Pretty much, at least according to the writer of Invisible Dragon and Air Guitar. Hickey notes that…

… his change of heart came when he was asked to sign a 10-page contract before he could sit on a panel discussion at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

I can certainly understand the frustration, but I’m willing to bet Hickey’s decision to parachute out of a plane in flames comes more from the dire status of the current “art world” than from the requirements promulgated by a museum’s legal department.

Simply put, and as a teacher of art and director of residencies, I’ve been privy to recent art grads and current artistic practices. To say that I’ve been surrounded by stupidity would be a bit harsh, but not completely off mark. Just this year I’ve heard artists mutter — more than once — that they don’t care as much about ideas and history as they do about making “sellable objects.” This mind-set, along with the lack of art historical awareness mixed with anti-intellectual proclivity leads to nothing but a dire cocktail of mindless entertainment and retardation.

Over lunch yesterday, a few of us wondered what art students were being exposed to; what their critiques and reviews were like. This led me to make a list of what I think the problems are with current art school pedagogy and artistic practices. Here’s my (ongoing) list:

1. Equating being an artist with having gallery representation and participating in gallery exhibitions

2. A complete lack of art historical and cultural knowledge

3. A belief — promulgated by political correctness — that everyone has something important to say

4. Resume building: it’s all about being in a show; not the quality of the project and/or exhibition

5. A belief that one needs money to make art

6. A belief that art is a career

7. Equating theory with practice (“I’m against power, therefore I am”)

Unlike Hickey, I’m not quite ready to quit. With the recent passing of Mike Kelley and Michael Asher, it is crucial that one not abdicate to the mindless powers of commerce and stupidity. In fact, the time calls for an even louder and stronger stance against those that wish for a fashion-conscious art practice. The “art world” might suck, but art making does not. At least not all of it.

Relying on the plain language and legislative history of the Act, the Copyright Office clarified in the Statement that to be registrable as a copyrighted work, a compilation must fall within one or more of the categories of authorship enumerated in Section 102(a).  The Copyright Office will now refuse to register a compilation that does not fall within at least one of the categories listed in Section 102(a).  The list of categories of copyrightable materials in Section 102(a) is nonexhaustive, of course, as evidenced by the use of the word “include” in the statute.  But the Copyright Office interpreted the use of the word “include” as intended to give Congress the flexibility to create new categories of copyrightable materials in the future.

Thanks to JD Supra for this very informative piece.

Yep, no security guards the night of the theft except a “state-of-the-art” security system.

The Copyright Office is reviewing the problem of orphan works under U.S. copyright law in continuation of its previous work on the subject and to advise Congress on possible next steps for the United States. The Office seeks comments regarding the current state of play for orphan works. The Office is interested in what has changed in the legal and business environments during the past few years that might be relevant to a resolution of the problem and what additional legislative, regulatory, or voluntary solutions deserve deliberation. This is a general inquiry, and the Office will likely publish additional notices on this topic.

Comments are due by 5:00 pm EST on January 4, 2013, and reply comments are due by 5:00 pm EST on February 4, 2013.

More information may be found at www.copyright.gov/orphan.

I met a couple of interesting filmmakers last night at the Harun Farocki film screening, who go by the collaborative name of Soda_Jerk. They’re having a screening of their own at Flux Factory in LIC next Tuesday, October 30th, at 7:30pm. They’ll be screening, Hollywood Burn, “an anti-copyright epic constructed from hundreds of samples plundered from the Hollywood archive.”

If you’re into a critique of copyright and pro-free culture, this film will probably be right up your alley. Yours truly will be there and hopefully engage Soda_Jerk in a bit of “pro-copyright” argumentation. Here’s the blurb.

Mimicking the hyperbolic rhetoric of today’s copyright cops, Hollywood Burn pits a righteous league of video pirates against the evil tyrant Moses and his Copyright Commandments. Determined to alter the present by changing the past, the pirates travel back to 1955 to construct the ultimate weapon: an Elvis Presley video clone. Part sci-fi + rom com + biblical epic + action movie, this remix manifesto adopts the tactical responses of the parasite, feeding off the body of Hollywood and inhabiting its cinematic structures and codes. The unwitting all-star cast includes Elvis Presley, Charlton Heston, Batman, Bette Davis, Jaws, Jesus, the Hulk, the Hoff & the Ghostbusters.

Apparently so.

Roger Diederen, curator of the Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung in Munich, are conflicted: “On the one hand, we want to make art accessible, but on the other hand such incidents are forcing us to turn museums and art galleries into bunkers.”

Via Deutsche Welle.

Conditions are reported to be tough at the camps, in Perm and Mordovia, east of Moscow. Those areas were used for mass prison colonies in the Soviet era.

More via the BBC.