Julianna Yau’s blog

The Art Law Blog and Merlion at the Sculpture Community have picked up on the New York Times article about Richard Prince’s latest show. I’m intellectually intrigued by the definitions of authorship and creativity that Prince’s work challenges… but am extremely concerned by his email to the Times which indicated he “never associated advertisements with having an author“. Creative reuse of artwork (aka appropriated art) is a longstanding tradition, and it seems a statement like that from a high-profile artist has potential of harming the legitimacy of the practise.

Art News Blog and Coxoft Art News have weighed in on Jerry Saltz’s artilce in New York Art, Where Are All The Women?. ARTnews has also dealt with the question in the past, particularly in their Feb 2007 issue.

Being not merely a female artist but an Asian one, the issue of quotas and discrimination was one I had to resolve for myself soon after I decided (realized?) that I needed to pursue the creation of art as a lifetime and professional venture. After much thought, I decided that I would never participate in a show or belong to a gallery which has a quota or is otherwise available only to artists who are not white males. This decision was not based on a naive thought that discrimination doesn’t exist or on a desire for rebellion.

Although discrimination is a very real problem, I don’t believe that quotas or self-inflicted segregation are means by which the problem can be resolved. Quotas and galleries mandated to show works by minority groups may create space for “the rest of us”, but they do not address the real issue. And, honestly, the thought that my work is being shown for any reason other than its own merits makes me a little nauseous. Naturally, I don’t want to have a smaller (or no) chance to get into a gallery because I’m an Asian woman.. but I also don’t want to have been granted a show even partially because I’m an Asian woman. I want my work to be strong enough to stand on its own. The issue of discrimination needs to be uprooted, not pruned.

Today, the Globe & Mail had an article by Pamela Hess on the some US officials calling for a redefining of privacy.

The technological and social practises in place today are very different from what they were 50, or even 10 years ago, and we certainly need to revisit our expectations and practises for privacy. The undertones of what the US officials are saying (at least as they are presented by Hess) concern me, though, because they seem to be using the changes in technology and culture to justify wider and more lenient access to information by the state.

Yes, “Millions of people in the United States – particularly young people –have already surrendered anonymity to social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook, and to Internet commerce.”… But they have  “surrendered anonymity” voluntarily. The amount of information given and, for the most part, the audience for that information is controlled by the person volunteering the information. The question then becomes whether a person is still entitled to a reasonable expectation of privacy when they are providing information about themselves to multiple social networking and Internet commerce websites, and what is then “a reasonable expectation of privacy”.

Surely if I broadcast to my friends on Facebook that I’m going on vacation, I should expect them to engage me in conversation about the vacation and be inquisitive about it. Likewise, if I were one to make use of the “relationship status” field provided by Facebook, I should expect questions, congratulations or consolations from friends if I broadcast changes in my relationship status.

But by providing my information to multiple sources, should I expect someone (or the government) to lawfully harvest all of that information into a file? Sure, it could be done by anyone with the desire and enough time on their hands, but am I implicitly authorizing such a use of my information by simply providing it and authorizing, in the case of social networking sites and my own sites (such as this blog), the distribution of that information?