Case titles

reuse case: conceptual poetry – just a publicly available document

A conceptual poet decides to recite official documents in a performance at a poetry festival. These documents describe in detail the autopsy of a teenager who was recently shot by the police. The performance of the autopsy of a Black teenager by a White established poet, presented as a piece of conceptual poetry, creates an outrage. The poet does not apologize and insists that he “took a publicly available document from an American tragedy that was witnessed first-hand (in this case by the doctor performing the autopsy) and simply read it”. The autopsy documents are available in the public domain.

reuse case: cultural appropriation – who decides

A EU-funded project on critical pedagogies in the arts is named after Teaching to transgress - education as the practice of freedom , a well known book by Afro- American feminist activist teacher and author bell hooks. Participants in the project question whether choosing this title is a form of unethical cultural appropriation. They wonder whether it counts as appropriate to use it for a project organised by white folks in three European art schools. The bell hooks foundation is asked for their opinion, who support the reuse of the book title for the educational project. This opinion appeases the nervousness in the group. The process leaves others to wonder why the bell hooks foundation has been readily accepted as THE authority in solving the question (whether the use of the title was an appropriative act) or whether there would have been other ways to address the question.