Julianna Yau’s blog

Press release:

SEIZED
Critical Art Ensemble
Institute for Applied Autonomy

June 7 to July 19, 2008
Opening Reception: Saturday, June 7, 8–11pm
Admission is FREE

Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center
341 Delaware Avenue, Buffalo, NY 14202

Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center is pleased to announce the exhibition SEIZED by Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) and the Institute for Applied Autonomy (IAA). The exhibition premieres Saturday, June 7, 2008 from 8–11pm and the opening reception is free and open to the public. The exhibition will remain on view through July 18, 2008. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Friday, 11am to 6pm and Saturday, 1–4pm.

Following the four year long ordeal of CAE founding member and University at Buffalo Art Professor Steve Kurtz—accused by the Justice Department of “bio-terrorism” and later indicted on charges of mail fraud for procuring harmless bacterial cultures for use in an educational art project—SEIZED presents the artworks behind this case which has attracted worldwide attention and propelled an international arts community to rally to Kurtz’s support and on behalf of freedom of speech.

SEIZED will center itself upon the works and materials seized by federal authorities, in particular the multi-media project Marching Plague, which was commissioned by the UK-based art-science initiative, The Arts Catalyst, and produced in consultation with scientists from the Harvard-Sussex Program on Chemical and Biological Weapons Armament and Arms Limitation. The project is comprised of an installation, performance, film, and book dedicated to demystifying issues surrounding germ warfare programs and the cost of their development to global public health.

Additionally, project documentation and ephemera from the three other CAE projects confiscated by authorities will be on display. These works—Free Range Grain, Molecular Invasion, and GenTerra—utilize the framework of science and research to inspire informed dialogue about questions and concerns surrounding the new biotechnologies.

SEIZED will also exhibit the physical artifacts of the 2004 FBI investigation of Steve Kurtz. Items seized from Kurtz’s home will be documented in photographs depicting the negative spaces remaining following their seizure: missing computers, books, notes, props from art performances, lab equipment, and an unfinished manuscript. In a curious—and unintentionally performative—gesture, the gaps left by seized items are filled in by the volumes of trash left behind in Kurtz’s home by federal investigators: hundreds of empty drink bottles, pizza boxes, Hazmat suits, and other assorted refuse, all of which will be on exhibit alongside CAE artworks.

The resulting exhibition will offer a strange amalgam—part survey of CAE’s recent body of artwork, and part exploration of an attempted “bioterrorism” investigation.

http://hallwalls.org/visual_shows/2008/show_seized.html
http://www.critical-art.net
http://www.caedefensefund.org
http://www.appliedautonomy.com

Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center
341 Delaware Avenue, Buffalo, NY 14202
716.854.1694 www.hallwalls.org

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(I double-checked this one…it really is about C-10, not net neutrality!)

CBC reports that the director of Love & Savegry suspects C-10 had a hand in his film being held at the border. To be honest, I wonder whether the title would have triggered a review based on pornography concerns alone. Although I’m very much against C-10 and am concerned about what would have happened if the footage was wrecked, I find that pinning the confiscation on C-10 is a bit of a stretch.

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The following notice of meeting has been released for C-10:

Wednesday, April 2, 2008
When the Senate rises
but not before 4 p.m.

Bill C-10, An Act to amend the Income Tax Act, including amendments in relation to foreign investment entities and nonresident trusts, and to provide for the bijural expression of the provisions of that Act.

I can’t seem to find the PDF I was sent on their website, so here it is. The link above is to the official governmental website.

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Michael Geist points to an article in The Star by Peter Howell which quotes a spokesperson for Heritage Minister Josée Verner as indicating that “Canadian Heritage has not received an application for a production containing criminal content”.

This is great news, but doesn’t make people’s concerns a simple case of “legal absurdity”. The proposed wording in C-10 uses the phrase “public policy“, and does not speak specifically to issues of criminal content. Again, the concern is not the isolated inclusion of the phrase “public policy”, but its existence alongside Charles McVety’s lobbying “to deny tax credits to TV and film productions that contain graphic sex and violence or other offensive content”.

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Despite the fact that the opposition motion to Bill C-10 was voted down in response to the Senate Liberals’ intent to block the Income Tax Act from being used as a censorship enabler, the Banking Committee resumes study of Bill C-10 amidst public concerns about censorship.

CARFAC Ontario has published their press release on C-10, as well as a form letter which can be used to send to members of parliament. The Toronto International Film Festival Group has also published a press release on C-10. The Facebook group Keep your censoring hands off of Canadian film and TV! No to Bill C-10! has 29,360 members as of the writing of this post.

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• Sam Trosow brings some disappointing news about an unsuccessful request to amend C-10
• Lawrence from Northworthy is keeping tabs on the news development
• Geist also likens the public C-10 response to that of the new copyright legislation, and reminds us that it’s about tax credits (this post has been hidden in my sea of email since Tuesday). The main difference between C-10 and the upcoming copyright legislation is we can actually see what’s in C-10.

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Lawrence at Northworthy and Sam Trosow have been busy with digging deeper into C-10 today. Lawrence looks at the history behind C-10 and the supposed consultation which happened with the film industry. Sam Trosow finds some interesting snippets from Question Period on C-10.

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A few more chime in on C-10:

• Sam Trosow, who has a thorough summary of the issues and found the direct link the the CCA’s press release on C-10
• Lawrence at Northworthy, who points to the CBC news segment “Film Funding Furour” from Sunday
• John Degen, who I missed the first time around (sorry, John!)

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The internet has been raging with bill C-10, which seems to have become the new media baby now that the government is dragging its feet with releasing the proposed copyright legislation.

Geist is surprisingly brief on his coverage of the activity, with a mere mention and pointing people to one of the anti-C-10 Facebook groups.

The Canadian Conference of the Arts issued a press release on the matter (I’m linking to my own blog because I can’t find it on their website), as did ACTRA and the Directors Guild of Canada.

Trying to read through the entire bill is a nightmare, and I’m grateful to “FF Canuck” for finding the relevant text in the bill. The offending text, in short, is that “public financial support of the production [of a Canadian film or video] would not be contrary to public policy”.

While I agree with some criticisms that this isn’t necessarily or specifically a censorship clause, anyone who reads between the lines (or any of the articles covering the issue) knows its intent is to facilitate censorship. It’s chillingly familiar to the undertones of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, and it’s no wonder everyone is aghast.

Just what exactly is “contrary to public policy”? What exactly is “public policy”? Who decides what “public policy” is and whether a work is contrary to it?

Surely the Canadian government shouldn’t be allowing hateful propaganda, but where do we draw the line…and, more importantly, from where do we draw the line? As others have noted, other provisions are in place to ensure that works which violate human rights are not allowed to be distributed. Is it really the place of the governmental branch in charge of tax credits to determine whether a film should be funded?

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Today, I attended Mark Rose’s lecture on The Public Sphere and the Emergence of Copyright. I was probably not able to appreciate the full effect of the lecture because of my limited knowledge of 17th and 18th century British history and literature. However, I knew enough to wonder why we are still dealing with the same types of problems which were around back then and why so many of us are trying to deal with problems that we think are relatively new, but could in fact be seen as being well over 500 years old.

Rose positioned us to think about “the public sphere” by contrasting the private sphere of the family and the sphere of the state, and where the pubic sphere involved private people coming together as the pubic. This was the grounds upon which we were to think about the emergence of copyright because Milton saw publishing as an act between the author and the public. This is also useful for us to keep in mind in this time where the concept of Private is suffering from an identity crisis.

The crash-course in copyright from that time took us from the English press regulation through the Star Chamber, to the Chamber’s abolishment, to the licensing and copyright demands brought by the Stationer’s Company, to the birth of the Statute of Anne.

Some things from Rose’s lecture which have modern-day parallels:

• a publisher’s (Stationer’s Company) use of the interest of creators (Milton) to support their own interests (protection of the publisher’s profit; in this case, Milton’s response came in the form of his work, Areopagitica) in times where the publishers’ role in the production and distribution of works was becoming uncertain
• pre-publication censorship via the Licensing Order, and the muddling of the line between copyright and censorship
• the Licensing Order also used as a tool for the protection of well-ordered printing, not the protection of the author’s income
• the collapse of press control and the end of licensing (in the pre-publication censorship context) as a precursor to the public sphere and more independent publications (particularly after the Licensing Order lapsed)
• the Statute of Anne as giving authors, not their publishers, the right over their works
• the preamble of the Licensing Order and the preamble of Statute of Anne having different focuses; the former was to prevent undesirable actions and the latter was to encourage learning

In the discussion following the lecture, there was also mention of the work of Oren Bracha, and in particular his forthcoming publication which deals with the transformation of the doctrine of copyright toward one of financial gain. Supposedly, the unfinished paper is available on his website, but the closest thing I could find is 75 pages of excerpts on the U of Texas website. I think that work will be very valuable to my ongoing study on copyright, and although it may be useful now, I’ll wait for the full publication (and hope I have time to read it by the time it’s available).

Over and over again in my notes from the lecture are questions to myself which are some variation of “why are we still dealing with the same conceptual problems?”. Some other questions the lecture raised for me were:

• why does copyright have a history of being used as a tool of censorship?
• how do the concepts of censorship, copyright, authorship, ownership fit together?
• how does the concept of ownership differ from the 17th/18th century and today (if at all)?
• how can we deal with the differences in and relationship between the concepts of intellectual, performance and physical property?

What was also mentioned near the end was the problems we are now facing because we took a piece of legislation which was meant to protect the right to copy and layered authors’ rights on top of it (and, I’d like to point out, other creators’ rights). This made me smile because of my exercise in deconstructing copyright and my move to categorize creators’ rights on their on (separate from, but probably encompassing, copyright).

What else made me smile? Larry Lessig being named as a modern-day Milton in terms of copyright activism (with a footnote that Milton was a better writer… although I think that may be true of almost any blogger or writer of our day, myself certainly included!).

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