Fixing the Shadows – Access to Art and the Legal Concept of the Cultural Commons

Abstract

Fixing the Shadows: Access to Art and the Legal Concept of Cultural Commons studies access to art as knowledge, and the role law plays in facilitating access. The research project discusses how to advance and strengthen access to art and create legal pathways that facilitate communication, access to and sharing of art as knowledge. Thus, the study introduces the legal concept of cultural commons and discusses how such a concept may be introduced to law and given a legal platform. The study utilises the theories and methods of the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995) and the French psychoanalyst Félix Guattari (1930-1992) in dealing with law and jurisprudence. It focuses particularly on the concept of the rhizome. The theoretical aim of the study is to develop a critique of dogmatic law and to study particular obstacles to access to art created by traditional approaches to legal concepts. Consequently, through a rhizomatic jurisprudence a legal concept of cultural commons is developed and presented. The study is divided in two volumes. Volume I is called “Beyond the ontological question” and it studies obstacles to access to art created by law and certain types of traditional legal reasoning, it aims to bring forth the potential of law. Volume II analyses the cultural commons as a legal concept and is called “The Performativity of the Commons”. Volume II analyses the potential of a legal concept of cultural commons.