A complaint filed by Kader Attia against Universal Music France for plagiarism has turned into a public spat between the French-Algerian artist and the South African-born artist Kendell Geers, who published an open letter on 5 December criticising Attia for censoring freedom of expression.
Attia says he is filing a lawsuit against Universal Music France over the video for the song Putain d’époque (loosely translated as “these fucking times”), a collaboration by the French rappers Dosseh and Nekfeu. The artist accuses the record label of not asking permission to reproduce one of his most well-known installations, Ghost (2007), which consists of 102 kneeling hooded figures created from sheets of aluminium foil.
The original music video, which was uploaded to YouTube on 21 November, has been removed, but a silent version is still available online. The video features people dressed in hooded foil emergency blankets. Universal Music France did not respond immediately to requests for comment.
In his letter, titled Now is the Winter of Our Discontent, Geers says he feels compelled to protest Attia’s injunction to remove the video clip. He cites other instances of plagiarism throughout history, from the poet Compte Lautréamont to hip hop and Pop Art. Geers also alludes to his own use of other people’s imagery, as well as close similarities between his and Attia’s work.
Geers writes: “If I were you, I would take it as a huge compliment that young French artists have decided to cut your work up into their online video. It is said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Plagiarism is not theft and in the context of Dosseh and Nekfeu, I would be flattered if I were you.” He continues: “One artist’s plagiarism is another’s sampling and yet another’s Appropriation Art and today we may even call it reblogging, retweeting or even sharing.”
However, Attia says he “has nothing against” Dosseh and Nekfeu, and that responsibility lies with Universal Music. “They perfectly know how to defend copyright when fighting against illegal downloading. Each artist, would it be musician, visual artist, or anything else, has to fight for the integrity and the respect of his work,” he says.
“The value of an artwork is above all intimate, symbolic, personal. Seeing it plagiarised like this makes an artist suffer, until he decides to stand up and say no to this exploitation.”
In response to Geers’ open letter, Attia says he is “appalled to see he had to resort to such low blows to draw attention to him. I won’t comment any further. Artists should stand up together and present a united front to big companies that plagiarise their work”.
