Not to belabor this more than we have, but the difference between Vanilla Ice and Negativland is that one is in the business of making monster hit records and the other is art. It is "appropriation art" a la Sherrie Levine rephotographing Walker Evans or neo-Dada like Robert Rauschenberg buying and erasing a drawing by de Kooning, which may not be types of art one likes or has any respect for but as a society we theoretically give artists a break to raise difficult questions and even get paid a relative pittance for it without throwing the book at them. The Negativland U2 business seems to deeply offend you but I'm equally irked that the U2 couldn't be generous enough to say hey this is art, just like we're doing with that satellite footage only with our music and image as the butt of the joke, these guys aren't really competing for the same market share, and ask for a token slap on the wrist settlement, or hell maybe throw them a little money by way of patronage. Whenever you talk about Negativland's stunt it's kind of with a sneer, like of course we can all see they're just hustlers and con men. I really, truly don't agree.

The folks in Hollywood were evading copyright for completely different reasons than an artist might want to evade copyright.

- tom moody 9-15-2005 5:39 am





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