John Berger’s four-part BBC documentary Ways of Seeing (1972) is a seminal work of popular art history. As the camera lingers on iconic European paintings, Berger examines our “learned assumptions” about fine art in a world saturated by cameras, screens, and easily reproducible images.
For her contemporary remake, Ways of Something (2014-2015), Lorna Mills invited more than a hundred digital artists to each recreate a one-minute section of the documentary, retaining Berger’s narration but replacing the image. The result is a chaotic compilation of 3-D animations, video remixes, animated GIFs, webcam performances, and more, by artists who update, challenge, or elaborate on Berger’s ideas. Ways of Something is, in effect, art about art about television about the internet, employing aesthetically diverse practices to re-examine Berger’s theories about looking at art in the digital age.
On 28th April from 18:30 to 20:30 there will be panel discussion, Copyright as Frame and Prison, to coincide with the No Copyright Infringement Intended exhibition currently on at Phoenix in Leicester.
Alongside our exhibition No Copyright Infringement Intended, this discussion will highlight the disruptive power of technological innovation on culture and copyright.
Using the works within the exhibition as a starting point, a panel featuring artists and copyright experts will discuss how emerging technologies are shaping creative processes, how (perceptions of) copyright enable and inhibit those technologically-enabled processes and the appropriateness of appropriation.
The panel discussion will feature exhibiting artists Andrea Wallace & Ronan Deazley (Display at Your Own Risk), Duncan Poulton (Pygmalion), alongside myself (I curated this whole shindig), and Dr Shane Burke (lecturer in Law at Cardiff University).
This event is free. Tickets available here.
