Object and Identity in a Digital Age
CHArt 25th ANNUAL CONFERENCE
|
|
Object and Identity in a Digital Age
|
Jeremy Pilcher, Lancaster University
Are You Clean? Parasitic Art and Privacy
In my paper I will examine the way in which the engagement by online art with traditional conceptions of authorship may have implications beyond being understood as a challenge to the affirmation of intangible property rights (such as copyright) at the expense of freedom of speech. Rachel Baker’s TM Clubcard (1997) employed direct lifts of the logos of two supermarkets to undercut the characterisation of participation in loyalty card schemes in terms of the membership of clubs.
Approaches to the work tend to focus on its challenge to the control of corporate identity through branding (Stallabrass). The supermarkets did assert infringements of their intangible property rights. However, one supermarket alleged that TM Clubcard resulted in personal confidential information being obtained by deception (http://www.irational.org/tm/archived/tesco/). The other company demanded that the data collected from visitors to the site should be surrendered (http://www.irational.org/tm/archived/sainsbury/). These aspects tend to be overlooked.
I will suggest that TM Clubcard provides the opportunity to explore the implications for identity of the law’s approach to the relationship of privacy to property. It seems to me that at present this relationship has particular relevance in the context of the impact of social networking sites. However, the discussion of the law’s attitude toward identity in such terms has looked back as far as legal action taken by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert to prevent private etchings from being printed publicly (Warren and Brandeis; Post).
The relationship TM Clubcard had with pre-existing supermarket schemes was described by Baker as parasitical. I will discuss the work through this metaphor, which has been variously conceptualised (Broeckmann, Derrida, Serres), in the process engaging with non-relational aesthetics (Gere). My argument will be that TM Clubcard allowed an encounter with the role of the violence of law in the construction of both human and corporate identity.
Jeremy Pilcher is a PhD candidate at the Institute of Cultural Research, Lancaster University. Previously he worked as a barrister and solicitor in New Zealand before moving to England, where he qualified as a solicitor. His thesis on the intersection of new media art and law builds on his legal background and qualifications in art history and art law. He also has an interest in indigenous culture in online museums, on which he has jointly published with Saskia Vermeylen.