[rumori] Re: pho: collage & advertising


From: Don Joyce (djATwebbnet.com)
Date: Fri Mar 02 2001 - 18:55:19 PST


Jesse,
It's simply this: Advertising needs to get your permission before using you
or your work in their ads because they may be selling something you or your
work don't agree with or don't agree to be associated with. This is the
right we have as individuals to NOT be forced into advertising something we
don't actually endorse. Again, it's the right to avoid association with the
ulterior motive involved in advertising. An individual's use of you or your
art in private expression, which is free speech, means they can say any
damn thing at all with you or your work. (Or I certainly wish you could!)
Free expression can embarrass you in any way it likes, but paid propaganda
for profit, a commercially motivated forced association can not. Would you
have it any other way?
Don't confuse the the work art does with an art work. Make this distinction
and hang on to it.
Advertising is NEVER interested in art for its own sake and thus, not a
useful ally to art in any sense except perhaps as its main inspirational
competition in society. Putting the Beatles' "Revolution" in, (was it some
shoe ad or some car?) did not endear either the art's owner, Michael
Jackson, or the sponsor to me in the least. I was not fooled. (I was so
friggin angry about THAT that I have forgotten the product!) The original
song and the ad that eventually used it were 180 degrees in opposition in
their internal motivating intents. Art and advertising often are, whether
or not they are brought together in the same view with money and
permission... usually in the hope that tingly nostalgia will be the main
impression. This is always the danger in using famous music in ads - the
stuff comes with a lot of unpredictable baggage, including opposing
intentions once you hit the 60s.

So It's called selling out for a good reason. Selling out needs to remain
an option based on the requirement for both payment and permission, not an
unavoidable public snare for whatever artistic integrity you are trying to
maintain as an artist/owner. Advertising is not free speech, it is paid
speech, and no one should be forced into publically endorsing others' paid
speech against their will. On the other hand, no one should be immune to
free speech uses of them or their work when it occurs within another
individual's free expression - art's domain. So you see, the principle is
NOT one of avoiding public embarrassement of any kind, but one of avoiding
a specific kind of incriminating association caused by forced servitude in
another's paid speech, especially because the ad that uses you is not going
to be saying you'ld rather not be there. With free speech uses, (like art)
I think we all understand that whatever is used, it certainly may not be
there voluntarily. We need to keep this awareness clear, that whatever
appears in an ad, for better or worse, was paid and agreed to be there.
This way we will always know exactly who has sold out and who has not.
DJ
Negativland

>Don Joyce wrote:
>
>> Everyone leaps to the commercial's heavy use of collage and how horrible
>> fair use would be there - Correct! - I ALWAYS STIPULATE THIS EXCEPTION IN
>> FAIR USE FOR COLLAGE - NOT AVAILABLE TO ANY ADVERTISING. PERIOD. They must
>> pay and get permission for everything of others they use because they
>> aren't making art, they are making ads. That would be the easiest of all
>> legal distinctions to maintain under fair use for collage. No advertising
>> need apply.
>
>Why? That's an honest question. I can see why one might insist on
>payment, but why permission? Shouldn't the same compulsory-license
>arguments apply here? (And are you sure ads can't be art? After all, an
>awful lot of art turns out to be advertising.)
>
>Besides, advertisers have a lot of clout in Washington, or at least they
>have more clout than you or I do. If you really want to get the law
>changed, you might find them to be a useful ally. And vice versa.
>
>-Jesse
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