Lögverndun "ókunns höfundar": Félagsleg sköpun og hugverkaréttur - verkefni lokið
Fréttatilkynning verkefnisstjóra
The project combines organizational ethnography with archival research and critical genealogy to investigate the various systems of subjection hidden in plain view in legal regimes of copyright and discursive regimes of authorship. Its aim is to shed critical light on normative understandings of creativity that control the circulation of culture and open the door to alternative ways of conceiving creative agency, beyond the figures of the author and the folk.
Heiti verkefnis: Lögverndun
"ókunns höfundar": Félagsleg sköpun og hugverkaréttur
Verkefnisstjóri: Valdimar Tr. Hafstein, Háskóla Íslands
Tegund styrks: Verkefnisstyrkur
Styrktímabil: 2010-2012
Fjárhæð styrks: 12,86 millj. kr. alls
Tilvísunarnúmer Rannís: 100620
The project analyzes key concepts in the grammar of creativity through a study of how folklore figures in regimes of copyright and authorship as the work of the “unknown author”. The materials emerge from four different contexts, contemporary and historical: (I) negotiations in the World Intellectual Property Organization on the legal protection of folklore; (II) negotiations that produce article 15(4) of the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works ( on protection for works by unknown authors); (III) polemics known as “Kæmpevisestriden´surrounding Svend Grundtvig's edition of Danish Ballads; (IV) transnational copyright debates centering on an Icelandic lullaby, “Vísur Vatnsenda- Rósu”.
In an age
of file sharing and peer-to-peer networking, of social software and web 2.0, of
mash-ups and remixes, we need a new language to speak of creative agency.
Historically, folklore offered an alternative to authorship: folklore is peer-to-peer,
it is collaborative, and it is collective. But the choice between these two options
is not satisfactory; we should not accept it uncritically. Each is based on the
exclusion of the other. Hence the project has sought to create a scientific
basis of critical knowledge from which to: undermine the dichotomies reified in
dominant understandings of creativity; help imagine creative agency differently;
and think in alternative terms about creative processes that are collaborative,
incremental, and distributed in space and time, for at closer inspection, such
creative processes are in fact all around us: they are the norm, not the exception.
Ouputs: Publications
Áki Guðni Karlsson. 2017. "Copyrighting the Copies". Submitted for publication to the journal Museum Management and Curatorship. (manuscript enclosed).
Áki Guðni Karlsson. 2017. "Impiety, Impropriety and Misappropriation: Narratives of Traditional Culture Used as Currency In Negotiations". Manuscript in progress. Will be submitted to the journal Narrative Culture in 2017.
Egill
Viðarsson. 2011. Deilurnar um Vísur
Vatnsenda-Rósu: Höfundarréttur, þjóðlög og eignarhald á menningu. MA
thesis. (Open Access)
Valdimar Tr.
Hafstein. 2010. Producing the unknown
author. A research project on Folkore and intellectual property. Rannsóknir
í félagsvísindum XI. (http://skemman.is/en/item/view/1946/6694) (Open Access)
Valdimar Tr. Hafstein. 2010. Social Creativity and the Ownership of Culture. In (Eds, Flemming Hemmersam, Astrid Jespersen and Lene Otto), Kulturelle processer i Europa, p.189-197. Museum of Tuschulanums Forlag Kobenhavns Universitet: Copenhagen.
Valdimar Tr.
Hafstein. 2011. Célebrer les différences, renforcer la conformité. In, (Ed.
Chaira Bortolotto), Le patrimoine
culturel immatériel. Enjeux d'une nouvelle caatégorie. Maison des sciences
de l-homme: Paris.
Valdimar Tr.
Hafstein. 2012. Celebrating Difference, Enforcing Conformity. In, Eds. Merril
Kapland and Timothy Tangherlini), News
from the Other Worlds: Studies in Nordic Folkore, Mythology and Culture, p.
356-375. North Pinehurst Press: Berkley/Los Angeles.
Valdimar Tr.
Hafstein. 2012. Cultural Heritage. In, (Ed. Regina Bendix & Galit
Haasan-Rokem), Companion to Folklore.
Blackwell: London/New York.
Valdimar Tr.
Hafstein. 2012. The Scent of Heritage. In Scholarly
blogposts in the Cultural Property Blog maintained by the Interdiziplinaren
Forschergruppe zu Cultural Property: Göttingen. (http://cultural-property-uni-goetting.de/2012/04/the-scent-of-heritage/?lang=de) (Open Access)
Valdimar Tr.
Hafstein & Martin Skydstrup. 2012. Europe at the Crossroads of Rights and
Culture. In, (eds: Nic Craith, Kockel & Frykman), Companion to the Anthropology of Europe. Blackwell: London/New
York.
Valdimar
Tr. Hafstein. 2013. Pravo na kulturu:
nemsterjijalna bastina d.o.o., folklor©, tradicijsko znanje TM. In, (Eds
Marjana Hammersak, Iva Plese andNana- Marija Vukusic.), Proizcodnja bastine: kriticke studje o inmeaterjalnoj kulturi.
Institute za etnologiju i folkoristiku: Zagreb.
Valdimar Tr.
Hafstein. 2014. Celebrando as differencas: reforcand a conformidade: El cóndor
pasa. In, (Eds. Sandro Salles & Calros Sandroni), Patrimonio cultural em discussao. Funcultura: Recife.
Valdimar Tr.
Hafstein. 2013. Intangible Cultural Heritage. In, (Eds. Katherine Campell,
Neill Martin, Gary West & Will Lamb), A
Guid Hairst. Edinburgh University: Edinburgh.
Valdimar Tr.
Hafstein. 2014. The Constant Muse. Copyright and Creative Agency. Narrative Culture 1:1/2014.
Valdimar Tr.
Hafstein. 2014. Fairy Tales, Copyright, and the Public Domain. In, (Ed. Maria
Tatar), The Cambridge Companion to the
Fairy Tale. Cambridge University Press: London and New York.
Valdimar Tr.
Hafstein. 2014. Protection as Dispossesion: Government in the Vernacular. In
(Ed. Deborah Kapchan), Cultural
Heritage in Transit: Intangible Rights as Human Rights. University of Pennsylvania Press.
Valdimar Tr.
Hafstein. 2015. Author Unknown: Last Words. In Copyrighting
Creativity. Creative Values, Cultural Heritage Institutions and Systems of
Intellectual Property. Ed. Helle Porsdam. Farnham: Ashgate.
Valdimar Tr.
Hafstein and Ólafur Rastrick (Eds). 2015. Menningararfur
á Íslandi: Gagnrýni og greining. Háskólaútgáfan: Reykjavík.
Valdimar Tr.
Hafstein. 2015. Menningararfur: Gagnrýnin nálgun. In, (Eds. Valdimar Tr.
Hafstein & Ólafur Rastrick), Menningararfur
á Íslandi: Gagnrýnin greining. Háskólaútgáfan. Reykjavík.
(The project
grant was granted before the IRF's Open Access policy was adopted. Hence the Open
Access policy rules do not apply to this grant. Publications in Open Access are
indicated in the bibliography).
Outputs: Lectures/Presentations
Áki Guðni Karlsson. 2011. "Authors
and Authorities: The Subject of WIPOs Convention(s) for the Safeguarding of
Traditional Knowledge, Genetic Resources and Expressions of Folklore", lecture at the second
workshop of CULTIVATE, Copyrighting Creativity", Amsterdam, 29-31 October
2011.
Áki Guðni Karlsson. 2012. "Höfundarréttur á
þjóðfræðiefni og þjóðnýting almenningsins", lecture at Hugvísindaþing 2012
(Humanities Conference of the University of Iceland), 10 March 2012, in a panel
that Valdimar Hafstein convened and chaired on interdisciplinary approaches to
intellectual property law: "Höfundarréttur er að þenjast út eins og
alheimurinn: Höfundarlög í þverfaglegu ljósi".
Áki Guðni Karlsson. 2013. "Copyrighting the copies:
are heritage institutions opening up or enclosing the public domain with their
digitisation efforts?", lecture at the international congress of SIEF
(International Society for Ethnology and Folklore), Tartu 30 June - 4 July
2013.
Áki Guðni Karlsson & Valdimar Tr.
Hafstein. 2013. "Protecting the Unknown Author" lecture at the third CULTIVATE
workshop, "Copyrighting Creativity: Creative Values, Cultural Heritage
Institutions and Systems of Intellectual Property" at the Tate Modern
Gallery, London 26. April 2013.
Áki Guðni Karlsson. 2015. "Ethnographers in the convention", lecture at the
international congress of SIEF (International Society for Ethnology and
Folklore), Zagreb 21-25 June 2015.
Egill Viðarsson. 2012. "Tár úr steini: Deilurnar um Vísur
Vatnsenda-Rósu", lecture at Hugvísindaþing 2012 (Humanities Conference of
the University of Iceland), 10 March 2012, in a panel that Valdimar Hafstein
convened on interdisciplinary approaches to intellectual property law.
Egill Viðarsson. 2012. "Um menningararf og höfundarrétt",
lecture in the symposium "Menningararfur: Þrætuepli og hreyfiafl í
hönnun", hosted by the Icelandic Academy of the Arts, 18 October 2012.
Valdimar Tr. Hafstein. 2010. "Höfundur ókunnur. Höfundaréttur og
höfundarleysi", lecture Social Science Conference of the University of
Iceland, Þjóðarspegillinn, 29 October 2010, University of Iceland.
Valdimar Tr. Hafstein. 2010. "Collective Creativity and
Intellectual Property", lecture at the first workshop of CULTIVATE,
"Copyrighting Creativity", Steningevik, 29 September - 1 October
2010.
Valdimar Tr. Hafstein 2011, plenary
keynote lecture: “Storytelling as heritage / Heritage as storytelling”, at
the conference Places, people, stories: An interdisciplinary and international
conference, Linnaeus University in Kalmar, Sweden,
28-30 September 2011,
Valdimar Tr. Hafstein. 2011. "Protecting the Unknown Author",
lecture at the second workshop of CULTIVATE, Copyrighting Creativity",
Amsterdam, 29-31 October 2011.
Valdimar Tr. Hafstein. 2011. "Have Horn, Will Travel: Rhino
Variations", lecture at the second workshop of CULTIVATE, Copyrighting
Creativity", Amsterdam, 29-31 October 2011.
Valdimar Tr. Hafstein. 2011. "Protection as Dispossession: A
Letter, a Song, a Story, and a Couple of Lessons about Intangible
Heritage", conference at the University of Gothenburg, 16-17 May 2011, on
The Production of Memory in Narrative, Art, and Craft ("Minnesproduktion i
berättande, konst och hantverk).
Valdimar Tr. Hafstein. 2011. "Höfundur er óþekktur. Fjölsköpun,
alþýðuhefðir og höfundaréttur", Lecture at Hugvísindaþing (Humanities
Conference of the University of Iceland), 26 March, 2011.
Valdimar Tr. Hafstein. 2011. "Höfundur er óþekktur. Fjölsköpun,
alþýðuhefðir og höfundaréttur", poster presentation at the Social Science
Conference of the University of Iceland, Þjóðarspegillinn, 28 October 2011.
Valdimar Tr. Hafstein 2012, plenary
keynote lecture: “The Condor's Flight: A
Letter, a Song, a Story, and a Couple of Lessons about Intangible Heritage”, at
the inaugural conference of the Association of Critical Heritage Studies,
“Re/Theorizing Heritage”, at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, 5-8 June
2012.
Valdimar Tr. Hafstein. 2012, plenary
keynote lecture: “The Opposite of Property: How the Grimm Brothers
Helped to Create the Public Domain (and why perhaps that wasn't so great)”, at
the conference The Grimm Brothers
Today: Kinder- und Hausmärchen and Its Legacy 200 Years After, Universidade
Nova de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal, June 21-23, 2012.
Valdimar Tr. Hafstein. 2012. “The Opposite of Property”, invited lecture
at Harvard, 23 October 2012.
Valdimar Tr. Hafstein. 2012. “The Condor's Flight: A Letter, a Song, a
Story, and a Couple of Lessons about Intangible Heritage”, ”, invited lecture
at the University of Gothenburg, 24 May 2012.
Valdimar Tr. Hafstein. 2012. "Mikki mús byggði hús, húsið brann:
Hugmyndaflugið, hefðirnar og höfundarrétturinn", lecture at Hugvísindaþing
2012 (Humanities Conference of the University of Iceland), 10 March 2012, in a
panel that Valdimar Hafstein convened on interdisciplinary approaches to
intellectual property law: "Höfundarréttur er að þenjast út eins og
alheimurinn: Höfundarlög í þverfaglegu ljósi".
Valdimar Tr. Hafstein, plenary keynote
lecture: “The Condor's Flight: Storytelling in the United Nations”, at the 16th Congress of the
International Society for Folk Narrative Research in Vilnius, Lithuania,
25-30 June, 2013.
Valdimar Tr. Hafstein. 2013. "The Opposite of Property: How the
Grimms Helped to Create the Public Domain (and how the Krohns carried on their
work)", invited lecture at the University of Helsinki in a public
conference on the occasion of the 125th anniversary of the university's
department of folklore and the 150th anniversary of the first professorship in
folklore, 6 September 2013.
Valdimar Tr. Hafstein. 2013. ”The Opposite of Property. How the Grimm Brothers Helped to Create the Public Domain (and why perhaps that wasn't so great)”, invited lecture in the lecture series "Folkloristiska seminariet i Göteborg" (Folklore Seminar of Gothenburg), 7 November 2013.
Valdimar Tr. Hafstein. 2013. "The Condor's Flight: A Letter, a Song, a Story, and a Couple of Lessons about Intangible Heritage", )", invited lecture at the University of Helsinki in an interdisciplinary lecture series called the "Cultural Research Colloquium", 9 September 2013.
Valdimar Tr. Hafstein. 2014. "The Condor's Flight. A Letter, a
Song, a Story, and a Couple of Lessons about Intangible Heritage", invited
lecture at the Universität Basel, Seminar für Kulturwissenschaft und
Europäische Ethnologie, 9 October 2014.
Valdimar Tr. Hafstein. 2014. "Protection as Dispossession: El Condor Pasa and Other Stories of Intangible Heritage", invited public lecture at the Reinwardt Academie of the Amsterdamse Hogeschool voor de Kunsten, in the lecture series "Erfgoedarena" or "Heritage Arena", 25 June 2014.
Valdimar Tr. Hafstein. 2014. "Andersen and the Grimms: Authors, Editors,
Folk", lecture at the annual meeting of the American Folklore Society,
Santa Fe, New Mexico, 5-8 November 2014.
Valdimar Tr. Hafstein. 2014. "Flug kondórsins: Menningararfur, menningarvernd og menningarþjófnaður", lecture in a conference titled "Á VÆNGJUM HINS ÓÁÞREIFANLEGA: TÓNLIST, MENNING OG ARFUR", convened by Rannsóknarstofa í tónlistarfræðum á Menntavísindasviði HÍ, 9 May 2014.
Valdimar Tr. Hafstein, plenary keynote
lecture: “Authors, Editors, Folk: Copyright & Creative Agency from a Folklorist's
Perspective”, at the 33rd
Nordic Ethnology and Folklore Congress in Copenhagen, Denmark, 18-21
August, 2015.
Valdimar Tr. Hafstein. 2015. "Copyrighting
Tradition: Creativity, Authorship and Expressions of Traditional Culture",
invited public lecture, the KNAW Academy Lecture, hosted by the KNAW
(Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen or Royal Dutch Academy of
Sciences), Amsterdam 28 May 2015.
Valdimar Tr. Hafstein. 2015. "The Condor's Flight: A Letter, a Song, a Story, and a Couple of Lessons about Intangible Heritage", invited lecture at the University of Siena, 29 October 2015.
Valdimar Tr. Hafstein. 2015. "Digital Traditional©: Distributed,
Collaborative, and Cumulative Creativity", invited lecture in the lecture
series "Smart Europe: Herausforderungen der Digitalisierung", at the
Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence in European Studies of the Universität
Osnabrück.
Valdimar Tr. Hafstein. 2015. "Andersen, the Grimms, and I: authors, editors, folk", lecture at the international congress of SIEF (International Society for Ethnology and Folklore), Zagreb 21-25 June 2015.