Caveat Reading Room: Agency
During this Reading Room, Koby Matthys of Agency will propose a text to read and discuss together.
16/04/2021
Location (to be confirmed): Rue Paul Devauxstraat 3, 1000 Brussels
Agency is an international initiative that was founded in 1992 by Kobe Matthys and has office in Brussels. Agency constitutes a growing ‘list of things’ that resist the radical split between the classifications of nature and culture. This list of things is mostly derived from juridical cases and controversies involving intellectual property (copyrights, patents, trade marks, etc…) in various territories around the world. The concept of intellectual property relies upon the fundamental assumption of the split between culture and nature and consequently between expressions and ideas, creations and facts, subjects and objects, humans and non-humans, originality and tradition, individuals and collectives, mind and body, etc…. Each ‘thing’ or controversy, included on the list, witnesses a hesitation in terms of these divisions. Agency calls these ‘things’ forth from its list via varying ‘assemblies’ which combines exhibitions, participatory performances, publications, etc… Each assembly speculates around possible inclusions of excluded agencies. As a whole all assemblies explore in a topological way the operative consequences of the apparatus of intellectual property for an ecology of practices and their different modes of existence.