P-Prompt: Residual autonomy

In 1999, Nicolas Malevé organised with Constant the event Copy.Cult discussing various aspects of the culture of the copy. It sparked the beginning of many defining, inspiring and influential interventions, activities, and reflections on authorship and ownership and Free Culture. Asking Nicolas, many years later, to revisit and rearticulate some of that history in the form of a prompt wasn't trivial. Eventually he wrote us an email titled "This is not a prompt", explaining that

“This conversation raised anew the relation between licences and art, and in particular the relation to the thorn notion of art’s autonomy. This might seem strange because it didn’t bother me one bit for more than 25 years, but my relation with free licences back then begins with a very art-oriented debate.​​​​​​​ I think that the Free Art Licence (FAL) was quite efficient to keep art with a capital A at bay, to relativise it. CC4r, interestingly, barely mentions art, it is cited as a practice among others 'collective documentation, hybrid productions, artistic collaborations or educational projects', which is, I think, very sound." (Nicolas, private email)

Finally, Nicolas contributed with a tentative labyrinthine map that sets out to reflect the precarious and rather partial process of making sense of the residual dilemmas involved in arts' autonomy: "[You said], there are circumstances in which you don’t want to ask for permission. And I agree, I too, really don’t. But how can we start to be above the law without recourse to exceptionality in a world legally regulated and already invested in property? Perhaps my prompt would be along the lines of revisiting autonomy, which is a risky business." (Nicolas, private email)

[Nicolas Malevé, This is not a prompt (May 2024) https://reuse.constantvzw.org/images/a/af/NM_I_don%27t_want_to_ask_for_permission.pdf Download Diagram PDF]