Objects from personally received Cease & Desist letters
Mixed Media

CEASE AND DESIST:
THE LUXURY OF LAW

We are constantly bombarded with messaging, transforming our public spaces into mind-warping galleries of corporate, political, and social communication. These images and words are carefully crafted to create value and influence thought, embodying ideas with specific agendas. They are also being labeled as "intellectual property." While we are free to adopt these ideas, we are forbidden from adapting them to question their underlying agendas.

Intellectual property rights were developed to stimulate creativity. This legal reification process turns ideas into property and grants the creator legal ownership. This generates economic incentive from, and protection for, the intellectual goods created. IP laws are therefore two parted: the goal and the incentive. The goal is to stimulate creativity and the incentive offers economic protection and advantage.

Over time the IP has been distorted by economic interests. The laws have devolved into a ‘pay-to-play’ corporate defence system that actively represses free thought, forbidding critique and discussion. IP has become completely antithetical to its intended purpose. As this continues creativity will be reserved only for those who can afford it.

'Cease & Desist' serves as a commentary on this phenomenon. The objects, created from personally received Cease & Desist letters, form a 'performance piece' that unfolds out between the theoretical ideal of IP rights and the distorted forces of their practice. The project aims to initiate an open discussion, within IP law, examining its impact on society and its role shaping or misshaping culture. ‘Cease & Desist’ seeks to explore the concealed boundaries of IP’s legal expression, shedding light on where property rights ends and where creativity and free thought begin.

The LETTERS

Below a series of Cease & Desist letters I received with regards to earlier projects. A Cease & Desist letter is a written request to an individual, or organization, to stop (cease) an action and refrain (desist) from doing it again. The letter notifies the recipient that they’re infringing on the sender’s ‘rights’.

This type of behavior includes ‘duplicating or reproducing’ copyrighted material, amongst other things. The letter typically comes with the threat of legal action if the recipient fails to comply with the demands detailed within a certain period of time.

Series of recevied Cease and Desist letters

The texture

The series of Cease & Desist letters were digitised into a texture and turned into a toolkit with (semi) manufactured goods such as wallpaper, fabrics and daily objects. With the toolkit other designers are able to appropriate and create new objects.

THE NFT

The texture was also converted into an NFT object, preserve it for future generations. An NFT (Non-Fungible Token) is a digital certificate that grants ownership of an asset verifiable via blockchain. NFT’s are tracked to provide the owner with proof of ownership that is separate from copyright.

The ‘Cease and Desist’ NFT object is a way of taking the discussion further into the digital domain and expanding it to an even larger, more intangible environment.

Cease and Desist NFT’ (2021)
Non-Fungible Token (TIFF)
Token ID: 40911
3740 x 23622 pixels (157.353.464 bytes)
Minted on 6 Oktober 2021.
Smart contract address: 0x60f80121c31a0d46b5279700f9df786054aa5ee5

More information on OpenSea

REAL WORLD OBJECTS

Next to the toolkit, the project also contains a series everyday objects featuring the legal texture.