[A2k] Launch: Kunstfreiheit.ch

[Felix Stalder]

Yesterday, we launched an initiative called kunstfreiheit.ch (freedom of
art). It's an open letter to the Swiss minister of justice and the
parliamentarians calling attention to the fact that the reform/expansion
of copyright, which currently being debated, is not in the interest of
artists. We got 40 prominent Swiss artists, curators and professors to
sign it in advance, and now we opened it to the public.

So far, response has been very positive. You can find more about on
http://www.kunstfreiheit.ch, which is mostly in German, except for the
open letter which is translated into French and Italian.

The main aim of the open letter is to make public the differing interested
between between artists and industry, helping to undermine the myth (which
is still politically powerful) that the industry represents the interests
of artists.

The whole initiative is a long term effect of the TACD conference on
the "Paris accord" because the idea was born there. As you will see
easily, appropriationart.ca was also a big inspiration. Which kind of
proofs the point of the entire argument that new things are but a
transformation of existing things :)


Felix









----http://felix.openflows.org------------------------------ out now:
*|Manuel Castells and the Theory of the Network Society. Polity, 2006
*|Open Cultures and the Nature of Networks. Ed. Futura/Revolver, 2005