Negativland’s No Business is about lost art, or at least, the potential for such loss, and this review is about that loss as well.
While the Music Spectrum reviews may not be art in some high-sense of the word, they’re at least creative works of expression, and my original Negativland review, written longhand on scrap paper, was accidentally placed in the recycling bin. Lost words.
More than my few words, Negativland’s No Business box set calls attention to the potential loss of art—not due to accidents, but due to the financial and legal constraints of copyright control. The box set includes audio disc, treatise booklet (“Two Relationships to a Cultural Public Domain”), and whoopee cushion bearing the copyright symbol ©.
In “Two Relationships,” Negativland shows how the copyright controls championed by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to shut down Napster, downloading, and file sharing, are actually leading to a loss of art. The same copyright laws which supposedly ensure an artist is paid for their work are also laws which potentially prevent artists like Negativland from creating their art. On track 3 on the audio CD, “Downloading,” with a foreboding soundtrack beneath his words, RIAA President Michael Green’s speech from the Grammy Awards are mixed and spliced with other sounds to expose the greed hidden behind the championing of copyright laws on behalf of artists.
Negativland has always uses found sound and samples to create sound collages. “Two Relationships” explores the history of collage in visual art which is allowed under copyright law, but those same principles have not allowed collage in audio. Negativland’s works borrow heavily from recorded works, but then they combine them in such a way as to create a wholly new piece of art.
Negativland bore the burden of the beginning of this fight when they were sued by U2 for their 1991 piece, “U2.” What was a watershed case of Goliath looking to demolish David has now been largely forgotten in how the music industry deals with samples. Where Negativland’s use was considered theft and illegal, now samplers are celebrated—or at least, tolerated—by the industry. Yet, the system that now exists to allow artists to sample other recorded works is still based on the almighty ©. Therefore, permission must be obtained, and a use fee must be paid in order to sample.
And that brings us to the potential loss of art. First of all, Negativland’s sound collages are often satire making “a social commentary or a statement about social awareness.” However, if the owner of the copyrighted work is the subject of that social commentary, they are unlikely to give permission for such use. If Negativland and other artists are unable to use samples under fair use for satire, such expressions of satire will not be able to created legally. The copyright owners (read: big industry) will have used the law so as to protect themselves from an unflattering commentary.
Secondly, even if permission is obtained, a use fee must be paid. Artists like Negativland do not work with huge budgets. One use fee could exceed the entire cost for a project, making it unfeasible to produce. Many artists have turned to other independent artists for samples where agreements can be made for little or no fees, agreements between artists who want to encourage one another to create. However, in order for satire to be effective, it must include something from our common experience.
For instance, through Negativland’s magic of mixing (for the first time using a computer), the lyric of the title track on the No Business audio disc is: “There’s no business like stealing.” It’s a powerful twist on “There’s no business like show business,” but that wouldn’t carry the same strong social commentary if Ethel Merman and Judy Garland weren’t the ones whose voices were remixed to say the words. The phrase itself points to both the forced position that Negativland is in (their art being defined as stealing) while also pointing to the music industry’s stealing of the control of art, but Merman and Garland are cultural icons, ramping up the power of the social commentary.
When teaching about the seventh commandment, I often use downloading and burning copies of CDs as examples of ways that we steal without even thinking about it. I will continue to teach students this, because no matter how I feel about the law, it remains the law—burning a copy of CD breaks the copyright law. However, Negativland’s No Business will hopefully continue to help us see that the copyright laws must be rewritten to handle today’s technology while also allowing artists the freedom to create art which may borrow heavily from others in order to produce new works (even satirical ones).
Thanks to Negativland and Mordam Records for the review copy.
