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Stolen and adapted from "Unlicensed: Bootlegging as a creative practice", Ben Schwartz, Valiz, |Tessa's script

Stolen and adapted from "Unlicensed, bootlegging as a creative practice"

I. Cover Version

A cover can envelope the work, but it can also open it up. The best covers tend to create space; between the original and the copy or reproduction, between the artist and the artist, between the thing and everything else. A cover ask what is possible whithin what is given, a theft shows what's possible whithin what's given. Cat Burns recently stole "Teenage Dirtbag", made it black, female, queer. Is that even the same song? Maybe we're asking the wrong questions. Maybe it was never about copying. Maybe it was about stealing all along.

Maybe she just translated language through feelings. Because lately, I, Ben Schwarz/ Tessa/ Anyone reading, have been thinking of theft as a translation. A translator must find what is "unfathomable, mysterious and poetic" in the original and interpret this as the essence of a new language.

Coleman Barks, rumi translator, is known for his translations that prioritize feelings over fidelity. As such, a bootleg, a cover, a theft, must aspire to be greater than a reproduction. It should open up space for the possibility to transform, and even transcend.

However not all of them are created with such noble aspirations, as some people see covers as a mimetic practice. In the global subculture of celebrities impersonations, which involves an intense competitive circuit, greatness is defined by how closely one can get to becoming Michael Jackson, the king of pop, or Britney Spears, princess of the same kingdom. There's no intent to adjust or update, rather the self disappears and in its place, is a red latex jumpsuit, blond hair, and a bright smile. At the core, a mimetic cover is an homage. But a cover's ability to celebrate its source can go further, and in doing so can become something else, such as an interpretive cover.

According to Anthony Huberman, an homage falls somewhere between admiration and research. A tribute maybe? A cover opens up the possibility to express admiration in a way that emphasizes affect over effect. I love it over I get it. We find things that other people wouldn't think of finding there.

"Respect" was originally a song by Otis Redding, in which he demands respect from "his woman" after a long day at work. But the "Respect" most of us are familiar with is Aretha Franklin's rendition. The track surpasses a stylistic interpretation; the most powerful change for the track is actually the context of the word respect, considering the realities of Franklin as a black woman in the late 60s, early 70s. The song became a demand for something that could no longer be denied. She had taken a man's call for respect from a woman, and flipped it. The US had never heard anything like it.

The track demonstrates that even in repetition, there's always a "quality of difference". A cover is never just the same thing, but rather a progression or regression. If a mimetic cover repeats and a transformational cover shifts, then a transcendant cover stutters. Despite the necessity of a cover to work within the limitations of its predecessor (it said originalm but we've established before there's no such thing as an original piece of work), there remains a possibilty for these structures to be manipulated.

Feline's Script

Ownership of identity script

https://pad.xpub.nl/p/ownership_of_identity

Week 8 Radio - Protocol to Free Britney

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