[rohrpost] INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM "DROITS D'IMAGES" (IMAGE RIGHTS)

Die Nov 30 10:01:19 CET 2004

INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM "DROITS D'IMAGES" (IMAGE RIGHTS)

Date:
Friday 3 and Saturday 4 December 2004
10 AM. - 12:30 PM   2:30 PM - 5 PM

Organization:
Centre for Contemporary Images, Saint-Gervais Geneva

To whom do images belong?
Identification with the images peopling our daily 
landscape, whether in the media or in 
advertising, naturally leads artists to give in 
to their influence and use them as a raw material 
when elaborating their work. This is how 
contemporary artists regularly fall foul of the 
law and find themselves involved in litigation 
because of their appropriating other's work and 
transposing it into the field of art. Who then is 
the owner of these images? The creator? The buyer 
of the object? The photographer? The artist? Or 
the public that enjoys the use of them?

The growing trend to legislate to the extreme and 
privatize the public domain raises very real 
questions as to the value and ownership of an 
image. What leeway in terms of freedom of 
expression remains to artists vis-à-vis a 
situation whose legal implications and 
restrictions that are ever more complex? Liberty 
versus protection, protection versus liberty. How 
are we paradoxically to protect the work of 
artists, who are themselves afraid of copies and 
often find themselves powerless when faced with a 
situation rife with conflict?

The protection afforded a work of art and an 
artist or writer through economic and moral 
rights is well known and clearly regulated. Yet a 
certain disconnect and mutual incomprehension 
characterize the relationship between 
contemporary art and law. The constant evolution 
of art and its transgressive nature clash with a 
well-established system of law and the difficulty 
it has with integrating and interpreting the work 
of art. Recycling, pastiche of images, 
reappropriation, remake, plagiarism or quotation, 
do the courts always make allowances for art? And 
at what price for artists?

The DROITS D'IMAGES symposium will bring together 
artists, art critics, legal specialists and other 
professionals from various backgrounds 
(philosophy, economy and history) to explore the 
complex relationship between art and law and help 
members of the audience to better grasp the 
question in turn. The symposium comprises four 
sessions, which will delve into the notion of the 
author and his or her rights, the definition of a 
work of art and its originality, the question of 
the protection that is extended to art and its 
limits, and above all the new perspectives that 
are taking shape as alternatives to copyright 
law, particularly in the digital domain. The 
symposium will also tackle the economic, 
political and legal implications of these 
questions thanks to the range of themes involved.
Protection for artistic freedom of speech will of 
course figure in the discussions. The aim of 
these talks is to generate positive avenues of 
investigation and thought while leaving a record 
of the exchanges in an official document to be 
drawn up at the end of the symposium. Such a 
publication will reflect the proposals and 
solutions imagined by participants and will begin 
to pave the way for other concrete legally based 
actions. Artists' films, specific projects and 
performances will also be presented over the 
course of the symposium. A practical guide on the 
copyright law for artists, designers and other 
professionals in the field of art is scheduled 
for publication in the spring of 2005 (in French 
and German).

Charlotte Mailler

FRIDAY 3 DECEMBER 2004	10 AM - 12:30 PM (doors open at 9:30 AM)

LAW AND IMAGES
Copyright and contemporary art: current situation and the issues at stake

1.	Management of a public collection of images
	Fonds iconographique de la ville de Genève/BPU

2.	Copyright and contemporary art (to be confirmed)
		Olivier ZAHM, art critic, 
co-director and editor of Purple Institute, Paris

3.	The role of rights management societies vis-à-vis contemporary art
Werner STAUFFACHER, head of the law department of 
ProLitteris, a Swiss rights management society in 
Zurich

		Beginning with the statement 
"ideas and the creation of works of art change 
and have always changed, but the protection of 
copyright remains and will always remain in 
force", Werner Stauffacher will demonstrate the 
immutability of and the need to respect copyright 
law today. He will also present copyright law and 
its application in contemporary art as well as 
the regulatory role played by management 
societies in this field. Finally, he will sketch 
out a survey of what lies ahead for management 
and the application of copyright law in the field 
of art.

4.	Image, to be or to have
		Marie-José MONDZAIN, philosopher 
and director of research, CNRS, Paris

Image as property? This expression is troubling 
because it throws together two contradictory 
questions. The property of a thing means what 
properly belongs to it and contributes to its 
definition, but can likewise mean that the thing 
in question is the property of someone who holds 
it in his or her possession. On the one hand 
then, we have the power that defines being, while 
on the other the domination of possession. If 
images are indeed a property of humans just as 
speech and laughter are, by what twist of history 
do we today think of ourselves as owners of them?

5.	Artists and image law: practice and the law in Switzerland
Christian PIRKER, attorney and member of the 
Geneva bar, graduate of the Ecole du Louvre

Christian Pirker will present aspects of Swiss 
law having to do with images. Mr. Pirker's 
overview, which aims to offer practical advice 
above all, examines copyright and its 
characteristics. He will cover such topics as the 
quality of the protected work of art, the extent 
of and exceptions to that protection, and finally 
the consequences of its violation. He will also 
touch on the limits imposed by the penal code as 
to representation of pornography and violence. 
Mr. Pirker will conclude his talk with an 
examination of a right that is often confused 
with copyright, that is, the right of a person as 
a legal entity and his or her representation, the 
right of each person to the use of his or her own 
image.

Moderator: Agnès TRICOIRE, attorney and member of 
the Paris bar, specialist in intellectual 
property rights, and delegate of the Centre for 
research in artistic freedom of speech, the 
League for Human Rights, Paris

FRIDAY 3 DECEMBER 2004	2:30 PM - 17 PM (doors open at 2 PM)

IS ART PROTECTED?
Protection, legitimacy and protection limits

1.	What legal protection(s) for contemporary art?
	Edouard TREPPOZ, senior lecturer in law, University of Lyon III

Mr. Treppoz will examine the application of 
copyright law in contemporary art. His assessment 
is pessimistic, given the difficulty for a 
certain number of contemporary works to satisfy 
the conditions of form and originality. All the 
same, this rejection of copyright doesn't leave 
such works without protection. It is the artists 
themselves who are prompting the experts to come 
up with other types of protection, including 
personality copyright, patent rights, and unfair 
competition laws.

2.	Owning culture: artistic creation and transmission of cultural heritage
Dominique NOAH, advisor-researcher for the Fine 
Arts at the Amsterdam School for Cultural 
Analysis, member of IPJustice, an international 
civil liberties organization promoting balanced 
intellectual property laws, Canada

Starting with a brief overview of the 
relationship between ownership and authorship, 
this presentation identifies one dead-end 
situation that exists for the artist. Artists, on 
the one hand, must act in a rather unprotected 
way, negotiating payment and contracts, while on 
the other, they run the risk with the new work 
being done now of increasing infringement of 
legally protected cultural property. What if the 
legal setting needs to be changed?

3.	The protection of artists' works under UK copyright law
Daniel MCCLEAN, lawyer, co-editor of Dear Images: 
art, copyright and culture, London

This presentation examines the scope of 
protection afforded to artistic works under UK 
copyright law by reference to statute and case 
law. It addresses how  UK copyright law defines 
artistic subject matter as well as inscribes and 
limits the degree of protection given to artistic 
works (against reproduction) through techniques 
such as the idea/expression dichotomy. The 
lecturer further looks at potential points of 
conflict between the legal conception of art and 
contemporary avant-garde artistic practices. It 
focuses on concrete examples and examines in 
particular differences in the concepts of "work", 
"originality" and "expression.

4.	Copyright interpreted by artists: creativity vs. protection
Nathalie HEINICH, sociologist, researcher, CNRS, Paris

Taking as her starting point several cases of the 
legal difficulties raised by contemporary art, 
Ms. Heinich, based on an analysis developed with 
the attorney Bernard Edelman, will look into the 
way artists use, reappropriate, extend or 
restrict the notion of moral right and a work of 
the imagination. She wonders in particular to 
what extent making art takes place "against" 
protection in the sense of an exchange (which 
raises the question of the limits of art's 
impunity), and to what extent it tends in 
practical terms to test the very legal privileges 
it enjoys, acting then "against" its own 
protection (which in turn raises the question of 
censorship and its current delegitimation).

Moderator: Marc-André RENOLD, attorney, lecturer 
at the University of Geneva, co-director of the 
Art-Law Centre, Geneva

SATURDAY  4 DECEMBER 2004	10 AM - 12:30 PM (doors open at 9:30 AM)

IS CREATIVITY FREE?
Freedom of speech, art and transgression, censorship

1.	The censors' tools
Agnès TRICOIRE, attorney and member of the Paris 
bar, specialist in intellectual property rights, 
and delegate of the Center for research in 
artistic freedom of speech, the League for Human 
Rights, Paris

Ms. Tricoire will sketch out a rather disturbing 
and restrictive legal situation in France in 
terms of individual freedoms of speech. French 
law includes a range of disparate arrangements 
that could affect works of art because of their 
content. In some instances, the laws allows for a 
priori censorship; far from being called into 
question, these regal powers have been reinforced 
today. Ms. Tricoire will then move on to look at 
copyright law and the essential conventions 
concerning human rights and the freedom of 
artistic creation, in order to see whether the 
tools for a legal exception to protect works from 
censorship are in fact adequate or need to be 
reinforced.

2.	Presentation of mediation and arbitration 
as alternative methods for resolving conflicts in 
the field of art
Ignacio de CASTRO, Head - Information and 
External Relations Section, Arbitration and 
Mediation Center, World Intellectual Property 
Organization (WIPO), Geneva

WIPO has been active in the field of arbitration 
and mediation for a number of years. Mediation 
has gone through significant development recently 
and could present one interesting solution for 
resolving conflicts in the field of art. The 
approach involves an extralegal procedure for 
settling lawsuits between individuals and private 
companies, a solution that is often relatively 
inexpensive and quick, and which involves 
specialists in the fields in question. Mr. de 
Castro will present the concept of mediation and 
its advantages, as well as its possible 
application in the art world.

3.	A) Offensive forms vs. works of the 
imagination: the necessary immunity of art
B) Copyright vs. freedom of interpretation: the indisputable price of glory
Olivier BLANCKART, artist, Paris

Occasional art critic, Mr. Blanckart has 
published in various periodicals several 
combative texts on the visual arts in France. He 
has notably analysed the current redeployment of 
censorship in light of recent developments in law 
and social mores. The question of censorship with 
regard to the trend towards confiscational 
interpretations of copyright laws will also be 
examined.

4.	Criticism and truth
Stéphanie MOISDON, exhibition curator and art 
critic, co-director of the publishing and 
production company of contemporary works of art, 
bdv-artview, Paris

Starting with her experience as a critic and 
curator of art shows, Ms. Moisdon turns to 
several recent examples that bring to light the 
mechanisms of credit and distinction, or 
rejection and disqualification in contemporary 
art practices. She will try to distinguish the 
changes affecting our culture with respect to the 
central question of ownership, which underpins 
the dominant discourse nowadays on the notions of 
representation, manipulation and 
spectacularization.

Moderator: Christian PIRKER, attorney and member 
of the Geneva bar, graduate of the Ecole du Louvre

SATURDAY  4 DECEMBER 2004  2:30 PM - 17 PM (doors open at 2 PM)

NEW LEGAL PROSPECTS IN THE DIGITAL AGE
Legitimacy of copyright, Net Art and copyleft

1. Thinking on the foundations of intellectual property, from Proudhon to GNU
Dominique SAGOT-DUVAUROUX, economist, professor at University of Angers

The economic debate over intellectual property in 
the 19th century pitted two concepts against each 
other. For one school of thought, the author or 
inventor is the natural owner of his or her 
creation and society must above all aim to 
protect that property, even if that protection 
harms the general good. For the other school, the 
rights of intellectual ownership are a convention 
meant to stimulate creativity for the general 
good of society. The tensions between these two 
concepts largely clarify contemporary questions 
touching on the notion of copyright.

2.  Libre software for the Freedom of Creation (in English)
JAROMIL, free software programmer, media artist, Italy

In the panorama of existing operating systems, 
there are a great number of possibilities for 
listening, that is, all kinds of 
"free-to-download" players for audio and video, 
but no easy way for people to speak up and spread 
their words. The way communication is structured 
obeys a hierarchy of well-established powers; 
what is worse, money is the main requirement for 
disseminating a voice and making it possible to 
be heard by others. We continue to share our 
knowledge, even though proprietary software is 
spreading dependence and slavery throughout the 
populace, under the aegis of capitalism.

3. The future of copyright law in the Internet age
Jacques DE WERRA, attorney, lecturer at the 
University of Geneva, co-director of the Art-Law 
Centre, Geneva

The Internet poses numerous challenges to 
copyright law, witness the revolution now 
affecting the music industry following the 
explosion of the (largely illegal) market for 
music on line. The application of copyright law 
in the realm of the Internet tends moreover to 
provoke increasingly sharp oppositions, with some 
making the case for free access to digital 
content (via a broader recognition of the public 
domain). This then raises the question of 
determining how copyright law is going to evolve 
in the new environment of global digital networks.

In her lecture Cornelia Sollfrank demonstrates 
how limited the legal concept of authorship seems 
to be when it comes to the production of an image 
in which machines, codes, and interactive users 
participate. Exemplified by one image of her 
"net.art generators" the artist discusses all 
possible options of "who has made that image?" 
and comes to some surprising findings... 
(http://soundwarez.org/generators)

Moderator: Edouard TREPPOZ, senior lecturer in law, University of Lyon III

Project coordination:
Charlotte Mailler

Co-organization: Mamco, Geneva
Centre d'Art Contemporain, Geneva
Centre de la Photographie, Geneva
Ecole supérieure des beaux-arts HES, Programme d'études postgrades CCC, Geneva
Haute école d'arts appliqués HES, Geneva
planet22, Geneva in collaboration with Hinrich Sachs

Legal coordination:
Christian Pirker, attorney and member of the 
Geneva bar, graduate of the Ecole du Louvre
Edouard Treppoz, senior lecturer in law, University of Lyon III

Partnerships:
attitudes - espace d'arts contemporains, Geneva
Art-Law Centre, Geneva
Activités Culturelles, University of Geneva

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