Abstract

Research Content: An investigation of artist’s use of copyright-free content in the creation of new works distributed online and offline.
The residency was the first for the established artist-run organisation to engage a joint researcher, art historian, theorist and writer, and their first substantial bilingual publication. The project involved new commissions from 7 artists of six new single channel works created in partnership with Library and Archives Canada, the national repository. The research concerned marking the changing landscape of copy-left creative production and the role of both open access and closed databases of moving image work online in the creation of new work, and the national geographically designated legal boundaries of artistic reuse.
The Guggenheim Museum partnership with YouTube was the first to address online video at an international level with physically-sited exhibitions of the selected works at all four Guggenheim museums at the same time. The accompanying online blog edited by the Guggenheim was widely read and cited including contributions from internationally recognised artists and theorists such as Dara Birnbaum, Maria Fusco, Michael Connor, Mike Sperlinger, Ryan Trecartin and others.

Invited four week curatorial research residency at SAW Video as part of their project Public Domain, including undertaking formal and informal interviews with commissioned artists, curators, lawyers and archivists (April 26-May 28 2010)