Prompts working page: title testing

Prompt #01 CUTE

CUTE, “Conditions d'utilisations typographiques engageantes” (engaging typographic conditions for use) were developed between 2022 and 2024 by Bye Bye Binary. The Franco-Belgian collective is invested in proliferating a specific post-binary typographic practice. The CUTE stipulates under which conditions the fonts can be used and modified and brings up two important issues. 

These conditions—quite unusual for a free licence—ask users and reusers to take into account their own economic situation and financially support the typographic practice of those that release the fonts. 

→ CC4r doesn't refer to donations, nor payments. Would there be a way to rewrite the text to integrate a concern for the economic conditions of users and re-users?

Donation
The fonts distributed under these terms of use have been designed by and for people who stand in solidarity with the struggles against cis-hetero-patriarchy, white supremacy, validism and capitalism. The use of post-binary fonts is obviously not a substitute for other militant actions against these systems of oppression.
These conditions of use encompass the question of the virtuous economy of research and the adoption of a materialist feminist position [😈]. Receiving donations creates the material conditions of existence for researchers active in the field of post-binary typography. Indeed, financial support makes it possible for people who can't afford unpaid work to participate, encourages designers to publish more, and opens the door to greater aesthetic and political variety. This field of research is precarious, existing on a shoestring thanks to a few grants and one-off commissions. Integrating a scale of donations with the conditions of use of fonts allows us to insist on concrete needs at different points in the ecosystem. This text thus distances itself from the received idea that “free” equals “gratis”.

Prompt #02 CUTE

CUTE insists on sharing packages that include documentation, source files, etc., rather than single font files. Their argument is, that in this way also typographic knowledge and post-binary practice are being shared.

→ Could it be helpful to ask reluctant authors to share some histories and contexts in which the object has been created?

Share complete packages
A font is a piece of software made up of vector drawing elements, as well as lines of code describing its behaviour and documentation providing an understanding of the context in which it was created. [lexicon: package] For the purposes of sharing and passing on knowledge, these are all ingredients that should travel with the font file. In this sense, for each copy, sharing or redistribution, it is important to take good care of the whole.

Prompt #03 Do first times exist?

In October 2023, Femke and Eva organised an event at Göteborg Literature House that they decided to call “First Times do not exist” referencing a quote from a book on disappropriation by Mexican author Cristina Rivera Garza. We invited Jen Hayashida and Nkule Mabaso to speak about their practices of translation and citation. They both responded to the title in very different ways, and we are interested in the friction between these two approaches.

Jen talked about translation as a practice of reuse, reflecting on the position of the translator in relation to the text. She made clear that for her a “transhistorical awareness” is needed for the author/translator not to behave in a settler way, as if they were the first on the scene.

Nkule enters the scene from a different position, stating that first times might not exist, but that there is always a first time for you. She therefore focuses her view on how she enters the scene through her own horizon of experience. This focus allows her to cite and reuse with integrity.

→ This prompt proposes you to cross read these two snippets/statements with a third position, which is articulated in CC4r (collective conditions for reuse). It starts with a bold reminder to current and future authors, that the work they are about to release is “never yours to begin with”.

Jen Hayashida (20:07)

Because to me, it's a temporal question, which is sort of at the heart of what you titled this event? Because I think one of the hazards, or I don't want to be that absolute, but this thinking that you're the first person entering the story. I mean, this question is, to me, incredibly present now: do you call something a defence or do you call it an attack? So that to me is a way of thinking about the translator's sort of position in relation to the text? If the translator imagines that they are the first person there, in a sort of settler way, then that to me is something…  The same is true of the author. Obviously, if the author has an errand {?} in writing, where they want to claim that they are the first person there, then that to me is something that is inherently suspicious. And as a translator, I think – this is not really answering your question – but I think, to be very mindful of the fact that you're never the first person there, and to treat the language and the, the claims of the text with that kind of trans-historical awareness.

Nkule Mabaso (09:31)

And the way I'm sort of tried to approach it as thinking about it, as since I will quite collaboratively all the time and what and the title of it The like, there is no first time that gets there is no first time. But there is a first time for you. When you encounter the thing, and that thing catalyses something, how do we site and make space for that moment of encounter? How do we make an acknowledgment of this thing that happened catalysed my thinking in this way? What would be an adequate way to signal that? So in when she's handing over the books on Amazon, she does signal that by writing this inscription, but it doesn't exist anywhere else. And so what is sufficient? What would be a sufficient signal? Or way? It located? And yeah, have I said, what I said I'd say.

Collective Conditions for Re-use (CC4r)
REMINDER TO CURRENT AND FUTURE AUTHORS: The authored work released under the CC4r was never yours to begin with. The CC4r considers authorship to be part of a collective cultural effort and rejects authorship as ownership derived from individual genius. This means to recognize that it is situated in social and historical conditions and that there may be reasons to refrain from release and re-use.

Prompt #04 Collective agreements

Prompt #04 takes on Gary Hall's remark that, similar to Creative Commons, the CC4r might put too much agency with sovereign individual (human) users. He argues that Creative Commons foster individuating processes rather than advocating for collective agreements. They are not contributing to social processes of production, management, and maintenance.

→ How could the CC4r be contributing to social processes? Could collective conditions for re-use be thought of as relational, instead of counting on individual responsibility?

Source: Gary Hall, Experimenting with Copyright Licences (Apr 20, 2023) https://copim.pubpub.org/pub/combinatorial-books-documentation-copyright-licences-post6/release/1

Prompt #05 Different assessment

In his blogpost, Gary Hall asks:

→ “(W)hat if (...) a future author is convinced that what they are doing is perfectly acceptable, and does not contribute to oppressive arrangements of power, privilege and difference, even though for a lot of others it does?

Source: Gary Hall, Experimenting with Copyright Licences (Apr 20, 2023) https://copim.pubpub.org/pub/combinatorial-books-documentation-copyright-licences-post6/release/1