Good artists borrow. Great artists steal
Pablo Picasso. Or Igor Stravinsky

Artist Talk: Michał Libera
Baltic Art Center
Tors 13 Feb kl. 17

The greatest swindles in music business come not from the sheer appropriation of the material. This is minor money and quick trials. The big money is in the thefts of mean, deceitful and most of all public character. It is in re-appropriation turned against the author, in a public perversion of his or her image. It is in Michael Jackson having “Bad” hiccup or Dolly Parton pretending to be male in “Pretender”.

Over the last decades with the development of P2P and YouTube stealing became an innocent and barely visible everyday practice. So the question is not whether to steal or not. The question is why deliberately make it public? The talk will about the specifics of thefts in the aural domain, the ownership and the loss of sonic identity, and finally stealing sounds and music in order to develop a critical response on culture and art.

Michał Libera (POL): born in 1979, sociologist (PhD), freelance music curator, producer and critic. His main interest is music and sound as social action. Head of conceptual-pop sublabel, Populista dedicated to music misinterpretation; co-producer of CD series dedicated to Polish Radio Experimental Studio – its archive and reinterpretations. Curator of music series such as “The Song Is You”, “Playback Play”, “Machines for Listening”, “Avant Avant Garde” held in Poland, Germany and UK. Collaborator of leading art galleries and museums (Zachęta National Gallery Of Art, National Museum in Warsaw) and theatres (komuna// warszawa, TR Warszawa). Editor of music section of Słowo / Obraz Terytoria Publishing House. Frequent collaborator of Polish Radio (Channel II) and other online radios. His essays published over last ten years have been recently collected in “Perfectly Ordinary Reality. Geography, Sociology or Metaphysics of Music” published by Krytyka Polityczna. Over last few years involved in experimental librettos for operas and lecture performances. Curator of the Polish Pavilion at 13th Venice Architecture Biennale (project awarded with a special mention).