ABSORB, INTEGRATE, CO-OPERATE…BUT DON’T STEAL
Where do you stand in the great copyright debate, when one man’s stealing is another man’s artistic soup?
It’s an issue oft mentioned in the music industry. I did used to think, like a lot of people I expect, that if you used a tiny snatch.. let’s say 2 seconds of a track as a sample for example, that it was ok if it was integrated into another, larger work. Wrong of course is the answer to that.
I often find myself in the middle of this in the Rink project. Some of what I am wanting to reference is, by its very nature, material either recorded or photographed way back when, and it can be quite tricky establishing ownership. It has been particularly pertinent this week.
Occasionally I Google for film relating to Hartlepool, and found some really quite evocative 8mm film footage from the Gowland family, shot from the 40’s through to the 60’s. It’s the usual thing… holidays, swimming, picnics, train spotting etc. but here and there the YouTube clips echoed with what I had shot myself; in particular short sequences of girls dancing in a park with post war collective innocence. Having filmed my group of dancers outside on the grass at the Rink a month or so ago – it reverberated through time in a magical way.
I asked the person who posted these how I could get permission to use short clips in my piece. Not getting a reply, I trawled other sites – and came across a reference to the same footage in the Northern Regional Film and Television Archive (NRFTA). I opened a dialogue with them about using the films, along with some other more obvious flicks they have showing the town and local industries. Result; now negotiating rights and licenses in a way I hadn’t initially considered when just looking to ‘see what was out there’.
Now this is not a criticism of NRFTA who I totally understand have guidelines to adhere to and wages to pay, but what it has highlighted to me is the grey area that ‘art’ occupies in terms of where reference can be drawn from and how source material can be completely different in a different context. The more usual model seems to be that people hire films to view for a weekend or a term perhaps or to put into a television prog. that will be broadcast on a particular date. Typically licenses seem to be granted for a certain length of time.. 1 year..5 years maybe even 10 years. The assumption seems to be that the clip will have a particular, time delineated purpose, after which it will no longer be required.
Well that may well be the case with my work – perhaps it will be shown once and never seen again! I sincerely hope not though. But when will it next be seen? 1 year 5 years 20 years later? I see my work in the same way as a painter would. If I stick a picture of a hat from a magazine onto my canvas, splash some paint over it and continue working that canvas until I’m happy with the painting – what then if I had to license the picture of that hat for say 10 years? After 10 years do I then peel it off the canvas and thus render the picture incomplete? It’s an odd dilemma.
Andy Warhol could have had the same problem with the Campbell’s soup cans. He didn’t seek permission to paint the brand. As it turned out the company apparently saw it as good publicity, though after his death the Warhol foundation and Campbell Soup Company formed an official legal agreement on licensing.
Damien Hirst on the other hand agreed to pay an undisclosed sum to head off legal action from the designers of the original educational toy that Hirst had admitted was the basis of his 20 foot bronze sculpture ‘Hymn’. It was as near a copy as you could get and yet, some would argue, transformative in a way that made it a unique piece.
A one million purchase from Mr Saatchi no doubt oiled the wheels.
