Critiquing Free Beer
These are the notes that I made for a public talk at Tate St Ives on 12th September, 2007 which I have recently tidied up, making small changes to the original text. The talk explored ideas of free software and open source as an area of contemporary art, and aimed to provide a context for SUPERFLEX’s FREE BEER project, exhibited at Tate St. Ives and within the Public Realm as part of the Projectbase-curated Social Systems exhibition, 2007. SUPERFLEX were formed in 1993 by founding members, Bjørnstjerne Reuter Christiansen, Jakob Fenger and Rasmus Nielsen and they live and work Copenhagen, Denmark (www.superflex.net)
Introduction
Within certain conceptual and post conceptual art practices it is possible to discern the influence of open source and free software methods and philosophies. These practices engage – directly or indirectly - with new forms of labour; known variously as flexible labour and open/libre ways of working that are emerging within contemporary capitalism. Unlike object-based art, they deal with the invisible: processes, relations, networks, and systems. Artwork like this is made up of many elements often existing in different spaces and temporalities, and is not as readily graspable, or indeed as visible, as object-based work. We are unsure of the boundaries of the work and so need to look to, to find, all the constituent elements. We have to ascertain for ourselves whether something is ‘part of the work’ or supplementary to it. Sometimes with this kind of work, all that can be seen are the ‘instructions for participation’, the ‘rules of engagement’, the ‘protocols’. With SUPERFLEX’s FREE BEER project the recipe is visible, as is the end product – the beer, but many of the other elements are not directly visible to the viewer. The ‘viewer’ becomes the participant who engages in the work through action: the work is not perceivable through sight alone.
These strands of contemporary practice are variously known as interactive, participative, socially- engaged and relational, and although not a commonly used description, I would also add the term ‘distributed’. These works often emphasise values such as cooperation, sharing, and participation, and they aim to engage with active and creative audiences through events, situations, encounters and performances. Attention is given to developing DIY – Do It Yourself – activities, in which participants are encouraged to make their own version of things from material that is readily available to them. In this kind of work, the artist devises a framework within which others participate. It is perhaps the case that in some instances the framework becomes the ‘form’ of the artwork and the participation becomes the ‘content’. What many of these practices have in common is a desire to resist the processes of commodification and colonisation of contemporary capitalism. Artists are continually re-assessing their strategies and practices of resistance as capitalism finds new ways of commodifying common culture and the everyday. However, I suggest that artists often unwittingly contribute to, rather than resist, new forms within capitalism, mistakenly identifying emerging organisational structures such as the distributed network as contrary to capitalism in themselves. The relationship between this strand of contemporary art and capitalism, then, is a very interesting one: does it offer an alternative approach within or outside capitalism, and does it foreshadow new labour patterns emerging from the network society? Consideration of the conditions and relations of our engagement as participants is important: whether or not we are ‘fodder’ for another’s project, helping him/her/they to accrue cultural capital has political and ethical resonance for participants and makers.
Elements of FREE BEER
Because we are dealing with an artwork that perhaps in not immediately recognisable as ‘art’, it might be useful to start by identifying the various elements that make up the FREE BEER project:
Recipe on the wall
Process of making the beer
Collaboration with St. Austell Brewery – experts in brewing
FREE BEER for sale in the café
FREE BEER intellectual property pub quiz that was held in the Tate St Ives café with
SUPERFLEX on 8th July 2007
SUPERFLEX-designed label that adorns the bottles
Although not strictly elements of the work, it might be worth considering also the following elements:
Documentation of the project on the Projectbase website that includes images of (one presumes) members of SUPERFLEX: one is dressed as a large bottle of beer, and another as a copyright sign. The one dressed as a bottle of beer is carrying a placard that reads copyright is preventing access to knowledge’
Invitation on the Projectbase website to download the recipe, make your own beer and send in your adapted recipe to info@projectbase.org.uk
Artists’ statements about the work
Free, Libre, Open Source Software (FLOSS)
SUPERFLEX often talk about their projects as tools, products or systems. They don’t see these projects as being their exclusive property: instead they believe that their works only make sense when they are being used or adapted independently by others. This links into the new forms of labour and production promoted by Free, Libre, Open Source Software (FLOSS). FLOSS is a philosophy that is underpinned by a notion of freedom that removes proprietary obstacles to the flow of creativity and entrepreneurialism; and in FREE BEER this notion of freedom is centre-stage. Within the free software movement, the phrase ‘free as in speech not as in beer’ is often used to mark the difference between ‘free’ in relation to freedom and ‘free’ in relation to cost. SUPERFLEX are clearly referring to this well-known phrase as they draw attention to the fact that their FREE BEER product, which ordinarily retails at £2.40 a bottle, is not ‘free as in beer’. There are philosophical differences between Free Software and Open Source, but those are outside the scope of this talk. Within the free software movement (and beyond) the term ‘free’ when applied to software means that the user can use a piece of software for any purpose, study its source code, adapt it to his/her/their needs, and redistribute it in either its modified or unmodified form. Contrary to this, proprietary software is software with restrictions on using, copying and modifying as enforced by the owner of the software.
To explain the freedom of free software a little bit more I’d like to refer to the analogy between software and recipes that is often used in open source communities. If you buy a cake (or indeed, receive one as a gift) it is quite difficult to ascertain the precise ingredients and method of making the cake without a recipe. Similarly, if you buy or are given a piece of software, without the source code, it is difficult to work out how the software has been made. When a recipe is made freely-available then it is possible to evaluate the recipe and modify it. The FLOSS community would suggest that having access to the recipe means that not only is it possible to eat the cake that was bought, but also possible to make more. It is even possible to modify the recipe, by adding or removing ingredients. It is possible then, to make cakes from both the original recipe and the modified version, and sell or give away those cakes. Furthermore, it is possible to learn from the recipe by understanding the methods and techniques used to make the cake. The same applies to FLOSS software: particular software features can be adapted by others – in accordance with the license - if the source code is made available. This is not the case with proprietary software: amendments to proprietary software would most likely constitute a breach of the copyright. The FLOSS model means that if an individual or group benefits from the use, modification or redistribution of the cake and the recipe, then they allow others the same freedoms as they have enjoyed. In addition, the FLOSS model insists that the originators of the recipe are acknowledged.
Licences
All software has a licence. When software is bought, the purchaser does not own the software because a licence to use the software is purchased rather than ownership of the software itself. The freedoms inherent in FLOSS are held within the licence under which the software is received. For example, public domain software allows the user unlimited freedom; proprietary software often has a licence that allows use of the software but limits the user from passing the software to others, from changing the software and from deconstructing the software. Free software allows use of the software, and also allows the user to change and redistribute the software, but it also insists that others are given the same freedoms to use, modify and redistribute as the user.
SUPERFLEX’s FREE BEER
Here at Tate St. Ives the recipe for FREE BEER is the element of the work that is presented formally to the public. SUPEFLEX say that ‘by offering the recipe or ‘source code’ of a usually highly guarded recipe, the project prompts the consumer to consider the wider possibilities of ‘FLOSS’ systems from both practical and philosophical perspectives’. In statements about the project, SUPERFLEX state that FREE beer was originally conceived by themselves and students at the Copenhagen IT University (Vores Øl v. 1) So they are working within a FLOSS philosophy by acknowledging their co-originators, although the students aren’t individually named.
SUPERFLEX integrate the well-used analogy between source code and recipe into the FREE BEER project. Like the source code of proprietorial software, the recipe for beer is usually not available with the product. SUPERFLEX on the other hand, offer the recipe or ‘source code’ of a usually highly guarded recipe along with the bottle of beer. Open source enables the user to modify, improve or share the source code and SUPERFLEX have modified, improved and shared the recipe of beer brewed by traditional methods. They have modified it by including guaraná.
The recipe and branding elements of FREE BEER are published under a Creative Commons (Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5) license, which means that anyone can use the recipe to brew their own FREE BEER or create a derivative of the recipe. FREE BEER Version 3.2 is available (at the time of writing in 2007) in the café at Tate St Ives priced £2.95/Take Out £2.40. Anyone is free to earn money from FREE BEER, but they must publish the recipe under the same license and credit SUPERFLEX’s work. All design and branding elements are available to beer brewers, and can be modified to suit, provided changes are published under the same license (“Attribution and Share Alike).
Critiquing Free Beer
If we look at FREE BEER without any contextualisation from the artists then it is possible to situate this project as having an ambiguous relationship with FLOSS - neither advocating it or rejecting it, but working to draw our attention to some of the issues. Although we are given a choice to buy the beer or make our own, most of us will not have the knowledge or equipment to begin brewing. This is analogous with open source software: we can download and use it, but most people will not have the requisite knowledge to do so. Alternatively, we can buy a version that is ready to use. In both cases, then, the choice between doing it ourselves and purchasing a ready-made item is contingent on knowledge, experience and equipment. That the artwork raises these questions without proposing a solution, in my opinion, strengthens the work, and prompts discussion of these concerns.
However, when SUPEFLEX talk about the project and contextualise its relationship to FLOSS our understanding of the work shifts. Here, the documentation and context of the work as presented by the artists influence our understanding of the work, and are relevant to our engagement with it. If we consider the Pub Quiz as ‘part of the work’ for example, then the artists seem to abandon their neutral position and begin to advocate the benefits of FLOSS. They do so without problematising the commodification of the participator and their (and the audience’s) relationship with new forms of labour. In this context then, the difficulties that participants face in engaging with the work through their DIY activities become more relevant to our critique of the work. SUPERFLEX have stated that they want their project to be used or adapted independently by others but I’d like to question the extent to which the recipe can actually be used by others to produce beer. Is it only experts in brewing who could make use of this recipe?
Other artists, myself included, have made DIY work that shares a recipe for others to follow. In most cases, the labour involved is such that it is highly unlikely that participants will engage in this aspect of the work. Kate Rich and Kayle Brandon’s Cube-Cola project took a freely available cola recipe and attempted to produce the drink. It took them two years to get a decent brew. They decided to share the knowledge of making the cola with others through artist-led workshops rather than expecting participant to make their own version without help. Glorious Ninth’s (Kate Southworth and the late Patrick Simons) love_potion also has a recipe freely available, and the website offers guidance not only on how to make the potion, but how to grow the herbs used in the recipe. In addition, free (as in free beer) aural-visual works were available for download so that participants could make their own DIY installation. In reality, it is highly unlikely that participants will go to the effort of growing their own herbs or indeed, of installing their own environment. Perhaps, in this kind of work, the invitation to participate takes on a symbolic or imaginary role in the work, prompting participants to fantasise the possibilities of DIY without actually doing the necessary work?
Like other artists working in this way, SUPERFLEX devise the framework within which others participate. In FREE BEER we are situated within that framework as consumers. We can buy the beer or make or own, but, given that making our own is not possible without access to brewing facilities, we engage the work primarily through a commodified relation. In the Public Realm, the artwork is accessed through consumption: the beer is available in pubs across Cornwall and in the cafés at the various Tate galleries. SUPERFLEX refer to their audience as ‘consumers’. Sara Black, Director of ProjectBase the agency that commissioned the 3.2 version of FREE BEER talks positively about the project enabling people to experience contemporary art in their local pub. What she doesn’t mention is that they experience the work as consumers.
One of the features of the network society is that commodification is not just formal but total, and in many ways this work exemplifies that shift. At Tate St Ives, like some other publicly- funded museums, visitors pay to enter the galleries within which artworks are housed. This arrangement can be seen as ‘formal commodification’ in that it is clear (if sometimes undesirable) that in order to have the opportunity of engaging with particular artworks we must pay a fee. Once the fee is paid, and we gain access to the place where the work is situated, our relationship with the work itself is, arguably, situated outside that commodified relation. FREE BEER, on the other hand, is placed outside the fee-paying gallery spaces, within common areas that can be accessed without payment. At first, that seems radical, and positive. However, the primary way of accessing the work is by buying the product, and our relationship with the work itself is one of total commodification. To me, SUPERFLEX do not maintain a neutral or ambiguous position to this shift in social relations; on the contrary they seem to promote and uncritically accept a real world and art world shift to total commodification.
The work is contextualised with reference to critical issues emerging with the rise of the so- called network society, and although this particular work perhaps doesn’t prompt a deeper understanding of the complexities involved, it is part of an extensive range of works that attempt in various ways to develop such an understanding.