Libre Society
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Libre Society is a radical artistic and cultural movement that is committed to releasing free/libre/open-source art, music and literature. The Libre Society released a manifesto, called the Libre Manifesto, as its call to action.
The Libre Sociey has been inspired by the copyleft movement, the 1960s situationists and writers such as Antonio Negri, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Karl Marx, Carl Schmitt and Friedrich Nietzsche. Set up by artists and intellectuals, it rejects art as merely objects to be bought and sold and instead reaffirms art as liberating, transformatory and emancipatory.
To quote from the Libre Society Manifesto [1]:
"A constellation of interests is now seeking to increase their ownership and control of creativity. They tell us that they require new laws and rights that allow them to control concepts and ideas and protect them from exploitation. They say that this will enrich our lives, create new products and safeguard the possibility of future prosperity. But this is an absolute disaster for creativity, whose health depends on an ongoing, free and open conversation between ideas from the past and the present.
— In response, we wish to defend the idea of a creative sphere of concepts and ideas that are free from ownership."
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Libre Commons Licenses have been launched which are expressly political in nature and attempt to counter the anodyne Creative Commons licenses which have been criticised for being too friendly to the content industries.
Copy Rip Burn is a touring show of work and art around created and inspired by the Libre Manifesto.
