A couple of weeks ago I went to see Lawrence Lessig, the intellectual property rights expert, speak at the main public library with Shepard Fairey, the artist who created the famous red-white-and-blue poster of Obama. Lessig was promoting his new book, Remix, which again tackles the impact of increasingly stringent copyright laws on creativity. The panel was moderated by Steven Johnson, who also has a new book, which looks at the history of ‘sampling’ by artists in all media, and they had some interesting examples, including work by Thomas Jefferson. Lessig said he’s pulling away from the Free Culture movement in the next phase of his career, and will be focusing instead on Corruption (yes, capital C). I think by that he means big business’s unseemly influence on our legislative process.
One surprise for me was how articulate Shepard Fairey was, considering that he’s a visual artist, not a lawyer/professor like Lessig, who’s used to harnessing the power of words. Maybe Fairey has gotten some practice, defending himself against the legal battle he’s in with the Associated Press over his use of the photo he tweaked to create his ‘Hope’ poster. After the talk, I created a similar image of myself at the site Obamicon.me. Try it, it’s fun, although I found it hard to come up with a single word I embody, promote, or aspire to, like ‘hope.’
Here’s a short clip drawn from the much longer talk they gave:
Fun post! And, of course I clicked on Obamicon.me!
We do tend to get surprised by how “articulate” people outside the academia or fields like the law can be, don’t we? I was really impressed by how articulate Mr. Schwartz was when he visited us.
I often catch myself expecting a little less from people than I should in this respect, and I feel quite embarassed afterwards. After all, I act as if being articulate would be our intellectual property, copyrights included (us = academics), and this is far from being the case. I had an experience similar to Wendy’s when I went to see South Asian (actually, Bengali, which is an important distinction among Indians) author, Jhumpa Lahiri. I used to teach her books at Hunter, and I enjoy her sensitive, unpretencious prose. She turned out to be true to her words: down to earth, low-key, beautiful in appearance and very articulate in speech. When the questions she received tried to push her into a diva-pose, as “the South Asian voice” of today, she said she was not interested. She is writing because she feels like it, but she does not desire a public profile as a represenative voice of her community, even if she cannot help being “it.” She deals with words and language, so her case is different from that of a visual artist, but, still, no grandiloquence, no posing, and no academic lingo. Not too many smiles either, but her words seemed to come from a source that had a sense of profundity to it. And I liked that because I think that you can be really articulate, but the real thing happens when your words reflect upon the depth of your own character.