Second-hand Material Original Works: Hong Kong Experimental Shorts, 二手料、原創片：香港實驗短片

Second-hand Material Original Works: Hong Kong Experimental Shorts二手料、原創片：香港實驗短片

12/11/2011 - 13/11/2011

The Hong Kong government has recently been reviewing the Copyright Ordinance, mainly to curb Internet piracy. The Director of Intellectual Property Department made it clear that “Kuso” style works are infringement of the copyright law. The government’s guest lawyer, who is supposed to be familiar with intellectual property rights, said using other people’s works, as art material is comparable to stealing. All of a sudden, artists who use found footage or images in their works are liable to criminal charges for suspected theft. The proposed stipulation makes a criminal offence any distribution of (creative) work that resembles an existing work, whether commercial or not, “to such an extent as to affect prejudicially the copyright owner(s)”. No wonder some critics of the proposal have dubbed it the “Article 23 of Internet”. Obviously, the government is using it to combat “Kuso” style political criticism to the effect that there is no exemption for art, thus further infringing on Hong Kong’s freedom of speech and creation. This situation worries many artists.

To provide more information for the discussion of this issue, the program “Second-hand Material Original Works” will show seven experimental short videos which involve the use of copies of images or found footage. The style of these works vary, some of them are serious research and discussion of culture, not restricted to “Kuso” style.