It seems that there is disconnection here: terms market, art, labour,
culture, production, demand, reward are cherry-picked to prove this or
that point, throwing them as needed in disjunct contexts.
From a purely 'market' PoV, there are:
(1) a limited (as in not infinite) cash-supported demand, and it's doing
fine. This demand is adequately met by the production of some 0.1% of
the 'artist' population, and the rest have lottery-class chances of
getting in.
(2) far less limited 'cultural' demand, which is perhaps best defined as
non-cash-supported, and can be loosely defined as superset of ideas,
ideologies, individual inclinations, etc. regarding what 'society'
needs/wants. Every single 'artist' can produce something for this
market, as there are at least few people who will buy it, paying with
flatter, emotional support, drinks, sex, tips, etc.
The confusion arises when (1) and (2) are mixed up. They are completely
separate mechanisms. (1) influences feeble-minded and somewhat shapes
(2). (2) migrates to (1) by the mentioned lottery system.
It is unlikely that any particular licensing mechanism (it's silly to
talk about licensing where no real money is involved and participants
can't afford real lawyers) will affect the lottery, so perhaps the best
strategy is the shotgun approach - get your stuff everywhere and hope
for the best. While operating in the market (2), licensing makes no
difference anyway - nazis will use the stuff regardless of licensing.
The whole licensing paradigm in this market looks more like a cargo
cult: if I attach some 'free/community/fair' license to my stuff maybe
the real money will land.
If the artist gets a winning ticket and enters (1), it will be very
traditional licensing enforced by a very traditional system.
Contrary to the wishful thinking, there is no evidence of middle ground.
First and foremost there is a confusion between the terms "art" and
"culture", which is created already in Ozgur's open letter and oddly
whipped up by Aymeric. Art production is quite different from cultural
# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
# more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
# archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [email protected]
