Yet another example of how overly aggressive copyright law is affecting our culture: Roberta Smith comment in the NY Times that artists must be able to use the images of popular culture in order to comment upon the culture as a whole:
- Jon Routson's exhibition of videos at the Team Gallery in Chelsea is a kind of last hurrah, a farewell performance. It is also a small eddy in the increasingly roiled waters where art meets the United States' rapidly expanding copyright laws.
A 34-year-old video artist living in Baltimore, Mr. Routson has a very particular method of art-making, which will soon be illegal in Maryland, as it already is in the District of Columbia and five other states, including New York and California. Like the appropriation artists of the early 1980's, who rephotographed existing photographs as a way of commenting on society, Mr. Routson makes movies of other people's movies.
Since 1999 he has been going to Baltimore-area movie theaters, often on a feature film's opening day, and recording what happens on and around the screen with a small, hand-held camcorder. He shows the grainy, oddly distorted results, which he calls recordings, as DVD installations in art galleries.
....Mr. Routson's work, which is not for sale, is the latest to find itself in the murky zone between copyright infringement and artistic license, between cultural property rights and cultural commentary. On Oct. 1 a new Maryland law will make the unauthorized use of an audiovisual recording device in a movie theater illegal. Last week two people were arrested in California for operating camcorders in movie theaters. One was apprehended by an attendant wearing night-vision goggles.
The Senate Judiciary Committee also recently approved a bill to make the unauthorized copying and distribution of movies a federal offense. The film industry has lobbied fiercely for this law, arguing that up to 80 percent of all illegal copies of films are made in theaters. (An AT&T Labs Research report, published last year, found that most illegal copies were either duplicates of stolen copies or were shot from tripods in projection booths.) Mr. Routson, who described himself in a telephone interview as increasingly nervous on his visits to theaters, said he had heard rumors that the management of one chain was offering $100 to any employee who apprehended someone with a camcorder.
Article comments
1 - Zeke
Howdy!
Thanks for writing about Art. I thought I would be the only one around here doing that! It's nice to have company.
Play ball!
2 - Nick Jones
For an interesting site on the blurred distinctions between Fair Use and intellectual property theft, you might check out Illegal Art.
The way things are today, Warhol could not have done his Campbell Soup Can series.
3 - RJ Elliott
"The way things are today, Warhol could not have done his Campbell Soup Can series."
Great point, Nick.
4 - Nick Jones
It's gotta suck to be a collage artist these days, unless you create every single piece of your source material yourself. Which is probably the case.
5 - Eric Olsen
As I have repeated ad infinitum: copyright has swung far over to the side of excess protection both in duration and in assertiveness and it is time for the public - who is the ultimate victim - to reassert its rights.
And yes, we have discussed the Illegal Art site and its activities many times.
6 - Nick Jones
That discussion must have taken place before I started spending quality time at Blogcritics. Still, it doesn't hurt to bring up the link again for newbies.
7 - Eric Olsen
Nick, Not at all, I didn't mean to imply that, just saying we have had several stories about it in the past. But there are new people everyday - a point the deeply involved (including me) often forget.
8 - Nick Jones
No prob; I didn't take it that way. B-D (I wear glasses.)