[00:13]
Public Library is the concept, the idea, to encourage people to become a
librarian, where a librarian is a person which can allow access to books – and
also which has a catalogue or index, so that it's searchable. [00:32] And the
person, the human being, can communicate, can talk with others who are
interested in that catalogue of books. [00:43] And then when you have a
librarian, and you have a lot of librarians, you have a Public Library,
because we have access to books, we have a catalogue, and we have a librarian.
That's the basic set up. [00:55] And in order to really work, in practice, we
need to introduce a set of tools which are easy to use, like Calibre, for
example, for book management. [01:07] And then also some part of that set up
should be also developed because at the moment, because of the configuration
of the routers, IP addresses and other things, it's not that easy to share
your local library which you have on your laptop with the world. [01:30] So we
also provide... When I say ‘we,’ it's a small team, at the moment, of
developers who try to address that problem. [01:38] We don't need to reinvent
the public library. It's invented, and it should be just maintained. [01:47]
The old-school public libraries – they are in decline because of many reasons.
And when it comes to the digital networks, the digital books, it's almost like
the worst position. [01:59] For example, public libraries in the US, they are
not allowed to buy digital books, for example from Penguin. So even when they
want to buy, it's not that they are getting them, it's that they can't buy the
books. [02:16] By the current legal regulation, it's considered as illegal – a
million of books, or even more, are unavailable, and I think that these books
should be really available. [02:29] And it doesn't really matter how it got on
Internet – did it come from a graphic designer who is preparing that for
print, or if it was uploaded somewhere from the author of the book (that is
also very common, especially in humanities), or if it was digitised anywhere.
[02:50] So these are the books which we have, and we can't be blinded, they
are here. The practice at the moment is almost like trying to find a
prostitute or something, so when you want to get a book online you need to get
onto the websites with advertisements for casinos, for porn and things like
that. [03:14] I don't think that the library should be like that.
[03:18]
Book Management
[03:22]
What we are trying to provide is just suggesting what kind of book management
software they can use, and also what kind of new software tools they can
install in order to easily get the messy directory into the directory of
metadata which Calibre can recognise – and then you can just use Calibre. The
next step is if you can share your local library with the world. [03:52] You
need something like a management software where it's easy to see who are the
authors, what the titles, publishers and all of the metadata – and it's
accessible from the outside.
[04:08]
Calibre
[04:12]
Calibre is a book management software. It's developed by Kovid Goyal, a
software developer. [04:22] It's a free software, open source, and it started
like many other free software projects. It started as a small tool to solve
very particular small problems. [04:31] But then, because it was useful, it
got more and more users, and then Kovid started to develop it more into a
proper, big book management software. At the moment it has more that 10
million registered users who are running that. [04:52] It does so many things
for book management. It's really ‘the’ software tool... If you have an
e-reader, for example, it recognises your e-reader, it registers it inside of
Calibre and then you can easily just transfer the books. [05:08] Also for
years there was a big problem of file formats. So for example, Amazon, in
order to keep their monopoly in that area, they wouldn't support EPUB or PDF.
And then if you got your book somewhere – if you bought it or just downloaded
from the Internet, you wouldn't be able to read it on your reader. [05:31]
Then Calibre was just developing the converter tools. And it was all in one
package, so that Calibre just became the tool for book management. [05:43] It
has a web server as a part of it. So in a local area network – if you just
start that web server and you are running a local area network, it can have a
read-only searchable access to your local library, to your books, and it can
search by any of these metadata.
[06:05]
Tools Around Calibre
[06:09]
I developed a software which I call Let's Share Books, which is super small
compared to Calibre. It just allows you, with one click, to get your library
shared on the Internet. [06:24] So that means that you get a public URL, which
says something like www some-number dot memoryoftheworld dot net, and that is
the temporary public URL. You can send it to anyone in the world. [06:37] And
while you are running your local web server and share books, it would just
serve these books to the Internet. [06:45] I also set up a web chat – kind of
a room where people can talk to each other, chat to each other. [06:54] So
it’s just, trying to develop tools around Calibre, which is mostly for one
person, for one librarian – to try to make some kind of ecosystem for a lot of
librarians where they can meet with their readers or among themselves, and
talk about the books which they love to read and share. [07:23] It’s mostly
like a social networking around the books, where we use the idea and tradition
of the public library. [07:37] In order to get there I needed to set up a
server which only does routing. So with my software I don’t know which books
are transferred, anything. It’s just like a router. [07:56] You can do that
also if you have control of your router, or what we usually call modem, so the
device which you use to get to the Internet. But that is quite hard to hack,
just hackers know how to do that. [08:13] So I just made a server on the
Internet which you can use with one click, and it just routes the traffic
between you, if you’re a librarian, and your users, readers. So that’s that
easy.
[08:33]
Librarians
[08:38] It’s super easy to become a librarian, and that is what we should
celebrate. It’s not that the only librarians which we have were the librarians
who were the only ones wanting to become a librarian. [08:54] So lots of
people want to be a librarian, and lots of people are librarians whenever they
have a chance. [09:00] So you would probably recommend me some books which you
like. I’ll recommend you some books which I like. So I think we should
celebrate that now it’s super easy that anyone can be a librarian. [09:11] And
of course, we will still need professional librarians in order to push forward
the whole field. But that goes, again, in collaboration with software
engineers, information architectes, whatever… [09:26] It’s so easy to have
that, and the benefits of that are so great, that there is no reason why not
to do that, I would say.
[09:38]
Functioning
[09:43]
If you want to share your collection then you need to install at the moment
Calibre, and Let’s Share Books software, which I wrote. But also you can – for
example, there is a Calibre plugin for Aaaaarg, so if you use Calibre… from
Calibre you can search Aaaaarg, you can download books from Aaaaarg, you can
also change the metadata and upload the metadata up to Aaaaarg.
[10:13]
Repositories
[10:17]
At the moment the biggest repository for the books, in order to download and
make your catalogue, is Library Genesis. It’s around 900,000 books. It’s
libgen.info, libgen.org. And it’s a great project. [10:33] It’s done by some
Russian hackers, who also allow anyone to download all of that. It’s 9
Terabytes of books, quite some chunk of hard disks which you need for that.
[10:47] And you can also download PHP, the back end of the website and the
MySQL database (a thumb of the MySQL database), so you can run your own
Library Genesis. That’s one of the ways how you can do that. [11:00] You can
also go and join Aaaaarg.org, where it is also not just about downloading
books and uploading books, it’s also about communication and interpretation of
making, different issues and catalogues. [11:14] It’s a community of book
lovers who like to share knowledge, and who add quite a lot of value around
the books by doing that. [11:26] And then there is… you can use Calibre and
Let’s Share Books. It’s just one of these complimentary tools. So it’s not
really that Calibre and Let’s Share Books is the only way how you can today
share books.
[11:45]
Goal
[11:50]
What we do also has a non-hidden agenda for fighting for the public library. I
would say that most of the people we know, even the authors, they all
participate in the huge, massive Public Library – which we don’t call Public
Library, but usually just trying to hide that we are using that because we are
afraid of the restrictive regime. [12:20] So I don’t see a reason why we
should shut down such a great idea and great implementation – a great resource
which we have all around the world. [12:30] So it’s just an attempt to map all
of these projects and to try to improve them. Because, in order to get it into
the right shape, we need to improve the metadata. [12:47] Open Library, a
project which started also with Aaron Swartz, has 20 millions items, and we
use it. There is a basedata.org which connects the hash files, the MD5 hashes,
with the Open Library ID. And we try to contribute to Open Library as much as
possible. [13:10] So with very few people, around 5 people, we can improve it
so much that it will be for a billion of users a great Public Library, and at
the same time we can have millions of librarians, which we never had before.
So that’s the idea. [13:35] The goal is just to keep the Public Library. If we
didn’t screw up the whole situation with the Public Library, probably we’d
just try to add a little bit of new software, and new ways that we can read
the books. [13:53] But at the moment [it’s] super important actually to keep
this infrastructure running, because this super important infrastructure for
the access to knowledge is now under huge threat.
[14:09]
Copyright
[14:13]
I just think that it’s completely inappropriate – that copyright law is
completely inappropriate for the Public Library. I don’t know about other
cases, but in terms of Public Library it’s absolutely inappropriate. [14:29]
We should find the new ways of how to reward the ones who are adding value to
sharing knowledge. First authors, then anyone who is involved in public
libraries, like librarians, software engineers – so everyone who is involved
in that ecosystem should be rewarded, because it’s a great thing, it’s a
benefit for the society. [15:03] If this kind of things happens, so if the law
which regulates this blocks and doesn’t let that field blossom, it’s something
wrong with that law. [15:16] It’s getting worse and worse, so I don’t know for
how long we should wait, because while we’re waiting it’s getting worse.
[15:24] I don’t care. And I think that I can say that because I’m an artist.
Because all of these laws are made saying that they are representing art, they
are representing the interest of artists. I’m an artist. They don’t really
represent my interests. [15:46] I think that it should be taken over by the
artists. And if there are some artists who disagree – great, let’s have a
discussion.
[15:58]
Civil Disobedience
[16:03]
In the possibilities of civil disobedience – which are done also by
institutions, not just by individuals – and I think that in such clear cases
like the Public Library it’s easy. [16:17] So I think that what I did in this
particular case is nothing really super smart – it’s just reducing this huge
issue to something which is comprehensible, which is understandable for most
of the people. [16:31] There is no one really who doesn’t understand what
public library is. And if you say to anyone in the world, saying, like hey, no
more public libraries, hey, no books anymore, no books for the poor people. We
are just giving up on something which we almost consensually accepted through
the whole world. [16:55] And I think that in such clear cases, I’m really
interested [in] what institutions could do, like Transmediale. I’m now in
[Akademie] Schloss Solitude, I also proposed to make a server with a Public
Library. If you invest enough it’s a million of books, it’s a great library.
[17:16] And of course they are scared. And I think that the system will never
really move if people are not brave. [17:26] I’m not really trying to
encourage people to do something where no one could really understand, you
know, and you need expertise or whatever. [17:37] In my opinion this is the
big case. And if Transmediale or any other art institution is playing with
that, and showing that – let’s see how far away we can support this kind of
things. [17:56] The other issue which I am really interested in is what is the
infrastructure, who is running the infrastructures, and what kind of
infrastructures are happen in between these supposedly avant-garde
institutions, or something. [08:12] So I’m really interested in raising these
issues.
[18:17]
Art Project
[18:21]
Public Library is also an art project where… I would say that just in the same
way that corporations, by their legal status, can really kind of mess around
with different… they can’t be that much accountable and responsible – I think
that this is the counterpart. [18:44] So civil disobedience can use art just
the same way that corporations can use their legal status. [18:51] When I was
invited as a curator and artist to curate the HAIP Festival in Ljubljana, I
was already quite into the topic of sharing access to knowledge. And then I
came up with this idea and everybody liked it and everybody was enthusiastic.
It's one of these ideas where you can see that it’s great, there is no one
really who would oppose to that. [19:28] At the same time there was an
exhibition, Dear Art, curated by WHW, quite established curators. And then it
immediately became an art piece for that exhibition. Then I was invited here
to Transmediale, and have a couple of other invitations. [19:45] I think that
it also shows that art institutions are accepting that, they play with that
idea. And I think that this kind of projects – by having that acceptance it
becomes the issue, it becomes the problem of the whole arts establishment.
[20:10] So I think that if I do this in this way, and if there is a curator
who invites this kind of projects – so who invites Public Library into their
exhibition – it’s also showing their kind of readiness to fight for that
issue. [20:27] And if there are a number of art festivals, a number of art
exhibitions, who are supporting this kind of, lets say, civil disobedience,
that also shows something. [20:38] And I think that that kind of context
should be pushed into the confrontation, so it’s not anymore just playing “oh,
is it is ok, it is not? We should deal with all the complexity…” [20:57] There
is no real complexity here. That complexity is somewhere else, and in some
other step we should take care of that. But this is an art piece, it’s a well
established art piece. [21:11] If you make a Public Library, I'm fine, I’m
sacrificing for taking the responsibility. But you shouldn't melt down that
art piece, I think. [21:26] And I feel super stupid that such a simple concept
should be, in 2013, articulated to whom? In many ways it’s like playing dummy,
I play dummy. It’s like, why should I? [21:50] When we started to play in
Ljubljana like software developers we came up with so many great ideas of how
to use those resources. So it was immediately… just after couple of hours we
had tools – visualisations of that, a reader of Wikipedia which can embed any
page which is referred, as a reference, a quote. [22:17] It was immediately
obvious for anyone there and for anyone from the outside what a huge resource
is having a Public Library like that – and what’s the huge harm that we don’t
have it. [22:32] But still we need to play dummy, I need to play the artist’s
role, you know.
Sollfrank, Francke & Weinmayr
Piracy Project
2013
Giving What You Don't Have
Andrea Francke, Eva Weinmayr
Piracy Project
Birmingham, 6 December 2013
[00:12]
Eva Weinmayr: When we talk about the word piracy, it causes a lot of problems
to quite a few institutions to deal with it. So events that we’ve organised
have been announced by Central Saint Martins without using the word piracy.
That’s interesting, the problems it still causes…
Cornelia Sollfrank: And how do you announce the project without “Piracy”? The
Project?
E. W.: It’s a project about intellectual property.
C. S.: The P Project.
Andrea Francke, Eva Weinmayr: [laugh] Yes.
[00:52]
Andrea Francke: The Piracy Project is a knowledge platform, and it is based
around a collection of pirated books, of books that have been copied by
people. And we use it to raise discussion about originality, authorship,
intellectual property questions, and to produce new material, new essays and
new questions.
[01:12]
E. W.: So the Piracy Project includes several aspects. One is that it is an
act of piracy in itself, because it is located in an art school, in a library,
in an officially built up a collection of pirated books. [01:30] So that’s the
second aspect, it’s a collection of books which have been copied,
appropriated, modified, improved, which live in this library. [01:40] And the
third part is that it is a collection of physical books, which is touring. We
create reading rooms and invite people to explore the books and discuss issues
raised by cultural piracy.
[01:58] The Piracy Project started in an art college library, which was
supposed to be closed down. And the Piracy Project is one project of And
Publishing. And Publishing is a publishing activity exploring print-on-demand
and new modes of production and of dissemination, the immediacy of
dissemination. [02:20] And Publishing is a collaboration between myself and
Lynn Harris, and we were hosted by Central Saint Martins College of Art and
Design in London. And the campus where this library was situated was the
campus we were working at. [02:40] So when the library was being closed, we
moved in the library together with other members of staff, and kept the
library open in a self-organised way. But we were aware that there’s no budget
to buy new books, and we wanted to have this as a lively space, so we created
an open call for submissions and we asked people to select a book which is
really important to them and make a copy of it. [03:09] So we weren’t
interested in piling up a collection of second hand books, we were really
interested in this process: what happens when you make a copy of a book, and
how does this copy sit next to the original authoritative copy of the book.
This is how it started.
[03:31]
A. F.: I met Eva at the moment when And Publishing was helping to set up this
new space in the library, and they were trying to think how to make the
library more alive inside that university. [03:44] And I was doing research on
Peruvian book piracy at that time, and I had found this book that was modified
and was in circulation. And it was a very exciting moment for us to think what
happens if we can promote this type of production inside this academic
library.
[04:05] Piracy Project
Collection / Reading Room / Research
[04:11]
The Collection
[04:15]
E. W.: We asked people to make a copy of a book which is important to them and
send it to us, and so with these submission we started to build up the
collections. Lots of students were getting involved, but also lots of people
who work in this topic, and were interested in these topics. [04:38] So we
received about one hundred books in a couple of months. And then, parallel to
this, we started to do research ourselves. [04:50] We had a residency in
China, so we went to China, to Beijing and Shanghai, to meet illegal
booksellers of pirated architecture books. And we had a residency in Turkey,
in Istanbul, where we did lots of interviews with publishers and artists on
book piracy. [05:09] So the collection is a mix of our own research and cases
from the real book markets, and creative work, artistic work which is produced
in the context of an art college and the wider cultural realm.
[05:29]
A. F.: And it is an ongoing project.
E. W.: The project is ongoing, we still receive submissions. The collection is
growing, and at the moment here we have about 180 books, here at Grand Union
(Birmingham).
[05:42]
A. F.: When we did the open call, something that was really important to us
was to make clear for people that they have a space of creativity when they
are making a copy. So we wrote, please send us a copy of a book, and be aware
that things happen when you copy a book. [05:57] Whether you do it
intentionally or not a copy is never the same. So you can use that space, take
ownership of that space and make something out of that; or you can take a step
back and allow things to happen without having control. And I think that is
something that is quite important for us in the project. [06:12] And it is
really interesting how people have embraced that in different measures, like
subtle things, or material things, or adding text, taking text out, mixing
things, judging things. Sometimes just saying, I just want it to circulate, I
don’t mind what happens in the space, I just want the subject to be in the
world again.
[06:35]
E. W.: I think this is one which I find interesting in terms of making a copy,
because it’s not so much about my own creativity, it’s more about exploring
how technology edits what you can see. It’s Jan van Toorn’s Critical Practice,
and the artist is Hester Barnard, a Canadian artist. [07:02] She sent us these
three copies, and we thought, that’s really generous, three copies. But they
are not identical copies, they are very different. Some have a lot of empty
pages in the book. And this book has been screen-captured on a 3.5 inch
iPhone, whereas this book has been screen-captured on a desktop, and this one
has been screen-captured with a laptop. [07:37] So the device you use to
access information online determines what you actually receive. And I find
this really interesting, that she translated this back into a hardcopy, the
online edited material. [07:53] And this is kind of taught by this book,
standard International Copyright. She went to Google Books, and screen-
captured all the pages Google Books are showing. So we are all familiar with
blurry text pages, but then it starts that you get the message “Page 38 is not
shown in this preview.” [08:18] And then it’s going through the whole book, so
she printed every page basically, omitting the actual information. But the
interesting thing is that we are all aware that this is happening on Google,
on screen online, but the fact that she’s translating this back into an
object, into a printed book, is interesting.
[08:44]
Reading Room
[08:48]
A. F.: We create these reading rooms with the collection as a way to tour the
collection, and meet people and have conversations around the books. And that
is something quite important to us, that we go with the physical books to a
place, either for two or three months, and meet different people that have
different interests in relation to the collection in that locality. We’ve been
doing that for the last two years, I think, three years. [09:12] And it’s
quite interesting because different places have very different experiences of
piracy. So you can go to a country where piracy is something very common, or a
different place where people have a very strong position against piracy, or a
different legal framework. And I feel the type of conversations and the
quality of interactions is quite different from being present on the space and
with the books. [09:36] And that’s why we don’t call these exhibitions,
because we always have places where people can come and they can stay, and
they can come again. Sometimes people come three or four times and they
actually read the books. And a few times they go back to their houses and they
bring books back, and they said, I’m going to contact this friend who has been
to Russia and he told me about this book – so we can add it to the collection.
I think that makes a big difference to how the research in the project
functions.
[10:06]
E. W.: One of the most interesting events we did with the Piracy collection
was at the Show Room where we had a residency for the last year. There were
three events, and one was A Day At The Courtroom. This was an afternoon where
we invited three copyright lawyers coming from different legal systems: the
US, the UK, and the Continental European, Athens. And we presented ten
selected cases from the collection and the three copyright lawyers had to
assess them in the eyes of the law, and they had to agree where to put this
book in a scale from legal to illegal. [10:51] So we weren’t interested really
to say, this is legal and this is illegal, we were interested in all the
shades in between. And then they had to discuss where they would place the
book. But then the audience had the last verdict, and then the audience placed
the book. [11:05] And this was an extremely interesting discussion, because it
was interesting to see how different the legal backgrounds are, how blurry the
whole field is, how you can assess when is the moment where a work becomes a
transformative work, or when it stays a derivative work, and this whole
discussion.
[11:30] When we do these reading rooms – and we had one in New York, for
example, at the New York Art Book Fair – people are coming, and they are
coming to see the physical books in a physical space, so this creates a social
encounter and we have these conversations. [11:47] For example, a woman stood
up to us in New york and she told us about a piracy project she run where she
was working in a juvenile detention centre, and she produced a whole shadow
library of books because the incarcerated kids couldn’t take the books in
their cells, so she created these copies, individual chapters, and they could
circulate. [12:20] I’m telling this because the fact that we are having this
reading room and that we are meeting people, and that we are having these
conversations, really furthers our research. We find out about these projects
by sharing knowledge.
[12:38]
Categories
[12:42]
A. F.: Whenever we set our reading room for the Piracy Project we need to
organise the books in a certain way. What we started to do now is that we’ve
created these different categories, and the first set of categories came from
the legal event. [12:56] So we set up, we organised the books in different
categories that would help us have questions for the lawyers, that would work
for groups of books instead of individual works. [13:07] And the idea is that,
for example, we are going to have our next events with librarians, and a new
set of categories would come. So the categories change as our interest or
research in the project is changing. [13:21] The current categories are:
Pirated Design, so books where the look of the book has been copied but not
the content; recirculation, books that have been copied trying to be
reproduced exactly as they were, because they need to be circulating again;
transformation, books that have been modified; For Sale Doctrine, so we
receive quite a few books where people haven’t actually made a copy but they
have cut the book or drawn inside the book, and legally you are allowed to do
anything with a book except copy it, so we thought that it was quite important
so that we didn’t have to discuss that with the lawyers; [14:03] Public
Domain, which are works that are already out of copyright, again, so whatever
you do with those books is legal; and collation, books gathered from different
sources, and who owns the copyright, which was a really interesting question,
which is when you have a book that has many authors – it’s really interesting.
Different systems in different countries have different ways to deal with who
owns the copyright and what are the rights of the owners of the different
works.
[14:36]
E. W.: Ahmet Şık is a journalist who published a book about the Ergenekon
scandal and the Turkish government, and connects that kind of mafioso
structures. Before the book could be published he was arrested and put in jail
for a whole year without trial, and he sent the PDF to friends, and the PDF
was circulating on many different computers so it couldn’t be taken. [15:06]
They published the PDF, and as authors they put over a hundred different
author names, so there was not just one author who could be taken into
responsibility.
[15:22] We have in the collection this book, it’s Teignmouth Electron by
Tacita Dean. This is the original, it’s published by Book Works and Steidl.
And to this round table, to this event, we invited also Jane Rolo, director of
Book Works (and she published this book). [15:41] And we invited her saying,
do you know that your book has been pirated? So she was really interested and
she came along. This is the pirated version, it’s Alias, [by] Damián Ortega in
Mexico. It’s a series of books where he translates texts and theory into
Spanish, which are not available in Spanish. So it’s about access, it’s about
circulation. [16:07] But actually he redesigned the book. The pirated version
looks very different, and it has a small film roll here, from Tacita Dean’s
book. And it was really amazing that Jane Rolo flipped the pirated book and
she said, well, actually this is really very nice.
[16:31] This is kind of a standard academic publishing format, it’s Gilles
Deleuze’s Proust and Signs, and the contributor, the artist who produced the
book is Neil Chapman, a writer based in London. And he made a facsimile of his
copy of this book, including the binding mistakes – so there’s one chapter
upside down printed in the book. [17:04] But the really interesting thing is
that he scanned it on his home inkjet printer – he scanned it on his scanner
and then printed it on his home inkjet printer. And the feel of it is very
crafty, because the inkjet has a very different typographic appearance than
the official copy. [17:28] And this makes you read the book in quite a
different way, you relate differently to the actual text. So it’s not just
about the information conveyed on this page, it’s really about how I can
relate to it visually. I find this really interesting when we put this book
into the library, in our collection in the library, and it sat next to the
original, [17:54] it raises really interesting questions about what kind of
authority decides which book can access the library, because this is
definitely and obviously a self-made copy – so if this self-made copy can
enter the library, any self-made text and self-published copy could enter the
library. So it was raising really interesting questions about gatekeepers of
knowledge, and hierarchies and authorities.
[18:26]
On-line catalogue
[18:30]
E. W.: We created this online catalogue give to an overview of what we have in
the collection. We have a cover photograph and then we have a short text where
we try to frame and to describe the approach taken, like the strategy, what’s
been pirated and what was the strategy. [18:55] And this is quite a lot,
because it’s giving you the framework of it, the conceptual framework. But
it’s not giving you the book, and this is really important because lots of the
books couldn’t be digitised, because it’s exactly their material quality which
is important, and which makes the point. [19:17] So if I would… if I have a
project which is working about mediation, and then I put another layer of
mediation on top of it by scanning it, it just wouldn’t work anymore.
[19:29] The purpose of the online catalogue isn’t to give you insight into all
the books to make actually all the information available, it’s more to talk
about the approach taken and the questions which are raised by this specific
book.
[19:47]
Cultures of the copy
[19:51]
A topic of cultural difference became really obvious when we went to Istanbul.
A copy shop which had many academic titles on the shelves, copied, pirated
titles... The fact is that in London, where I’m based, you can access anything
in any library, and it’s not too expensive to get the original book. [20:27]
But in Istanbul it’s very expensive, and the whole academic community thrives
on pirated, copied academic titles.
[20:39]
A. F.: So this is the original Jaime Bayly [No se lo digas a nadie], and this
is the pirated copy of the Jaime Bayly. This book is from Peru, it was bought
on the street, on a street market. [20:53] And Peru has a very big pirated
book market, most books in Peru are pirated. And we found this because there
was a rumour that books in Peru had been modified, pirated books. And this
version, the pirated version, has two extra chapters that are not in the
original one. [21:13] It’s really hard to understand the motivation behind it.
There’s no credit, so the person is inhabiting this author’s identity in a
sense. They are not getting any cultural capital from it. They are not getting
extra money, because if they are found out, nobody would buy books from this
publisher anymore. [21:33] The chapters are really well written, so you as a
reader would not realise that you are reading something that has been pirated.
And that was really fascinating in terms of what space you create. So when you
have this technology that allows you to have the book open and print it so
easily – how you can you take advantage of that, and take ownership or inhabit
these spaces that technology is opening up for you.
[22:01]
E. W.: Book piracy in China is really important when it comes to architecture
books, Western architecture books. Lots of architecture studios, but even
university libraries would buy from pirate book sellers, because it’s just so
much cheaper. [22:26] And we’ve found this Mark magazine with one of the
architecture sellers, and it’s supposed to be a bargain because you have six
magazines in one. [22:41] And we were really interested in the question, what
are the criteria for the editing? How do you edit six issues into one? But
basically everything is in here, from advertisement, to text, to images, it’s
all there. But then a really interesting question arises when it comes to
technology, because in this magazine there are pages in Italian language
clearly taken from other magazines.
[23:14]
A. F.: But it was also really interesting to go there, and actually interview
the distributor and go through the whole experience. We had to meet the
distributor in a neutral place, and he interviewed us to see if he was going
to allow us to go into the shop and buy his books. [23:31] And then going
through the catalogue and realising how Rem Koolhaas is really popular among
the pirates, but actually Chinese architecture is not popular, so there’s only
like three pirated books on Chinese architecture; or that from all the
architecture universities in the world only the AA books are copied – the
Architectural Association books. [23:51] And I think those small things are
really things that are worth spending time and reflecting on.
[23:58]
E. W.: We found this pirate copy of Tintin when we visited Beijing, and
obviously compared to the original, it looks different, a different format.
But also it’s black and white, but it’s not a photocopy of the original full-
colour. [24:23] It’s redrawn by hand, so all the drawings are redrawn and
obviously translated into Chinese. This is quite a labour of love, which is
really amazing. I can compare the two. The space is slightly differently
interpreted.
[24:50]
A. F.: And it’s really incredible, because at some point in China there were
14 or 15 different publishers publishing Tintin, and they all have their
versions. They are all hand-drawn by different people, so in the back, in
Chinese, it’s the credit. So you can buy it by deciding which person does the
best drawings of the production of Tintin, which I thought it was really…
[25:14] It’s such a different cultural way to actually give credit to the
person that is copying it, and recognise the labour, and the intention and the
value of that work.
[25:24]
Why books?
[25:28]
E. W.: Books have always been very important in my practice, in my artistic
practice, because lots of my projects culminated in a book, or led into a
book. And publications are important because they can circulate freely, they
can circulate much easier than artworks in a gallery. [25:50] So this question
of how to make things public and how to create an audience… not how to create
an audience – how to reach a reader and how to create a dialogue. So the book
is the perfect tool for this.
[26:04]
A. F.: My interest in books comes from making art, or thinking about art as a
way to interact with the world, so outside art settings, and I found books
really interesting in that. And that’s how I met Eva, in a sense, because I
was interested in that part of her practice. [26:26] When I found the Jaime
Bayly book, for me that was a real moment of excitement, of this person that
was doing this things in the world without taking any credit, but was having
such a profound effect on so many readers. I’m quite fascinated by that.
[26:44] I'm also really interested in research and using events – research
that works with people. So it kind of creates communities around certain
subjects, and then it uses that to explore different issues and to interact
with different areas of knowledge. And I think books are a privileged space to
do that.
[27:11]
E. W.: The books in the Piracy collection, because they are objects you can
grab, and because they need a place, they are a really important tool to start
a dialogue. When we had this reading room in the New York Art Book Fair, it
was really the book that created this moment when you started a conversation
with somebody else. And I think this is a very important moment in the Piracy
collection as a tool to start this discussion. [27:44] In the Piracy
collection the books are not so important to circulate, because they don’t
circulate. They only travel with us, in a way, or they travel here to Grand
Union to be installed in this reading room. But they are not meant to be
printed in a thousands print run and circulated in the world.
C. S.: So what is their function?
[28:08]
E. W.: The functions of the books here in the Piracy collection are to create
a dialogue, debate about these issues they are raising, and they are a tool
for a direct encounter, for a social encounter. As Andrea said, building a
community which is debating these issues which they are raising. [28:32] And I
also find it really interesting – when we where in China we also talked with
lots of publishers and artists, and they said that the book, in comparison to
an online file, is a really important tool in China, because it can’t be
controlled as easily as online communication. [28:53] So a book is an
autonomous object which can be passed on from one hand to the other, without
the state or another authority to intervene. I think that is an important
aspect when you talk about books in comparison with circulating information
online.
[29:13]
Passion for piracy
[29:17]
A. F.: I’m quite interested in enclosures, and people that jump those
enclosures. I’m kind of interested in these imposed… Maybe because I come from
Peru and we have a different relation to rules, and I’m in Britain where rules
seem to have so much strength. And I’m quite interested in this agency of
taking personal responsibility and saying, I’m going to obey this rule, I’m
not going to obey this one, and what does that mean. [29:42] That makes me
really interested in all these different strategies, and also to find a way to
value them and show them – how when you make this decision to jump a rule, you
actually help bring up questions, modifications, and propose new models or new
ways about thinking things. [30:02] And I think that is something that is part
of all the other projects that I do: stating the rules and the people that
break them.
[30:12]
E. W.: The pirate as a trickster who tries to push the boundaries which are
being set. And I think the interesting, or the complex part of the Piracy
Project is that we are not saying, I’m for piracy or I’m against piracy, I’m
for copyright, I’m against copyright. It’s really about testing out these
decisions and the own boundaries, the legal boundaries, the moral limits – to
push them and find them. [30:51] I mean, the Piracy Project as a whole is a
project which is pushing the boundaries because it started in this academic
library, and it’s assessed by copyright lawyers as illegal, so to run such a
project is an act of piracy in itself.
[31:17]
This method of doing or approaching this art project is to create a
collaboration to instigate this discourse, and this discourse is happening on
many different levels. One of them is conversation, debate. But the other one
is this material outcome, and then this material outcome is creating a new
debate.