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Lew Andow Ska, Ptak (Eds.) Undoing Property? ? PROPERTY LEWANDOWSKA, PTAK (EDS.) UNDOING 2013 Undoing Property? Aenc David Berry Nils Bohlin Sean Dockray Rasmus Fleischer Antonia Hirsch David Horvitz Marsia Lewandowska Mattin Open Music Archive Matteo Pasquinelli Claire Pentecost Laurel Ptak Florian Schneider Matthew Stadler Marilyn Strathern Kuba Szreder Marina Vishmidt CONTENTS 11 Preface Binna Choi, Maria Lind, Emily Pethick 14 As We May Think David Berry 17 Introduction Marysia Lewandowska, Laurel Ptak 27 The Sabotage of Debt Matteo Pasquinelli 37 Cruel Economy of Authorship Kuba Szreder 53 Improvisation and Communization Mattin 69 Copying Is Always Transformative Rasmus Fleischer in conversation with Laurel Ptak 81 Fields of Zombies: Biotech Agriculture and the Privatization of Knowledge Claire Pentecost 93 Public Access, Private Access David Horvitz 117 Thing 001895 (playing cards) Agency 129 The Edges of the Public Domain Open Music Archive 141 Seat Belt Patent 1962 Nils Bohlin 145 The Artist’s Trust Marysia Lewandowska 159 Abstraction and the Currency of the Social Marina Vishmidt in conversation with Laurel Ptak 171 From Ownership to Belonging Matthew Stadler 183 Interface, Access, Loss Sean Dockray 195 Imaginary Property Florian Schneider 207 Reproducing the Future Marilyn Strathern in conversation with Marysia Lewandowska 221 Exchange and Circulation Antonia Hirsch 237 Common Pool Resources 247 Contributors 254 Acknowledgments PREFACE Today, across the world people are 11 engaged in exploring the bounds of locality, community, and commons. From Ramallah and Holon to Caracas and New York, these partly forgotten notions are being both revisited and retrieved. This revival is a sign of the urgent need to find contemporary ways of dealing with existence under capital- ism in crisis. Undoing Property? forms part of this widespread urge. Specifically, it gives the urge more fuel through its specific focus on property, usually thought of as either untouchable or unshakable, and how it can possibly be undone. Here, undoing takes the form of an attitude. This attitude is not of critique, or hammering problems, but of a criticality that seeks out and weaves together minor but yet multiple possibilities, emerging between the fissures. A unique and very timely collection of essays, art projects, and conversations, Undoing Property? was conceptualized and carried out over a four-year period by artist Marysia Lewandowska and curator Laurel Ptak. The project has slowly evolved in a purposeful way, allowing a space for conversations, resilience, and careful negotia- tions. These have been constituent parts of an artistic practice, evidenced through Lewandowska’s work and guided by Ptak’s curatorial attentiveness to cultural practices at the edges of contem- porary art. The publication has involved several of the key agents in recent debates on the contested relationships between culture, political economy, immaterial production, and the public realm. Its perspective is multifaceted, yet grounded in the fields of art, cultural production, and activism. Together, the contributions set forth propositions—ranging from the imaginative and visionary to the abstract and concrete—on modes of thinking about how things can be different, and how to act accordingly. Brought together in this book, they exceed the so-called reputational economies of authorship (as forms of property) by creating positions that share affinities with collectively authored works. Undoing Property? is part of the multiyear project COHAB (2012–2014), which investigates meaningful ways in which artists and organizations can be deeply invested within their local contexts and at the same time form close dialogues in an international arena. Drawing on areas of commonality, such as the “situated” ways of working of the three institutions involved—namely Casco – Office 12 for Art, Design and Theory, Utrecht; Tensta konsthall, Stockholm; and the Showroom, London—COHAB is a framework for inquiry about cohabitation. This book sheds light on and enacts forms of cohabitation itself. This has been apparent in the process of its production, which included four seminars in the series “Publishing in Process: Ownership in Question," which the editors conceived and realized with an unusual degree of precision and care at Tensta konsthall during the spring of 2012, and which acted as the spring- board for the publication. In turn, the publication will offer itself as another point of departure for various forms of activities to be organized at Casco, the Showroom, and perhaps elsewhere. As directors of these organizations we would like to extend our warmest thanks and admiration to the editors for their engagement with the issues at hand and for their hard work in making them public. Our gratitude extends to the publisher Caroline Schneider for her unwavering support and to Konst & Teknik, the designers who gave the publication its shape. Marysia Lewandowska’s and Laurel Ptak’s insistence on the conditions of property being at the core of any discussion about a future other than one that extends the present remains an inspiration within our multiple contexts. The book leads us toward exploring, problematizing, and expanding the commons, and challenges us to embed these in our work. Binna Choi, Maria Lind, Emily Pethick Introduction Marysia Lewandowska Laurel Ptak 17 PUBLISHING IN In 1793, in the middle of the French 19 PROCESS Revolution, the Musée du Louvre opened its doors—transforming a private palace into a public museum. Art was mobilized to embody Marysia the government’s movement from a monarchy to a democracy. An art collection, previously privately owned, was now shared publicly. Inside, civic, financial (via taxation), and social relationships between Lewandowska, the state and museum-goer arguably stirred a sense of mutual agency, responsibility, and collectivity. In stark contrast, today we see a drive on the part of many governments toward private interests in Laurel Ptak nearly all aspects of our lives—from art, to housing, to health care, to education. What we are experiencing right now feels like a near reversal of the Louvre’s gesture—a turn away from a collectively owned culture. More than 200 years later, in 2009, we began thinking about making a book. Informed by our histories and practices as artist and curator, we started to ask ourselves: who owns culture, information, and knowledge, and what are the conditions, politics, and economies of its production and circulation today? We wanted to bring attention to a growing number of artworks, texts, and initiatives problematiz- ing existing notions of property inside contemporary capitalism. We were also interested in how the possibilities of digital technolo- gies and networked distribution affected these issues. Additionally, we set out to explore art’s current models of ownership, collectivity, publicness, and value already at play. These were not just theoretical concerns: we wanted to test if the context of art itself could be a productive site for critique or action. We worked collaboratively and sought to acknowledge the many collective social processes that underlie the making of a book. This four-year inquiry connected numerous contributors and took on several forms. For instance, we negotiated with our publisher a generous set of non-exclusive rights and the release of a digital version of the publication to circulate for free alongside its traditional printed form. Over a communal pot of soup, we hosted a series of public seminars at Tensta konsthall in Stockholm to discuss the making of the book. Presentations, led by Antonia Hirsch, Florian Schneider, Matthew Stadler, and Marina Vishmidt, known as “Pub- lishing in Process: Ownership in Question,” nurtured this book’s Introduction Marysia Lewandowska, Laurel Ptak 20 development as together we scrutinized what production, property, unequal distribution of what is otherwise collectively produced 21 exchange, and ownership mean to us today. value. The city is a prime site of such relations; we are unable to Somewhere along the way, however, the stakes changed. By decipher how what we encounter physically translates into legal 2011, the very question of what is privately owned and what is public- ownership. The contemporary life of the city, as well as our lives, is ly shared in society began to animate intense political struggles and threatened by unprecedented financial speculation. Such speculation social movements unfolding in numerous parts of the world. This breaks up many aspects of public life, replacing them with more much seemed vivid: capitalism had been steadfast in naming, sepa- private aspirations. Introducing this set of concerns writer Matteo rating, and enforcing property for decades in such a way that it Pasquinelli asks if punk culture and the political movements of 1977 confused and destabilized our notions of what might be collective, anticipated cognitive capitalism, and, if they did, how we are now shared, and afforded to everyone equally, versus what was private, projecting ourselves beyond the current crisis. In sounding the owned, or monopolized. “ruins” that knowledge society and financial capitalism are leaving Inside the context of art, how we thought about property had behind, and examining the crumbling topography of the postindus- its own particularities. Artists have experimented endlessly with the trial metropolis and the sabotage of debt, Pasquinelli connects terms of ownership and authorship. Many refused the notion that an interactions between art and gentrification, art
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