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Agency

Assembly (Survival Kit 4)

Plural media and various dimensions, 1992-


For Assembly (SURVIVAL KIT 4), Agency calls forth Thing 000885 (Daley Bicentennial Plaza) from its list, speculating on the question: “How can processes become included within art practices?”. Some artists tried to protect gardens with intellectual property (copyright). In order to qualify for copyright protection, a garden must be an original work of authorship fixed in a tangible medium of expression.

Thing 000885 (Daley Bicentennial Plaza) concerns a conflict between the painter Chapman Kelley and Chicago Park District about the gardens at Daley Bicentennial Plaza inside Grant Park in Chicago. Despite Chapman Kelley’s disapproval, the Park District altered Kelley’s existing garden entitled Wildflower Works I in oder to make it fit inside the new plan of Daley Bicentennial Plaza. During the case Kelley v. Chicago Park District the judge had to decide if the garden Wildflower Works I was a fixed work and protected by the Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA). On September 9, 11 a.m. Thing 000885 (Daley Bicentennial Plaza) will convene an assembly during SURVIVAL KIT in order to bear witness.


Artists' Bio: 

Agency is the generic name of a Brussels-based initiative that was founded in 1992 by Kobe Matthys. Agency constitutes a growing list of things that resist the split between the ontological classifications of nature and culture. This list of things is mostly derived from juridical processes, lawsuits, cases, controversies, affairs and so forth involving intellectual property issues (copyrights, patents, trade marks, etc.). The concept of intellectual property relies upon the fundamental assumption of the division between nature and culture and consequently between expressions and ideas, creations and facts, subjects and objects, humans and non-humans, originality and tradition, individuals and collectives, mind and body, fixations and processes, etc.... Each thing on the list invokes the moment of hesitation in terms of those divisions. Agency calls things forth from it’s list via varying assemblies inside exhibitions, performances, publications, etc... Each assembly speculates on a different question. Every question explores in a topological way the operative consequences of the apparatus of intellectual property for an ecology of art practices.