ILLEGAL ART
Kembrew McLeod, Freedom of Expression, 1998
Illegal Art features the work of Kembrew McLeod and Eric Doeringer.
The exhibition was on display April 26, 2003 – June 7, 2003.
In 1998, McLeod trademarked the phrase “Freedom of Expression” and created a zine with that title. He enlisted a friend, Brendan Love, to pose as the publisher of an imaginary punk rock magazine also called “Freedom of Expression”, whom he then pretended to sue. McLeod hired a lawyer and didn’t let her in on the hoax. Shortly thereafter, the Daily Hampshire Gazette ran an interview with McLeod. He played it straight, telling the paper, “I didn’t go to the trouble, the expense and the time of trademarking Freedom of Expression just to have someone else come along and think they can use it whenever they want.”
For CD-2001, Doeringer duplicated every CD in his personal collection — 289 in all —and repackaged them in handprinted, numbered editions. Each CD label bears Doeringer’s signature but doesn’t provide any information about the style of music on the disc or about the artist or recording company
BOOKS
Culture Inc.: The Corporate Takeover of Public Expression
Herbert Schiller
The A-Z of Free Expression
Judith Vidal-Hall, ed.
Economising Culture: On the (Digital) Culture Industry
Geoff Cox, et al ed.
No Logo
Naomi Klein
One World, Ready or Not: The Manic Logic of Late Capitalism
William Greider
®TMark: Bringing it to You!
Seeland/ Negativland
WEBSITES
Illegal Art Exhibition Website
Organized by Stay Free! Magazine
Stay Free! Magazine
Brooklyn based magazine dedicated to analyzing the politics of American mass media and culture. Organizers of Illegal Art Exhibit.
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Organization working to protect free speech and free expression on the internet and in other new digital mediums.
Creative Commons
A nonprofit offering a flexible “some rights reserved” copyright program to protect artists and creators while allowing ideas and creativity to be shared.
Illegal Art
Record label devoted to releasing music made by sampling other recordings.
Detritus.net
Website dedicated to “recycled culture” featuring info on legal issues, links ot artists who appropriate and sample popular culture in their work and news on upcoming events.
Freedom of Expression at the National Endowment for the Arts
An introduction to free speech issues related to the arts and government support for the arts.
Prelinger Archive
Archive of “ephemeral” films, archived and in the public domain for everyone’s use, plus “Panorama Ephemera” free for download and advice on intellectual property issues.
Copyright.gov
Official Website of the United States Copyright Office