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Press Release | 16 10 2003
Public Netbase
Nike-Platz: transnational corporation attacks freedom of art
International art project threatened by court injunction
On 14 October, the net culture institution Public Netbase was served a
writ intended to prohibit a work of art. The writ was the result of a
lawsuit filed by Nike corporation, with a disputed amount of 78,000
Euros.
The space installation "nikeground – rethinking space" is a joint
project of Public Netbase and the renowned art group
0100101110101101.ORG. The renaming of the historic Karlsplatz square in
the center of Vienna into Nikeplatz, as suggested by the project, is
meant to encourage reflection and public debates. In their work, the
authors combine the artistic tradition of mythopoesis with the new
culture of communication technologies.
The reaction of the transnational sportswear company is questionable in
several different ways. At no time during the art project were any goods
or services offered under the name of Nike. In addition, Public Netbase
is a non-profit organization and stands in no competitive relationship
whatsoever to Nike. Therefore, any talk of violation of trademarks is
unfounded. Instead, Nike corporation appears to stand in opposition to
the principle of the freedom of art, as laid down in Section 17a of the
Austrian constitution.
Konrad Becker, Director of Public Netbase: "We are talking about a
company that was recently sentenced by the US Supreme Court because of
misleading advertising, and now seems determined to write art history by
engineering punishment campaigns against artists all over the world."
This is a way of criminalizing the artistic reflection on symbols of
everyday culture and symbolic representations of the city. "Nike uses an
artistic intervention as a pretext to stifle any possible debates or
criticism of global developments", Becker said.
The US cultural theorist Timothy Druckrey describes the artistic
importance of the work of 0100101110101101.ORG as follows. "The group
provokes questions about the 'other' side of the power, about the
premises on which the culture is promoted (and, increasingly,
regulated), and, now, about how corporate identity cannot endorse itself
as a proxy public sphere or as an entity immune from the implications of
their actions"
In a press release, Nike’s PR agency FCB makes it clear that hardly any
harm was done by this artistic action. "What is true is the exact
opposite: Nike has chosen to do harm to art. Their position represents a
frontal attack against contemporary artistic practice", Becker
concluded.
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