Over time, the term “bootlegging” has evolved beyond illegal copyright infringement and moonshine to describe, in essence, a creative act. In this ongoing series, we turn to designers and artists who exploit this phenomenon to provide some insight into contemporary culture’s obsession with bootlegging. Read more.
As a part of his design practice, Mark Owens often writes about the intersection of design, music, and material culture. While his writing touches on subjects from Brutalism to Times New Roman, his specific relationship to punk and hardcore subcultures has given him a unique perspective on the recent bootleg phenomenon. In the following interview, I chat with Owens about fan recordings, imaginary collaborations, and the value of “plunderphonics.”
Ben Schwartz (BS)
How do you understand bootlegging today—on a broad level as well as how it’s related to your practice?
Mark Owens (MO)
For me, the most generative way to distinguish bootlegging from practices like knockoffs or pirating is to emphasize the connection to music, fandom, and modes of circulation. In this respect bootlegs as we know them are an invention of the late 1960s and describe “unauthorized” recordings such as audience tapes, demos, and studio outtakes that are circulated on vinyl by fans without the permission of the artist or major label. The presumption is that the true fan already has all of the “legitimate” releases by a given artist, and the bootleg is filling a gap that the music industry is either unwilling or unable to fill.
The bootleg thus has both an archival value and also provides insight into the artist’s creative process that an “official” release that is sanitized and over-dubbed might not. By pressing vinyl records of these recordings and inserting them into the marketplace, bootleggers were also occupying systems of production and distribution. This combination of archival value, fandom, and (mis)use of systems of circulation also opens up an enormous space for creativity in the form of label names, cover artwork, material choices (like colored vinyl), and the sourcing, sequencing, and editing of bootleg material—this is where things like mash-ups find a close proximity to bootlegs.
It is this creative dimension that the current crop of bootleg projects inherit from the earlier bootleg era and transport into the internet-savvy present—whether in music or some other medium. As designers we are very often working as our own editors, archivists, and researchers, so I think for my own practice this creative potential within the bootleg impulse is one that can help inform design decisions and suggest new possibilities—even if they might be “irresponsible” or “vulgar” ones.
BS
Can you discuss a particular example of bootlegging in your practice? What did you bootleg? Why did you bootleg? What were the ideas behind the project? What was the process of putting it together? What were the implications? What did you hope to achieve?
MO
A few years ago my partner, Alex Klein, and I were invited to contribute to a group exhibition at LAXART in Los Angeles loosely organized around the idea of the bootleg. We had always wanted to make a piece of furniture and were fans of the Ulm stool, which was originally created by Max Bill in 1954 for the Ulm School and is still sold by Vitra as an icon of modernist design—a simple form that can double as a portable stool or a bookshelf. At the time we had also managed to track down some deadstock Memphis Bacterio pattern laminate from a vendor in Studio City, and we wondered what it would be like to cover the outside of Max Bill’s Ulm stool with this pattern designed by Ettore Sottsass, the quintessential postmodern designer, who we were also huge fans of. So, we made one, imagining this bootleg stool as a kind of “lost” collaboration between the two designers. Ironically, the laminate gave the stool, which is normally raw wood, both an added decorative element and an improved functionality.
In terms of client work, a similar idea informed a pair of catalogues I created in collaboration with the artist and curator Justin Beal along with designer Nilas Andersen. These catalogues document two group shows, Soft Matter and Touchpiece, that included design objects and artworks that, very generally, explore connections between materials and the body. Many of the works feature flexible “skins” of various kinds, and we wanted to find a way to get that idea into the book. Justin had suggested revisiting a catalogue designed by Andrea Branzi’s studio in 1986, Domestic Animals. The book is long out of print and somewhat marginal to Branzi’s output as an industrial designer, but we tracked it down and attempted to “pour” our contents into its format. Of course, in the process all kinds of unexpected things happened, and we ended up making design decisions that we never would have on our own. The paperback is also a format that is scaled to the size of the human hand and is part of a whole economy of circulation, so we ended up with two books that function as additions to an imagined series and enter into dialogue with their predecessors. The artist Martin Kippenberger did something similar with his 1987 Peter catalogues, whose format was based on a Sonnabend Piero Manzoni catalogue from 1973, and his example was also very much on our minds.
BS
What is the difference between bootlegging and appropriation? Bootlegging and copying?
MO
Again, I think the archival dimension and a sense of desire or fandom is important. Studio outtakes, audience tapes, and demos are all the products of a kind of audio archaeology. They take research and digging, and often bootleggers will put these elements together to tell a story, to fill in a gap in the “official” record, or to create an imagined artifact. I think this aspect distinguishes bootlegs from straightforward ripoffs, clones, or copies.
Growing up listening to punk and hardcore bands at a time when many of the original groups had long since broken up, I encountered the records themselves as historical artifacts and studied the minutia of type, layout, photography, lyrics, and liner notes with the kind of attention that designers are very familiar with. Bootlegs open up and mine this imaginative space as well.
BS
Can you talk about the relationship between bootlegging and politics? Bootlegging and irony? Bootlegging and fandom? Bootlegging and capitalism?
MO
There is a great book by Clinton Heylin from the mid-1990s titled, appropriately, BOOTLEG, that goes into the whole history of rock bootlegs, beginning in the late 1960s and ending with the advent of the CD era. What comes through strongly in that book is the way that bootleggers have constantly negotiated their relationship to capitalism and the market, whether by trying to get around copyright with so-called “production gap” releases, by undercutting competing bootleggers by repackaging existing bootleg releases or by trying to masquerade as legitimate releases in order to get wider distribution. One bootlegger suggested that what really annoyed major labels about bootlegs was not the potential loss of revenue (which was minimal by comparison) but that bootleggers were using capitalism to do things that it wasn’t designed to do.
BS
How does bootlegging relate to the idea of ownership? Does it share a relationship with the internet and the way no one truly owns an idea?
MO
The internet has really thrown ideas of ownership into question, and as both an open archive and a platform for circulation it has created a huge realm of new possibilities. The artist and theorist Hito Steyerl has discussed this in terms of the circulation of “poor images,” which trade quality for speed and make possible new forms of participation and social connection. At their best bootlegs and musical forms like plunderphonics and mash-ups create entirely new forms out of pre-existing material. For me, these internet subgenres tap into larger questions of collective memory, affect, and the material remainder that exceeds the parameters of a given historical moment or even a given material artifact.
Get Walker Reader in your inbox. Sign up to receive first word about our original videos, commissioned essays, curatorial perspectives, and artist interviews.
)
)
)
)
)
)
)