HAZEL FRIEDMAN reports on a lengthy court action being waged by author/artist Pippa Skotnes
Artist Pippa Skotnes unashamedly courts controversy with the enthusiasm of a moth to a flame. But her latest controversy has landed her in court. And this time her adversaries are the South African Library and an odious piece of legislation called the Legal Deposit Act.
For three years Skotnes has been fighting a long and costly legal battle to prevent the state library from appropriating her acclaimed art book Sounds from the Thinking strings, which exposes the historical plight of South Africa’s San community through images and text. At the centre of the conflict is the Legal Deposits Act.
This law requires that five copies of any published book be deposited in the so- called Legal Deposits Libraries in South Africa. Even if a few copies of the book have been reproduced, the publisher is legally obliged to supply the libraries. Only in special cases can a single copy be given, and this must be deposited in Cape Town’s South African Library.
Skotnes’s battle of the book began in 1992 when the State Library requested a copy of Sound from the thinking strings. She explained that the book was in a hand- produced artwork and could not be donated free of charge. She did say, however, that the matter was “open to negotiation”.
The library disagreed. “In 1993, under the direction of Piet Westra, from the South African library, a summons was pinned to my studio door demanding the book’s recovery,” she recalls. “While I understand that the book forms part of South Africa’s cultural heritage, in effect the Act compromises freedom of creative expression and the artist’s right to ownership of creative production. It is therefore a matter of principle for artists to fight it.”
So began a series of court cases that saw Skotnes’s initial victory (the magistrate ruled that her book was in fact an artwork and therefore exempt from the Legal Deposit Act) overturned in the Supreme Court. She has since taken her case to the Appeal Court in Bloemfontein where she will appear in March.
Ironically, the Legal Deposits Bill, in theory anyway, upholds the very principles to which Skotnes clearly subscribes. Passed in South Africa during the 1970s and currently under review, the act aims to provide a public service by making information accessible to all. Yet it is sadly lacking in detail.
Firstly, it fails to define what constitutes a book. According to conventional dictionary definitions, a book is a “portable written or printed work filling a number of sheets fastened together”. But that definition precludes a portfolio which might consist of text but is not bound together. Furthermore it fails to differentiate between conventional mass- produced publications and original books produced by artists. The latter are usually more costly to produce and are bought by specialised art institutions or collectors. They are often painstakingly hand-produced as unique artworks, or in limited numbers, using the book format as a medium, in much the same way as a piece of sculpture or installation.
In recent years artists’ books – featuring images and text – have made enormous headway in the United States and Europe. Artists working in a variety of media and traditions regard this as a cheaper, more portable means of artistic expression. As such, artists’ books should fall under the laws governing intellectual property, as they do in the US and Europe, excluding Britain.
“This issue does not simply involve one person but has enormous repercussions for the future of creative freedom in this country,” says artist Malcolm Payne, who has championed Skotnes’s cause by organising an auction in Cape Town to raise money for her legal costs. Linda Givon of the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg has offered to act as auctioneer. “If Pippa loses her case, this will serve as the biggest disincentive to creative expression,” says Givon.
But some artists believe Skotnes is “morally obliged” to donate her book to the library.
“While I admire Pippa’s strength of principle I am convinced that if a book has pages, text, is printed in an edition and bound – it constitutes a book,” says artist Judith Mason, herself the publisher of numerous artists’ books. “Unless it is an artist’s edition, which is enormously expensive to produce and contains original artwork, it is the artist`s responsibility to give a copy to the viciously cash- strapped public collections in South Africa, in order to make their work as accessible as possible to society.”