Lecture by Eric Schrijver: An artist’s guide to Copyright on 13 January 2020 at the HFBK Hamburg, lecture hall. 

Artists and designers today are increasingly confronted with legal issues. Legally speaking, popular artistic strategies such as citation and appropriation can amount to copyright infringement. Given the increasing ease with which images circulate, it becomes ever more necessary for artists to apprehend the legal status of their works. Simultaneously, as an artist you might find their own works re-used in ways you do not like. What are their rights if that happens? Which aspects of artists’ work are protected by copyright? And if there has indeed been a copyright infringement, what are the solutions, practically?

Together with the author of Copy This Book: an artist’s guide to copyright, we’ll find the answers to questions like: How do you obtain copyright? For what work? And for how long? How does copyright traverse mediums? And how do you go about integrating the work of others within your own? We’ll also detail the concepts of authorship and original creation that determine today’s legal systems, providing you with the conceptual tools to participate in the contemporary debate about intellectual property.

Eric Schrijver is a Dutch interaction designer, artist and author. He was born in Amsterdam in 1984 and lives and works in Brussels. He runs a group blog called I like tight pants and mathematics, which aims to motivate designers and artists to get more involved in the world of computer programming. A former core member of the Open Source Publishing collective, he taught interaction design and coding in the Graphic Design department of KABK, The Hague, and has also taught workshops at schools around the world.