The Piracy Project
The Piracy Project
Part of this is The Piracy Project, which is inspired by book piracy that exists in many emerging countries. This phenomenon has reached global scale, and book pirates in Peru for example go beyond creating unlicensed reprints – they have even begun to interfere with the content. An entire genre of “improved” versions is emerging. All the books, in a sense, become legitimate versions.
This project is not about stealing or forgery, it is about creating a platform to innovatively explore the spectrum of copying / re-editing / translating / paraphrasing / imitating / re-organising / manipulating of already existing works. Here creativity and originality sit not in the borrowed material itself, but in the way it is handled. We are interested in the whole spectrum of appropriation and copying, which Karsten Schubert describes as ranging from “mechanical or rote copying, graduating to knowledgeable reworking and culminating in innovative recasting”. (Karsten Schubert, Daniel McClean ed. (2002) Dear Images, Art Copyright and Culture, Ridinghouse, 2002, page 27)
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