BEFORE

WHO MAKES AND OWNS YOUR WORK?
Exploring the Economy of Sharing and the Commodification of Community

Konstfack Tuesday 5 December 2006 at 18.00

With a general shift in society towards information-based production, questions of ownership and organisational practices have come to the fore. Simultaneously, in the recent history of digital networks and software development sharing has been a crucial mode of co-ordination. Today it seems relevant to revisit this near history in order to address a wider field of cultural production. The various methods for licensing material and immaterial products have triggered an intensive international debate among cultural producers where both standpoints and awareness vary. How do these issues play into diverse fields such as medicine, law, economics and artistic practice? Which are the most pertinent international developments?



Community as commodity?

Beyond the question of copyright there is also a fundamental question of who the peer in peer-production is. Or, rephrased, what happens to the role of the user when voluntary activity becomes enclosed within the framework of commodification? Platforms enabling user-generated content – such as YouTube, MySpace, Flickr, Second Life and Wikipedia – are all based on the idea that the user group voluntarily produces their own consumption. At the same time the question of enclosure and commodification is also one of power and control. What is the premise of an open production set?
Process, Themes & Outcome
The process is set up as a collaboration between Iaspis and Konstfack creating an opportunity to develop content and format through joint meetings and discussions with students, residents and staff of both institutions, as well as others. Participation is open to all and will constitute the basis of all decision making involved in preparing the outcome. The first in a series of open meetings will take place at Konstfack at 18.00 on Tuesday 5 December 2006, and will continue through next spring and summer until the final event which is planned for September 2007.



The meetings will be a forum for discussing and developing the issues briefly outlined above. We expect that several different specific themes will evolve out of them. Some of them might be:



* Constructing realities – mass media or media of the masses
* User-generated content – when enthusiasm is commodified
* Who is a peer? – finding a place for sharing between markets & hierarchies
* Open content surveillance – new models of control
* Ownership and public domain – patents, copyright, piracy and bio-piracy
* Etc.



The meetings will also work toward a collaboratively arranged public presentation in September 2007, which could take the form of enactment, workshop, performance, publication, intervention, symposium, broadcasting etc.





Simon Goldin, Marysia Lewandowska, Maria Lind, Jakob Senneby, Robert Stasinski