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."
Activities
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.
Text taken from: www.wikipedia.org.
Images taken from: http://www.libresociety.org/
