14:00 Speculative license writing (4 groups, FR + EN)
17:00 Feedback (FR/EN) *
17:30 End
18:00 Doors close

* session recorded (sound)
<-> simultanuous translation FR <-> EN


Severine Dusollier - Inclusive Copyright: A critique of copyleft licences

> The master's tools vs the master's house: creative commons vs copyright
very much cited by jurists, very rarely correctly, because usually cited as a pure criticism of open licenses.
Open licences were a very important tool to arrive, very promising.
replaced the 'no copy' sign with something more complex and meaningful.
There were some things to take into account though. Like:
did not take into account the payments of artists
platforms incite the usage of cc licenses to profit from the circulation of materials without retribution to authors.
"extractive usages"

- Licenses don’t do anything to further collaborative processes
it's mostly generosity coming from the authors
based on idea of Lawrence Lessig, one chapter on authors, rest of book on users, 
author <-> user distinction.
not about creative collaboration, not collective processes

critic by juridic people: continued to use notion of exclusive property
example
shortcomings of exclusive copyright in copyleft licensing
->
'additive licensing'
Author A writes code, puts license, than B adds something which they put in another license. And C can do that too. Than there are three licenses.

separated writers
the work can be a collection of different ltypesof licenses
imagine one of the licenses disappears / did not exist in the law (if under 18 years old by example), you cannot use that part of the code anymore
a risk as the whole of the code wouldn't work anymore. ( the missing part would need to be replaced )
it's not occurring often, which makes this situation theoretical, but as a lawyer this is an interesting case
does not take into account how the creation is made

this is mine six times, not: this is ours and we decide together how we use it

The incapacity of embracing a collective of authors, to reflect the different types of relations.

ex. Houellebecq who used paragraphs from Wikipedia
Activist: Because Houellebecq re-used a share-alike license, that should make the license apply to the novel, so someone else took houellebecq's book and shared it online.
Was quickly removed by the publisher.
He used content without attribution to Wikipedia/authors of the page
Who would complain about this?
So many authors, hundreds? In French law all authors should have done an action together. 
Needs to be authors who 'contribute original material'  not removing the commas :-)
So making that filtering, already complicated.
CC licenses don't address this type of complexity, relying on copyright laws which have such limited understanding of authorship / creation...
Wikipedia is more related to a weird mix of authors, contributrs, robots...

Article: Public Open Collaborative Creation
Goal: Inclusviity in (intellectual) property
IP has 2 dimensions: exclusion (once one is author you can exclude); exclusion is related to individuality (because we excluded the others)
Context: Occidental law making, based on Western ideas of property
which is now in many places (colonialism, trade treaties)

Law has a problem to recognise shared property. the legal regime is centered on individual property, and sharing is only included as a temporary exception.

The exclusive is the basis, the rest is exception
Paradoxical, since intellectual property only works when shared
And also the individual seems in opposition with the practice of creativity.

So a research project into more 
trying to include collaborative creation & inclusivity into copyright
what is property? Exclusive property is only one model of property
taking into account generative / relational / collective / inclusive properties
vs
extractive, individual, exclusionary, Western
ex also in shared housing projects
It‘s not the practices should wait for new laws, but research the situations in which inclusive and exclusive rights are at odds. (and when where exclusive now has the advantage)


Daniel Blanga Gubbay: Potential Authorship
KFDA has multipersonal directorship, collectively making the program
https://www.kfda.be/

Perspective where I come from; when I was 19 came across text by Andalusian philosopher Ibn Rushd aka Averroes
He speaks about the collective intellect; only one single human capacity for human knowledge
The idea of a common intellect for all humans
Sometimes a cloud that thinks beyond the human being
Uses the faculties of individual humans, the intellect that thinks through our human brains.

In arabic there is a term "..." sometimes translated as thinking, but rather an act of imagination connected to intellectual capacity that is beyond human

From practice of curating, performing art. Collective and imagination are at the core of performing art. There is a collective history. In context of Western performing art; how the collaborative nature of theatre raises question about complexity of authorship. In performing arts we speak much later, 20th century, about authors.
while in visual arts the figure of the 'author' emerges during (late) renaissance, in performing arts it appears in the 20th century.

Reclaim different practices.
Eleanor Bauer, Nobody's Dance
platform for sharing methods of artistic practises horizontally, outside of the practice of 'workshop'? which is uni-directional.
in the act of sharing the practice is archived and become "nobody's".
https://www.kfda.be/en/program/nobodys-dance
What does it mean to share? OR become the owner of an artistic practice? CAn we go beyond the anthropocentric model of choreography/
How can we deal with non human contributions within artistic creations?

Graham Harman's text Ontology and Choreography 
Can we imagine movements not as a quality of an object, but as an object in itself?
mouvement always appears through a body in motion, makes this a difficult exercise to get 'movements' as such

Imagine we are sitting in theatre
dancers makes appear series of flamenco mouvements
do these movements exist before the dancer makes them?
Can we disconnect the existence of the movement from the body?
if the body motion is perceivable, dance will have to include movements that exists before their appearance on the body
dance composed of both the body of the dancer and the movement which is performed
can the movement circulate between different bodies?
we can imagine that one dancer is replaced by other dancers
we emancipate the movement from the dancer, it is not a property from the dancing body
(note: people like Jan Fabre take copyright on their mouvements....)

Vilem Flusser's attempt to emancipate the act of speaking from the activity of the speaker.
we do not process our own words in our speaking, since the words are used by others. Reusing words used and produced by others.
Notion of circulation is essential.

Graham's substitution suggestion: can we substitute the dancer's body with other non-human bodies / objects ( what does it mean for the movement )
for example by a computer rendering

From expression to circulation
from property to use 

It’s not the movement of the body, but by the body.
Dance is made of an encounter between movement and bodies.
The movement of movements between different bodies.

We have to see also the other aspect; if we make exactly the same movement now as a month ago
Does the movement exists indipendently of its appearance materialized in the movements of different bodies?
We need to imagine continuous life of the mouvement

A circulation of bodies inside the life of one movement
Dance is where the bodies occupy the movement
Bodies visualize the life of the mouvement at certain moment
'she moves, she's still alive'

But here the bodies show it’s the movement that is still alive.
which is a not-body
dance gives possibility to exceed the antropocentric vision of life

Article: inhuman, parasite .... Emilie Rākete
http://artspace-aotearoa.nz/reading-room/in-human-parasites-posthumanism-and-papatuanuku

political agency of non-human forms
Dance can be described as Two different forms of live
not 2 autonomous forces
If the body depends on the live of the movement, the movement depends on the body

If the movement is not simply my movement, I do enter its live
I enter its life in the same way it enters mine
all of a sudden we are interdependent entities

Not simply a circulation of movements, or of bodies, but of lives, human lives in the movement and the live of the mvement in the humn live
dancing is interconnected/interdependant experience, beyond antropocentricity
we are parasites of a space that parasiting us

Castro de Viveres has similar point of view
mouvement can also move to non-human bodies, animals, other beings, machines reproducing the mouvement


Eva Weinmayr
piracy project, interesting collection of colophons

publication not as a noun/object but as a verb/process.
'Qu'est-ce que c'est la documentation', essai by Suzanne Briet, Bibliothèque Nationale de France
https://web.archive.org/web/20080704115756/http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/maack/BrietPrePress.htm

An antilope in the savanna is considered to be a wild animal
An antilope in the zoo in Europe is considered as a document, analyzed as a specimen
Primary document (caged antilope) produces all series of secondary documents (classifications, schemas, etc.)

In academics, there are a lot of documents. Some are authored (like reimbursement forms) others are authored. 
impact and value of research is assessed by quantification, so documents and publications have become an asset and currency. Ridiculous and synical.

How inclusive are our tools and protocols?
What if we don't only value the content, but also the ...

from author to authorial practice
a practice as a dialogical process, instead of a commodity/object

christopher kelty 

[image] collaborations -> difficult conversations painful compromises unavoidable conflicts

author from latin etymology is related with augmentation, growth..
a facilitator, an organizor, someone who triggers something

It would expand authored object, output.

Instigator an organiser is
this way of looking at an author, is collective + in motion

We would have inputs. Not outputs.
What is the difference between input and output?
I put yeast into the dough to make it rise.
Input is agency
Input has mostly a purpose

In 2015 in Gôteburg a group of teachers, studens, administrators amde a working group— Let’s mobilise what is feminist pedagogy
Based on event where keynote speaker on critical pedagogy managed to do a 1 hour long keynote of 13 white male references
http://wiki.evaweinmayr.com/index.php/Let%27s_Mobilise:_What_is_Feminist_Pedagogy%3F#Working_group_2015-2016
We replace conference with mobilisation

Experimenting with languages, spatial conventions, teacher-student hierarchies, timing.
we organised a sleep over. How do you do this? It’s forbidden to stay overnight
How do situations, settings, mode of gathering influence the process?
We wanted to experiment with institutional timing. But staying in an institution where staying over night is prohibited, is complex.
How to have catering from arab women collective not on the list of accredited caterers?
We worked hard for a year and made all these connections to do this questioning of instituional practices

For the publication we printed a workbook all pages separately and then people came to bind them
the pages also become posters that claimed space in the academy
Made collective reading, connecting the people working togehter as a body, introduce the topics, involve them.

To come back at impact ...
This had a huge impact; only the possibility that things could be done differently radiated throughout the academy
However none of this contributed to research points.

[image]
difficult .... conversations
painful ... compromises
unavoidable ... conflicts

impactful input not recognised as 'output' by academia

[image]
Iceberg of knowledge citation

With copyright licensing where only talking about the tip of the iceberg.
What’s underwater allows for alliences and transversal practices taking place.

“But that was my idea”
https://research.gold.ac.uk/7258/

The term transversality is described by Guatarri as 
and differnt forms of subjectivity that break down contradictions(?) between the individual and the group
It was alienating for the participants when someone clamed individual authorship
An example from anti-austerity protests

moments where input & output are clashing
presupposes notion of authorship even if you don't want it
Licenses already presoppuse a position of ownership

I try to make a code of conduct for the specific situation I’m working in.

We have been trained as possesive individualists

The work must be immunised by exclusionary measures

this logic extends to concepts of community; membership is staked on exclusive claims to communilaty

Roberto Exposito
communal debt, you owe me something / I touch something & I am being touched vs permissive licenses
we should think more in terms of code of conduct
instead of trying to find an universal model ... 
Eva tries to formulate a code of conduct... and the idea of a contract resonates

We all have been trained as possesive individualist... my identity, my territory, my land
all things that need to be prevented from external involvement

community is threatend to a substance that belongs to its members
commonality, what each has in common is individual to each member of the community

a different way to see community ... 
would be one that is not characteristed by what is common to all... but rather mutual
you give something to me, therefor i owe you something

in order to continue thinking about collective authorship, perhaps we need more contracts/coc instead of permissive licenses

Boxing as an exercise of mutuality


Aymeric Mansoux: Free Only-if *
most fierce critical on free culture, but also most loyal 

Wants to share his confusion. An historical overview over what happened over 30-40 years in non-software licensing
In order prevent recreating based on nostalgia, but instead to push it further.

Licenses are ideological interfaces.
They allow a work to establish a relation between their practice and society.
They share how is envisioned the transformation of society.
Therefore licensing is interlinked with politics, licensing is a political act.

Difficult discussion to have because a lot of the software developers believe they have an apolitical practice. That’s completely wrong.
Art made this delusion visible, in a way.
Because twho histories have crossed roads:
techno-legal cybernetics vision of the world /\/\/\/ art and activism practices
This created a new selection of documents in which the political intention was made much more explicit.

To understand this junction
free/open source software licenses /\/\/\/ underground publishing 
examples are the xerox mag (trying to encourage copying) and all rites reserved

These two things have nothing in common. Yet they mannaged to meet.
The meeting point is a massive misunderstanding. And it is caused by language: around the word "copyleft"
[free culture, creative commons, copyfree, copyleft, open content] "<-- a bit of a mess"

when stallman was working on free software he received a box of stickers, including πcopyleft∏ stickers.
Stallman got excited and decided to name a part of free-license mechanism copyleft.
The “share-alike part‘, or what was called the ‘viral part’. So in this context copyleft is a specific kind of free and open licenses.
But copyleft only applies to a part of the free licensing licenses.

Since the word copyleft was already used for art, this created an interest from artists. Helped foster movements of Free Culture, Creative Commons, Copyfree, Copyleft, Open Content
Not a movement but many voices
Creative misunderstanding

Techno-legal template for art and cultural prodctuion
the license as a tool to materialize an ideology
Does not have to be the same as free software.

In the mid-90ies I kind of Cambrian explosion of licenses took place of people writing licenses for art and cultural production. Creative Commons came in a violent and colonial way; they did not acknowledge any of the existing non-software licenses.
But their initial announcement text revealed that they were aware of the existence of all these licenses. Yet they silenced it.
Because of connection to tech world and upcoming platforms they had a lot of visibility
It was very hard for others to compete with this visibility.

Some of the diversity was lost. And as a result, a specific free culture definition was formulated .. (missed how this happened?)

proto-free culture ------ > free culture
Where the presence of affect, speech acts, manifestos, statements (and also emotions) created a diffusion of cultural diversity (in proto-free culture), 
free culture became an interface to liberal file-sharing understandings of culture

When the free culture definition was drafted on a wiki, a relatively small group of people started to decide for others what it means to work of free culture.
The wiki was only open on-invite. 

Free culture as a pipe, that can be filled with content now, and files. Hence the phrasing of free culture as a liberal file-sharing system.
there are no ways to change the plumbery of the pipes ..

This criticism is not nostalgia
there is a regression that needs to be fixed
From a means (a tool to discuss an idea for society) it became an end

Critique on free culture is complicated, quickly misunderstood
There has been a lot of radical experimentation with intellectual property (60s/70s)
Nowadays, it's more likely that you're introduced to intellectual property experiments through creative commons and remixing culture.

What is the act of sharing?
a highly priviledged position?

As free licenses are a higher level of copyright ... Would an injection in the existing copyright law perhaps open up many more possibilities?
While recreating boundaries, it is possible to exclude others again.


Discussion

Dismission of Stallman from FSF & Hitherto from MIT
is confirming statement of Aymeric, neoliberal made money with free software, they're hard to criticise

Are there examples of the 60s/70s that reject authorship and contribute to collectivity?
Main trap is to generalise. Examples of Fluxus, mail art, all have their own voice.
they are in control of the rules that empower their artistic production
Which is a type of practice that is linked to the writing of manifestos
still exemplary, because it works

Eva: it was not an issue to instittutionalize these practises (feminist)
Example of collectively made posters, where the question of sharing was not a problem, as there was a mutually of trust in a community.
universalized global format was not at stake

Harrison: 20y ago we were looking for hegemonized way to rely on, be protected by
caused by a feeling of being weak, singularity as a force and weakness at the same time
we contributed to sthg that worked against us

Kobe: attempt of looking for 1 solution for all
every practise is different (boxing/dancing), each practise has properties that are inherent to it
embedded in practise
how come the notion of legal property shifted so far away from properties art is dealing with
when properties become characteristics, you are much closer to alchemy/magic

Severine: 
two reflections on properties:
Sarah Keenan (?) Subversive property
Lesbian African asylum seekers in UK asked to fit in what is supposed to be lesbian in UK
does not work, uses notion of belonging, she relates to indiginous property 
she is using the term "belonging" to reverse "property"

Sarah Vanuxem, environmental lawyer, France
Book Propriété de la terre: https://www.livre-provencealpescotedazur.fr/parutions/la-propriete-de-la-terre-386056
tries to suvert property by looking at what is a milieu
inhabiting a milieu, we don't own it
mouvement is by us, you live within
it's something that does not comes from you, but something that you need to live within
creation is a milieu that you inhabit, makes milieu dynamic
In Aymerics presentation, licenses are external to the art
In another view, it (?) could be something that is there, and you just participate in it at a certain point.

Latour: we should give seats to environment in Parliament
can be good starting point for the license, start from practises/creation and intriduce us into that, not as initiatiors

Femke: collectivity not as something external, but something you participate in

Peter: idea of circulation
quite useful to think in object & subject, to see who is moving what?
messiness of licenses was exciting
now license is economic deal we don't think about anymore
Cinema Sauvage 2019: interesting discussion with filmmakers who make films without copyright
http://www.festival-cinemas-sauvages.net/en/
without affirm a rule to other on how the work can be used by others
Does thinking about licenses also include the life of an object without you being present? Somehow you would like to stay involved.

Free culture allows for things to travel beyond you, strange that objects stick with you for the rest of your life
Part of the excitement of free culture is also to let a work travel beyond you.

Donatella: The free licenses that are there reinforce a hegemony; In dance, in the summer school there is not this hegemony. Temporality: what happens when a creation leaves a collective and enters another collective, from one body to another…
How can be break this idea of chronological order?

Kobe: More than ten years ago I proposed a case on magic, on a copyleft conference, magicians practice would be killed by copyleft because they share only between magicians, not the audience. Neither copyright or -left would work for them. Share in guilds.
It refers again to the milieu of a singular practice.

Aymeric: Same in demo-scene
code is anyway shared within community, part of the culture of demo scene

Pierre: also sharing of heavily copyrighted fonts within community of graphic designers

Femke: Free licenses/culture as a way to exactly break with these types of guilts. Open to others as well.

Martino: Is a license the only tool that we should refer to ?
The political momentum is lost, and replaced with a drop-down menu (creative commons)
What other formats are there to pick up and engage again in political conversations?

Femke:
What would be the use of a speculative license? What work could it do?
What use is it to think about authorship?

Wendy: can we add legibility to these questions? multicplicity is great, but what CC brought was legibility, through language and design (icons for example)


What are questions we can work on in the afternoon?

Daniel: we inhabit the practise, open question: what does it mean to share? ex of magician Who can share? Who can share to whom? Who can inhabit this practice?
a few years ago: artist using mouvement of mapuche community in Latin America

at the same time, a community is not something that is open
notion of stewardship is interesting in this regard: guarding, milieus are sensitive, can be easily be damaged
choreographers are often stewards, learn/transmit the dance

Severine: start from the practice, look at the user at the end (instead of the start)
perhaps the word "license" is not helpful, but "code of conduct" is perhaps also not very suitable, where there is "code" and "conduct", both very normative terms
look at language 

Question from Femke to Eva: framework of authorship, your work is very much for authorship
under pressure in instittution that only values outputs
campaigning for the inputs, but there can be more movements of course, much more messy ones
author can be instigator, lets someone else grow
which relates it to collective practices

Aymeric: How can we re-emulate the past, where licenses become a strategic tool? Re-engaging with the license as a tool.
Another thing is to go back to the relation between the definition (of free culture?) and the license .... What kind of other tools are already there, but have to be re-invented, in order to become tools to limit or accelerate access and circulation.
Also to reconsider the relation between object and license.

Example of aliexpress, new form of craftmanship where re-appropriation trigger a whole range of products that are shipped over the world. 

How can we avoid to think in generalities in the afternoon, how to make it concrete and directly connect it to practices?
Otherwise we fall into the hole that we are criticizing here today.

Taking algorithms/software as part of the milieu. Algorithms as storyteller.
Milieu / habitat -- user + ownership

Licenses that follow the object, not the author 
Right of the object. Who has the right to be copied?

How we / you create together 
Right of the user

should we think use and making separate


Trying to sort things to make groups

1. Cinemas Sauvages -- a feral license?

- Persona: who represents what. Who/what represents the forest?
-- Forest case: writing a story with a tree.
-- Legal fictions, blocking expulsion through licensing. Author > legal subject > 'papiers'

Deborah -- what happens when she makes perfo in public situations; photographers make images, choose: 'the best' and this becomes the way the work is lived after. Copyright? Body of a woman in public, and in art history. Needs to re-buy her own image. 

- Milieu
Milieu 1:  vocabulary + other agencies
how is creation organised
- What agreements, terms of conditions (words?) if whe think of authorship as instigation/mobilisation
- commitments? is there more agency? obligation? -- subordination? response-ability?
 to owe. engagement. guideline = proposition.

Milieu 2: What right for who? Who gives right?
right (belongs) vs justice (in-between)
user / use
++
Milieu 3: users = creators?
A methodology of response-ability
Not because I can, I should
different levels access. 

property

(not a proposal)
Licenses as a political strategy (license first, case later)
- Evolving license / pluriform
Relations between different documents --

Projet Bureau des Dépositions: https://www.pacte-grenoble.fr/programmes/bureau-des-depositions


Notes of groups

Notes for group milieu 1 → https://pad.constantvzw.org/p/authorsofthefuture.notes.milieu1 - read only https://pad.constantvzw.org/p/r.bc5618c6ac900bc8ac8f36258dbdcfd8
Notes for group milieu 2-3 → https://pad.constantvzw.org/p/authorsofthefuture.notes.milieu23 - read only https://pad.constantvzw.org/p/r.b210dd95ffb4d793e2479304945e49b7
Notes for Cinéma sauvage?
No notes for group around Deborah de Robertis case, but interesting discussion around the consent principle; the shift from collaborators and opposant to agent, situations and provocation to agency; and the input instead of the output coined by Eva. Deborah as an instigator? Two references brought by Femke : Marie Bardet (https://www.pewcenterarts.org/people/marie-bardet) and Flore Bleiberg