Master Lecture 1/3 by Céline Manz 'What do you know about art, you're not a lawyer'

Wednesday 01 March 2017, 19:30 - 21:30 hrs.

Wednesday 1 March 2017, 19:30-21:30 hrs.
Film Academy cinema
Reservations

When entering “appropriation art copyright infringement” into a google search engine, the results show a surprisingly high amount of prominent artists who lost copyright law cases. Even more surprising is the reason they lost: the lack of “originality” in their works. 

One of the problems artists face in copyright infringement cases is that a work of art has to be “original”, whereas postmodern artists take, recycle, sample or adopt already existing material in order to look at a subject from a new perspective. 

The word “copy” means very different things to different people. For a lawyer, it describes a felony. For an artist, it is a matter of tradition, a procedure that goes back to the beginnings of art history itself. Based on Manz’s own body of work „The Precedent Cases“, which is an examination of different forms of appropriation in art and their possible legal consequences, she will give an overview on the most frequent issues contemporary artists face when working with appropriation. To further illustrate the issue, Manz used the occasion of the lecture at the Filmacademie to ask the copyright owner of a work she recently infringed for their feedback, inviting them to send suggestions on how to make the work „legal“. The evening will end with an open discussion on how the current copyright legislation could be adapted in favor of the artist.

Céline Manz
Céline Manz (1981, CH) is an Amsterdam-based artist and publisher mainly working with appropriated content. Since her research for the body of work „What do you know about art, you’re not a lawywer“, her practice is questioning the meaning of ownership in digital age. Her most recent work "The Precedent Cases" exposes contradictions within the current copyright law and the ambivalent status of the artist as both inforcer and infringer of the law. Manz did an education as bookseller and studied photography in Switzerland before she graduated from the Photography Department of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam in 2013. In 2014, Manz initiated the experimental exhibition space STUDIO 47. The space functions as both physical and virtual platform for artists investigating the subject of appropriation through their practice. Visit her website for more information. 

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