Questions (no answers)

Try listing the ideas, knowledges, materials, practices or works that you are reusing – is anything missing?

Example: In an attempt to re-invent a practice of citation that is beyond academic signposting, Black feminist theorist Katherine McKittrick describes the committment to map the genealogies, while at the same time knowing that these genealogies can never be complete: "I show the images because I want to be as honest as I can about my intellectual history while also recognizing my dishonest memory. I show the images because I want to be honest about where my ideas come from while recognizing that this is also a process of forgetting."

What kind of citational strategies have you been experimenting with? Can you invent a few new ways to experiment with citational practice by refering to circumstances, people, tools and experiences?

Example: Experiment with writing a colophon that features a narrative account of influential encounters involved in, for example, creating a movie rather than a list of roles and responsibilities.

Example: Avoid using given descriptors or names (such as "authors"). Experiment with alternatives to ordering references alphabetically. Flip the usual hierarchy of who or what gets listed first (authorial roles, production roles, care roles). Cite things, places, experiences. To further expand your citation practice, see also Angela Okune: Self-Review of Citational Practice. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

When we encounter something that catalyses our thinking, how do we make this encounter legible? How do you account for the relationship that is being built?

Example: In the prompt Spaces for discomfort - recognition, Nkule Mabaso describes how she meticulously keeps track and documents each encounter in order to remember and be able to disclose how something comes into being. Are there any other strategies you know of? And how do you do this in collective situations, or when multiple strands of thinking are co-constructing each other?

Example: Andrea Francke asks in the prompt Intimacy vs Property for shifting relationships based on property to relations based on intimacy within practices of reuse.​​​​​​​ What would a relationship of intimacy mean for your colophon? Could you think of ways to recognise and acknowledge this relationship publicly? (See also question 5)

Can you think of yourself as a reuser (rather than as author). What shifts? What frictions might come up?

Example: Such a shift might map onto how Katherine McKittrick distinguishes “making something your own” (reuse practice) and “owning something” (authorial practice), when she writes: "by observing how arranging, rearranging, and collecting ideas outside ourselves are processes that make our ideas our own, I think about how our ideas are bound up in stories, research, inquiries, that we do not (or should not claim we) own’ (Footnotes, (Books and Papers Scattered about the Floor), 2021, page 15

Example: Cristina Rivera Garza insists that “First times do not exist”. She talks about the communality of writing and counters the assumption that one could come first to a scene or start from scratch. Rather, she insists, that we are always building upon others' work. (ref)

Example: In: Rebeing: A practical exercise in psycholexicography, Stephen Wright proposes the exercise "Restarting all verbs with re-" to intervene in day-to-day language. You could do this exercise to widen your imaginary for practicing reuse. https://reuse.constantvzw.org/index.php?title=P-Prompt:_Rebeing

Let's try to think with intimacy rather than contracts, licences and the promise of clarity for organising around reuse. This does not necessarily mean all reuse needs to be figured out on a case-by-case-basis. What processes can you rely on? Are there any protocols in place to help?

Example: Andrea Francke's proposition to think with intimacy rather than with (intellectual) property asks us to allow for unstable relations. "That’s what I want to hold onto. To refuse the creation of a ‘neutral’ admin infrastructure that takes the awkwardness out." she writes.

Let's imagine property to be inclusive, instead of exclusive. What shifts? What frictions might come up?

Example: In the conversation Subverting the narrative of property, Séverine​​​​​​​ Dusollier introduces us to the work of Sarah Vanuxem, a French lawyer who developed an ecological notion of property, proposing that all systems of property could be conceived as a milieu. Séverine​​​​​​​: "you do not own a thing, you're not dominating a resource, but you live in it, you inhabit it. So whether you are the owner, whether you are the tenant, she says your legal relationship to this resource is that of an inhabitant. Her theory helps us to understand that you don't have only rights, you have mostly liabilities."

If someone reused materials/practices/works you were involved in, would it matter who, what, when or for which purpose?

Example: In the credits for the tarot game Bewitching Technologies, Dilan U+16DE decided to adapt the anti-colonial software licence to read as follow: 'Bewitching Technologies is anti-capitalist, anticolonial, and anti-fascist software available at www.bewitchingtechnologies.link [1]. It is released for non-commercial free use by individuals and organizations that do not operate by capitalist, colonial and/or fascist principles.' https://bewitchingtechnologies.link/assets/txt/Bewitching_Technologies_Copyright_License.txt

Example: The Copy Far AI Licence can be added to extend any Free Culture licence to stipulate that 'This work, in the present or previous versions, cannot be used for procedures known as “machine learning” and stylometric analysis without the previous authorization.' https://copyfarai.itcouldbewor.se

How could you share the histories and contexts of the works that you reuse?

Example: A font publication could include, besides the font files, also source files, technical manuals and a documentation of the process. [ref. CUTE]

=== Release situation: Are there any instructions that you need to provide to potential reusers, so they can reuse in solidarity (not contribute further to power asymmetries, economic differences and privileges)?

   Example: The open access publication As I Remember It Teachings (Ɂəms tɑɁɑw) from the Life of a Sliammon Elder (2018) shares the teachings of elder and knowledge keeper Elsie Paul in Canada by setting an indigenous guest-host protocol to access the online publication. https://scalar.usc.edu/ravenspace/as-i-remember-it/index

   Example:

Copyright page in G.B.Jones, Kunstverein Toronto, 2022:

x

See also question 9.

9. Do you think a compensation for reusing work is needed, and if so in what way, how much and who would need to be compensated?

   Example: The "Conditions d'utilisations typographiques engageantes" (engaging typographic conditions for use) give detailed references for relational compensation, ranging from zero (if you reuse from a precarious situation) to a suggested €1000 (for a cultural institution). Large corporations are asked to look elsewhere. https://genderfluid.space/documents/2024_BBB_CUTE-EN.pdf

10. What to do when work was reused without recognising one another, or relevant issues, sufficiently?

   Example: An editors' note had been added to the ebook version of a publication that took another as inspiration stating the regret and grief about the ommission failing to cite the influences. The note is also understood to instigate a shared reflection on the oversight. [REF. practice docments]

   Example: Omissum is term that was invented for what needed to happen in response to the omissions in editorial work with/around the historical figure Paul Otlet, which included to be silent about how racism is part of his oeuvre. The term ‘erratum’ was proposed at first, but rather than using a word that would suggest an isolated mistake that needs to be corrected [REF practice documents]

   Example: In the prompt: "Space for discomfort: recognition" Nkule Mbaso describes the search for a way to deal with the discomfort not to have been recognised in the reuse of a work she has co-created. Very clear that it is not about "performing" some preset transactional corrective, she emphasizes the need to acknowledge and reflect on the emotions and create space for a conversation: "They´re feeling something, I'm feeling something. We talk, you go back, look at the book, and then remember another case... There's nothing linear about it. And whatever happens will inform other things. It's just the willingness to be in conversation. And to say, there's something here.​​​​​​​"

https://reuse.constantvzw.org/index.php?title=P-Prompt:_Spaces_for_discomfort_-_Recognition

---

rest latest version 18 Nov

We just need to work through something. And whatever it is, it doesn't have to be public. It doesn't have to be about "performing" something.

And I don't want us to state from the outset what it is, because then again, it would mean we're going back to the corrective. So I don't know. It's a feeling. It sounds arbitrary. But it's really serious, because it's very emotional: They´re feeling something, I'm feeling something. We talk, you go back, look at the book, and then remember another case... There's nothing linear about it. And whatever happens will inform other things. It's just the willingness is to be in conversation. And to say, there's something here.

"If citation and referencing are about signalling how and when you come to know something, then what happens in the moments where it is not acknowledged. The space of discomfort means for me working through how to talk about it, how to deal with it." https://reuse.constantvzw.org/index.php?title=P-Prompt:_Spaces_for_discomfort_-_Recognition

Winnie proposes to pay attention to the feelings and insecurities involved in making work public. They ask to pause for a moment and double-check which are the right conditions for sharing or not sharing.​​​​​​​

"To be honest with how much one would like to share and what you want from it in return. If one is not happy for others to install or pick up your code and study it, perhaps you should not have the floss license. Or, if you would like to be contacted for every use, just state this." (Winnie Soon, private email)

Winnie proposes to pay attention to the feelings and insecurities involved in making work public. They ask to pause for a moment and double-check which are the right conditions for sharing or not sharing.

A related approach has come up in the Revisit Reuse work session, where participants have proposed to "enter sideways" as a way to create a moment of reflection as part of a collective process. The group invented different exercises to pay attention to contradictory feelings of for example wanting visibility and acknowledgement but needing protection and opacity.

Making space to feel and acknowledge potential discomfort before releasing a work means also to work together to make the implications of reuse imaginable.

Could such frank and courageous articulations of what is at stake contribute to a practice of reuse in solidarity?