librarypunk - 072 - F for Fake (1973)

Episode Date: November 11, 2022

Docudrama time! We’re watching F for Fake (1973), the world’s first breadtube essay. We discuss the nature of art, lies, forgeries, markets, and how bad editing is ableism.  Readings S3E5: Elmyr de Hory F for Fake - Wikipedia Chokepoint Capitalism | Cory Doctorow's craphound.com

I'm Justin. I'm a Skalkan Library, and my pronouns are he and him. I'm Sadie. I work IT at a public library. My pronouns are they at him. I'm Jay. I am a music library director, and my pronouns are he, him. And we don't have a guest. We're doing a movie episode. So here's a sneak peek of what we're going to talk about before we do the segment. We know a little place in the American Far West where Charlie Briggs chops up the finest prairie-fed beef and tastes. This is a lot of tripe. You know that.

Anybody like Pinky in the Brain? Duh. Of course, like Pinky in the Brain. Okay, well, that's a very specific reference. But first, we're going to do Ask Credit. Wait, what did I use for this? Those people are dumb-dums. Yeah.

Those people are dumb-dums. There we go. Okay. So, it's the first one. Oh, it was deleted. Okay. No. All right, let's see the next one.

It was deleted. What? What? In the time that you found them? Like two weeks ago. Damn. Okay, here's one. This is a long one, though.

So can you way back machine Reddit? Okay. Yeah, I got the first one. Working for free. I'm a full-time salaried librarian. I have a regular workweek schedule with which consists of 37.5 hours. However, for special events, I am being asked to come in on a weekend or on an evening to host. I will not be compensated for the time I dedicate to these events.

I will also not be receiving comp time for those hours worked. When I asked about this, I was just told that there are expectations that I would come in every so often outside of my shift and that I need to be more of a team player. Has anyone else dealt with anything like this? Yes, it's called working in academia and you need to do work to rule and stop that shit. Yeah, I was about to say, are you a union? Because this sounds like way outside of any union contract. Yeah. Or if you are like a, like if you're salaried, some workplaces.

like especially with, you know, this, I don't, you know, they're not faculty. Are they? But like, you know, like faculty librarians, sometimes it's understood that like some weeks you're going to work less and some weeks you're going to work more and you don't really have like a strict schedule. You still have to defend your like work life boundaries. But also the whole like, but it's expected that you volunteer at that point. That's not volunteering. That's just part of your job and they should pay you for it. Into story. That would be one thing if it was like, yeah, you come in for these extra three hours this week.

and then take off like three hours next week because it's all within the same salary period. Like that's how I've worked plenty of times in the past. But like you get to show up for an extra however long just because like fuck that. Yeah. No, it worked a rule. So if you're exempt like I am, then you can work more than 40 hours or whatever your contract is. But this person says in a response, they are not union. but they do have a contract, specifying their schedule at a maximum number of weekly hours.

And so I think the main question is, are they exempt or not? And I think the next question is, how do we help them unionize? Yeah, they stopped responding. So it doesn't say if they are exempt or not. But if they are not exempt, that is illegal for anyone out there who needs to know. If your boss asks you to come in and you are non-exempt, exempt and they ask you to come in and don't flex your schedule, that's illegal, that's wage theft. The most common type of theft in terms of money stolen.

Yep. And also unionize. Yeah, and also unionize. But you should be covered. I mean, if you do a wage theft lawsuit, I can really hit them. They really don't want to deal with that. If you're exempt, can't really do much about it. Like, I don't even have a contract.

But if you are not exempt, then yeah, that's a violation of overtime laws. So, oh man, this one's gone, but I want to pull it up because it's just funny. It's not really even much to it, but I just want to pull it up. I'm just watching the bunnies in the background. Yeah, they're really active. They were annoyed earlier when all the commotion was happening. Everyone is talking over each other when helping patrons. Any advice?

This is going to sound like a really small thing. I guess it is in the grand scheme of things, but I'm curious if anyone has any advice for dealing with this. My annual review is coming up, and I know my boss will give me an opportunity to talk about anything I'm having trouble with, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Essentially, basically when there will sometimes be three to four employees behind the desk, a patron will approach the desk with a question. It could be anything from basic questions to asking about volunteering. If the patron is making eye contact with me, obviously I answer the question.

However, often, even if my coworkers on the other side of the desk, and even if it's a very simple question, they will interject and or talk over me as I am answering the patron's question. I guess we all just want to be welcoming and helpful, but I'm afraid it makes us look unprofessional. It's sometimes confusing because the patron is looking back and forth between the two or three of us, not really understanding the answers to their question because we're all talking at once and giving slightly varied answers. I really try not to do this if I'm not the employee who first made eye contact or agreed to the patron, or if someone else starts speaking first, but several of my coworkers don't seem to follow the same approach,

and it's frankly starting to annoy me. Aside from the confusion, it comes off as rude or likely to think. I think I can't answer a simple question. I do know at least one other employee is annoyed with this, probably more so than I am, actually, so it's not just me. It sounds like you talk a lot, because this was a really long post. As a fellow talk allotter, I would say, like, I don't give a shit about how this person feels, but I do agree with the point that they brought up about it being confusing to patrons,

especially if the patron is, like, looking between people and, like, not knowing who to pay attention to, especially if the answers are varying slightly. that to me is where there is actually a problem here. And what I would ask was like when people are onboarded and trained, what are sort of the protocols for how are interactions answered at the desk, especially when there's more than one person? Is there a policy for such a thing? Like is this procedure?

Is this workflow written down anywhere? Because like that is like a legitimate thing confusing patrons because like patrons. Because like patrons get intimidated. at the desk and that this just sounds like it's confusing people more. So I actually honestly agree with this post, but not because it's annoying, but because of its effect on any patrons that come up. Yeah. Yeah, no, I agree with you on that because like, and also, I don't know.

I guess I'm just not really sure what this person's looking for because like reading down in the comments, somebody says, well, if my boss is anything like yours, they'll ask if you've done anything to address it first. And it's like, yeah. So like instead of going to your boss and like, this is a really annoying behavior. I mean, you could go to your boss and be like, this is a really annoying behavior. How do you think I should approach it versus like, please solve this for me? Yeah.

If it was me and I've had this kind of thing happen and I've been that person too where it's just like I just verbally blurt out like the answer or something I know when I'm not even part of a conversation because I'm a chronic eavesdropper. but like yeah like be like oh like afterwards just be like hey i had that under control can we please try to just keep it to one one on one at a time or something like that like i don't and maybe phrase it is like hey i feel like this is maybe confusing patrons yeah when you do this like make sure that you're bringing up that like you know like i you know obviously like if i were this person like yeah i would feel like kind of like annoyed and also like the point about feeling like do they not think I can handle it or whatnot. Like, I totally understand that.

I'd probably feel the same way. I'd feel annoyed. I know the multiple times that I tried to file grievances against my dean, I was always told, what is the outcome you're looking for? Not just this person did a grievable offense, but what are you wanting to be done about it? What do you want the outcome to be besides just getting them in trouble? Yeah.

And having it recognize that they did something wrong. because I was like, no, I want to recognize if they did something wrong. Because often it was like, well, there's not really much outcome change difference. So it's like focus on like, okay, what do we want the outcome of this to be? Like either talk to the coworkers first and be like, hey, I feel like it's maybe confusing patrons when we do this. Could we maybe like have like a like, oh hey, whoever gets their first or whatnot or maybe we agree to switch? And if they don't think that would be successful or if it's not, then go to. to the boss, but also in the, like, frame it as, like, I feel like this is confusing to patrons,

and I feel like X, Y, Z should be the outcome of this. And I need your help. Like, what do you want me to do? Or in your authority, you know, something like that. Yeah. God, I had a thought. I just, I'm so sorry. See, I'm the asshole. No, no, I've just been super scatterbrained for the past week. Um, did. Same. God, what was I going to say? Yeah, like outcome-based, but also, like, you're annoyed. Congratulations, deal with it.

You're an adult in a professional space, right? You work in customer service. You work in customer service. You're going to be irritated on even good days. So, like, yeah, no, like, what do you want out of this? Do you want your, do you want to be validated? Do you want your annoyance validated or do you actually want something to, like, happen? is unprofessional a word that you're using to mask something else?

You know? Oh, are you saying it's unprofessional because you're annoyed or are you actually annoyed because it's unprofessional? I had a coworker who used to do this kind of thing all of the time would just be like, I just think it doesn't look, it doesn't look good or it doesn't, it's unprofessional. And the rest of us were just like, no, you're just a classist bitch. Yeah, it's like, I would say like, if anything in this is like correct, it's like, this is confusing to patrons.

Focus in on that and go from there. Don't worry about it being annoying. Of course, it's annoying, but that doesn't matter. Yeah. Beside the point. Yeah, it's besides the point. Yeah, I think a lot of people don't really get training and running the desk, even if they went to library school.

So it's probably something that, like, some training could address. And also, it just sounds like the desk is overstaffed. Yeah. Sounds like everyone's sitting there bored. Yeah, like go do some like shelf reading. Okay, I got one more. It's PC management solutions for a library newbie. I'm looking for a free open source PC management solution for a library.

The only definitive requirements are ability to time box user sessions and kick them off when done. Other features are nice, but we don't need anything that is feature heavy and expensive like in Visionware, as they are already happy with their cloud printing and payment solution, which is Prince. And I wish technology companies would come up with real names. French. So one of the ones that's mentioned in the comments is the one I used at a previous library that I just fucking hated. Every second I had to use it.

It's a Libby? No, no, it was Cassie. Okay. Which mostly it was just because it was not, it was a horror. Like, it was just a bad product. Like my previous library was not a big library system. It was four libraries and two of them were like very small. So I hated it.

I hated working with it. I hated their customer service. Like it had the weirdest shit. Like this is the smallest most inconsequential but not like UX thing where like you couldn't sort any of the fields. So if like you had multiple entries for like the hours that people could log in for like each branch and each day of the week and you couldn't sort them and you couldn't expand the box. So I just sit there be scrolling through like five lines at a time trying to find the one day that I need to edit.

There are no good solutions. I'm sorry to say. I like the comment on here and I feel like anytime anyone ask a question ever in general, but especially in libraries and I'm guilty of this too, not thinking of this when I ask questions. When you ask a question, I feel like you should have this in mind is the can you share a bit more about your library and its needs. Yep. And I feel like if you, if there's, okay, one, if there's anything you learn being a librarian, it's that people are bad at asking questions. That's why we have the reference interview, right?

Like, this is just, this is not a value judgment. People are just about asking questions. And so if you are a library worker or anything and you need to ask like, oh, hey, I'm looking for like a thing to do this. What do people recommend? try to in your when you're asking but this is my library and its needs this is what we've tried so far this is like the types of things I don't like this is the kinds of things I'm looking for like like give as much info as possible so I do like that someone asked that yeah and I mean I've

asked these sort of questions before just in my like work like what do other people use and do you like it what you like about it like I've did a whole thing trying to trying to find a wireless print solution for my previous library. And like because libraries vary so widely, like if you're just like one city-based library or something, like envisionware is going to be like a super expensive overkill. But if you're like a big system, then something like Cassie is not very sustainable at all, even though it's quite like a lot cheaper than an envisionware. So it's really like know what, know what your sibling libraries look like.

And ask them. It's really important to, anytime you do any kind of comparison or like looking for things is to know who your comparators are. Yeah. Yeah. Both in size and in like mission. Yeah. Like when I'm looking for like things to do, I'm going to not look at, I'm not going to look at universities that have music departments. I'm going to look at smaller conservatories or dedicated music schools, even if they're bigger than me.

and there's a shitload of him in Boston so I can just walk down the street and like walk a mile like bug the people at Berkeley or the New England Conservatory or something right? Like you throw a rock in Boston and you hit a music school.

But I'm not going to look at like Johns Hopkins as a comparator. I mean I know the librarian there. Arthur's here. Everyone say hi. Yay. It's fucking Arthur time. But yeah.

Like, I don't know how you find out who your comparators are. That might be like, it might experience like an ARL, a CRL thing. If you're a public library, you might ask your state library because I know at least Washington does a, the Washington State Library does an annual survey. That asks like how many computers you have, like what your circulation stats are. And you can scroll through there and you can find some like you can, and it's all, should be all open access. You scroll through there and find like ones, which, yeah, I've done before. But yeah, and also, like, make a matrix. Yeah.

And if you're IT and you're trying to figure this stuff out, what are the staff actually want? Like, find out what features are out there and then ask the people who will actually be using the product, what they think will be the most useful. And, like, narrow it down to maybe like five and then matrix the shit out of that shit and like figure out which ones actually address the needs you're looking for. Because I feel like, and this is something I'm definitely guilty with is it's like, ooh, I get to pick out a new system and I get a play with a new system.

And then it's like, oh shit, but there are actual people who have to use this on their daily life and not just troubleshoot it when something goes wrong. So like, you know, like when I was working, trying to figure out like a wireless printing solution, it was, you know, I could only get so far before I was like, I have to be able to talk to public services people. I cannot get any further than this. And my boss was like, well, they really want it done by the end of the year. And I'm like, I'm not comfortable just arbitrary being one person arbitrarily picking a solution. Like, I got to have more than that. So yeah, if your IT, check your new system toy box impulses. Yeah, like think about what you're wanting to do. Think about what you currently can't do. Like, what are your limitations? Think about what you want to do, but isn't possible. and think about what you want to do

and how much it costs to do that thing. That's like what I'm having to learn right now because I'm wanting to get us new discovery systems and like we're wanting to move more paperless and like how the fuck do you do like that with sheet music and stuff, right? And so it's like, okay, we want to do this. This isn't possible yet.

Or this would cost a billion dollars and this is our current limitations. But we can do this right now. And we would need this to do X, Y, Z. Like that's a good way to sort of start looking into systems. And if you don't even know where to start, like there's, you could just straight up just cold email other library systems. Yeah. Done that before.

Just go, hey, what do you use for this? Give the name. Then you can look it up and figure it out, like what's possible. And also, like, if your library sends people to like conferences and stuff, have them do some like reconnaissance for you. Like have them hit up the vendor hall and grab cards and stuff just so you have something to start comparing off of. I get that like, oh, what even does this? Sometimes blind Googling doesn't actually lead you in good places. Because a lot of that is deep web stuff.

It's not index because it's been like at conferences or something. Like I have never felt weird about getting an email from another librarian asking me what we might do. So I feel no shame in doing that. And also like, I mean, I know Twitter's imploding and so this might not be relevant like tomorrow. Because everyone's just like, oh, no, Twitter's bad now. Twitter's always been bad. Shut the fuck up. Of yours, woke moralism.

But, like, honestly, do not, like, be hesitant to just be like, hey, librarians on Twitter, what does your library use for this? And, like, especially if you are a this kind of library, like, what do y'all do? Like, honestly, no shame in that. I do it all the time. Don't listen to the folks that think that, that say, well, that's lazy and not. doing your job. No, fuck that. Like, just ask questions. Save yourself some work, see that other people do. Twitter's a really good place for that, honestly. And that's one thing that I've always

really liked about working with libraries is like if you just reach out and ask other people shit, they're like so much more willing to tell you than a lot of other kinds of like areas. Because they had to figure it out too and they don't want you to go through the same thing. And there's no competition. It's not like me figuring out the best solution for my library is going to take business away from another library, you know? So it's like you've got all this opportunity to be far more collaborative and like than, you know, a lot of other sort of industries or stuff do. So also like list serves. Don't be afraid to leverage that. List serves. Yeah, list serves like as annoying as they are are really good, like especially, but like a more specialized list serve. Just be like,

do not be afraid of sounding like you don't know how to do your job or what you're doing in a list serve just be, hey, we're looking for this kind of thing, and I'm not really coming up with anything good in initial searches or, like, know where to look. What are people using what do you recommend? There's no shame in doing that. We've all been there. It does not matter how far along you are in your career. You will encounter things where you don't know where to start or you're not sure that you're finding everything and you will need to ask people. So do not feel any shame doing that. Yeah, because everybody's doing two jobs. Yeah. That is what those lists are. are four, to be honest.

Okay, that was asked credit. Those people are dumb-dums. That's a good question, though. Yeah, I wanted to save the one for Sadie. I had it last week, and I was like, Sadie will have something to say about this. Yeah. Oh, oops.

So we watched F for Fake, the docu-drama film essay by Orson Welles about forgeries and art and reality and lies and De Horey, who is a Elmere DeWry, a professional art forger who spends a lot of the movie just being at parties, thing going and telling stories about everyone always buying his forgeries and stuff like that and trying not to incriminate himself because he did spend some time in prison for forgeries. There's also a If people are more Because honestly Like this is a documentary

And I put air quotes around that Arthur you put in your tail around me buddy If you are more curious about Almer DeHore Bad Gays The Bad Gays podcast Has an entire episode About Elmere DeHore

So you should go listen to that If you actually want to learn about him And not in an Orson Well's Like weird documentary Where it's Orson Wells Fucking with you for an hour and a half Which the goat, the king, we love him. That's I'm drinking red wine in his honor.

I was telling my wife about it earlier and like just sort of and I was like, oh yeah. And like, it's like I said something about like orson Wells and they were like, it's an Orson Wells film. And I was like, yeah. And they were like, oh no. So. It's Orson Wells doing magic tricks. fucking around in Abiza and showing off his hot girlfriend.

Yeah. Oh my God. The hot girlfriend part. That whole last half hour, I was like, what the fuck am I even doing here? I was reading the wiki to keep up with like the names. And so I already knew that the last 17 minutes of the movie was all bullshit.

Yeah. It was just all like a little play he was putting on. And so then I knew that going in. And then once you get to it, like, the tone in the movie changes quite a bit where he's just narrating a lot. And he's really just doing dramatic readings. Yeah. Yeah, it was a way to shoehorn his girlfriend in there. I'm pretty certain.

Like, in her ass a lot. Yeah. Which she had a nice ass, so don't blame them. There's like four or five solid minutes at the beginning of this movie of just her ass. Yeah. Which. And like, nothing, have no narration over it. It's just like, it's like, it's like,

We did this man on the street study to see how many people would leer at my wife. Not wife, mistress. Companion. Companion. It's the movie, the conversation, but horny. Yeah. So it's just a bunch of Spanish guys going, mama me. I think someone literally goes mamma mia during that part.

That is pretty funny. But yeah, this is the last film. Orson Wells directed, not the last film he starred in. Do we know what the last film Orson Well's starred in was? Spaceballs. No, it was a Transformers movie where he voiced. Was it the Shyla Buff one? No, it was one of the animated one.

Was it the big animated one, the one that like people love? I think so. Did he play the planet that eats things? Maybe. I don't know if that thing even talks. He, um, I have not seen this. Yeah, I know it's left. It's like really highly detailed animation.

Transformers. Transformers the movie 86. Yep. Let's see if he's in it. And he, no, he played, um. Yes, he is. Who does he play? Unicron.

Oh, so he just plays a transformer. Yeah. He doesn't play the thing that eats everything. Yeah. But yeah. So this is not the last film or someone has appeared in, but it is the last film he directed. And it's like

kind of goofy and kind of a mess. And it's him doing magic tricks and fucking around. But I really like it. He is dressed like a magician. I mean, he looks just like any magician looks now. He's just got like a cape and like a double-breasted vest.

Didn't have a hat. He looks like any sleight-of-hand YouTuber. Guys like that, you're usually like Fun, but. So is he the original and the rest are all knockoffs? Kafka and his precursors. Yeah.

But yeah. What is it from? Kafka and his precursors. It's a Jorge Luis Borges. But yeah, I've just been hearing that phrase recently. Yeah. Jorge Luis Borges. It's a short story essay by Jorge Luis Borges.

Yeah, I haven't been reading that. Where have I been hearing it? I feel like I heard this like. Horror Vanguard, maybe. Huh. Yeah, I think, I think. It's probably something Kyle says a lot. Yeah, it's like either.

No, I think I've heard it on HV lately. How many other podcasts can we name drop right now? John and Ash, let us know. I don't know. I was listening a lot to a lot of thanks for the memories. And there's an episode with Ash and Kyle, and I think I might listen to that twice. Maybe that's, but I was like, that is a weird. That is a weird phrase that's been following me around.

I was just like, that's strange. Yeah. Okay. Oh, that was just bothering me. Whatever. I can cut that. So, Transformers, the movie, 1986 by Toe Animation. Yeah.

This is the movie we watched. Yep. But yeah, I wanted to... Oh, that was a lie. It was a lie. I've been deceiving you. But yeah, I wanted us to watch this, because I know it's not directly library-related. It's related to museums, and that's in the glam acronym, so it kind of counts, cultural

institutions. But because of, like, both, like, from an... information, information, literacy, misinformation, like how does this film present information and what is it saying about how information is presented, but also about the value of art and objects in general within cultural institutions and how like forgery plays a role in that? Like, how does forgery reveal any cracks in what we consider valuable and why we collected what we collect and choose to preserve. That's what I thought. It repeats itself a lot.

And I can't, I couldn't tell if they were reusing footage or if people were just saying the same thing in different ways. But they said several times it's like art foragers wouldn't exist without art experts because if there were no experts to certify art, then there would be no need for foragers. If there was no art market, then there would be no need for for foragers because the forgeries only exist basically because people want to buy them. And that's kind of like personalized when it talks about different people selling forgeries to like get by. So they talk about like Michelangelo. They talk about Elmere.

I'm forgetting his love. Elmere DeHore. DeHore. Okay. They talk about DeHore and they talk about someone else. Well, the biographer DeHore is Clifford Irving who did a biography of Elmer DeHore. but then did a hoax biography of Howard Hughes. Right.

And that came to, like, while they had already filmed the DeHorese footage. Yes. So a lot of the footage quality in this film changes drastically from the parts of Orson Wells is just fucking around. And then, Beck, once the story broke that the biographer, who they'd interviewed, had also forged a biography of Howard Hughes, then Orson Wells was like, hang on, let's make this a video essay. About forgery.

Yeah, and that's why I wrote, he's the first breadtuber. Yeah. It's in a docu drama. It's a video essay. And like my favorite, well, my favorite bit, of course, is the like, you know, but what I go on singing? Like that whole little monologue that he does. I've used that in a legitimate presentation at a conference before.

But my other is like right at the beginning, Clifford Irving says, like, the question is not, is this the real thing or is this a forgery is, is this a good fake or a bad fake? That's my favorite line like in this whole fucking movie because it totally flips as to like what you're actually evaluating when you try to figure out which one's the authentic one and which one isn't and like it's all fakes. Like I love also when it's talking about Picasso, I think it's Picasso, where it says that like even Picasso can like, like not all the paintings that Picasso. Picasso would see all the ones

I didn't paint that or like, that's not a real Picasso, that's not a real Picasso. And even Picasso can paint fake Picasso's, like, where it's not necessarily who painted it. But yeah, so I thought that quotation from Clifford Irving

was one, very telling, but two, like also a really nice summation of the theme of this. And again, like, like, we talked about with like American animals. Like the, what was the, John D. Fucksmith.

Is that what it was, like the John D. fucksmith, like, special collections of like, why do we have special collections and why do we preserve things? And what are they serving in a university

or a museum or a cultural institution? Is it a good fake or is it a bad fake? Like, what makes this thing valuable, I guess? Because if you think about it, anything that's the only thing of, it's kind of rare,

but not everything that's like that is, worth a million dollars. Right. Yeah. Yeah, it's about the market itself, because like, all of these foragers did their own original paintings, and they were obviously good, but people wanted things done in the style of Picasso or whoever else, and even if they were, like, previously unknown works, right? So they weren't, like, copies of things that already existed. There were just things done in the style of. And, like, in addition to the, like, You know, if we didn't have experts, we wouldn't have the need for foragers. They also say that if you didn't have an art market, then you wouldn't have foragers.

My favorite part was the art dealer at the end who was like, yeah, I would ask if he had like anything that was like, I don't remember exactly. It was like, if he had any Picasso's and Elmere would be like, no, I don't. And then three months later would be like, oh, no, I totally have this one. And he just buy it because he knew he could sell it. and like kind of like skipping around the fact that he knew that they were probably forgeries, was buying them to deal them anyways. Like, is there a victim here? No.

Yeah. And also because it's like often with private collections, and I put this in the notes, when people buy, you know, if I were to go buy a John Singer Sargent painting, that's like not in a museum and have it in my own private collection if I were a rich asshole. I mean, I would love to have a sergeant painting. But if I were like a rich asshole, but a sergeant painting, what I would do was I would not hang that sergeant painting here in my living room. I would put it in storage to keep it safe and get a reproduction and hang it up. So how the fuck is that different from a forgery?

It's not. Besides the fact that you have a receipt that says that you paid this much money for this artwork, then you're going to hide away and not actually enjoy. and you're going to put a reproduction up that you could have bought for way cheaper. Oh, God, what does that sound like? NFTs is exactly what that sounds like. I was going to say, what if it was a painting of a big monkey? About a big ape.

Yeah, like, that's literally, you're not buying the thing, you're buying the prestige and the status. It's not about the thing itself. It's about the amount of money you dropped on it, and you're getting to show that off. And how does that prestige and status come to place? in the John D. Fuxmith Museum, right? Yeah, yeah.

The John D. Fuxmith's charitable foundation for art. Yeah. So when I was telling my wife about this earlier, they asked if there was a museum that was nothing but good fakes. There should be. I was like, there should be because that would be fucking rad. I mean, the exit through the gift shop. He said there was a collection that was all fakes that a museum had,

but they couldn't bring it up in the documentary. for legal reasons. Oh, that's right. Yeah. But the curators knew they were all forgeries. But they wouldn't be explicitly, like, showcased as, like, forgeries. Because I think that would be really interesting to see, like, a curated show of forgeries and art history and all of that stuff, too.

But, you know, like, I don't get why this is, like, a prison time crime. Because rich people feel victimized. I think it's weird European cultural laws because there was the thing with wine. There was the thing about it's only illegal if he forged the signature. And he didn't sign any of them. And so after he gets out of prison, there's footage of him going like, I never signed any of them. I never signed them. And then the guy who did his biography is like, of course they're all signed.

How else would they get sold? Yeah. Of course they're all signed. What are you talking about? But also they need at least two witnesses saying he's, signed it. So, you know. So as long as he doesn't admit that he signed it, yeah, then he legally

is fine. So I think it's some weird cultural heritage law that might exist in the U.S. I would imagine the U.S. might not have a law like that. We might, but... Would it be like identity theft, maybe? Well, and I wonder how much of it, like, leads back to, like, I think, doesn't...

A lot of those kind of things come from, like, the fact that, like, the Nazis were, like, trying to find and, like, find and get a hold of like a bunch of these works of arts and stuff so like there was like a whole weird art smuggling thing going on during that era too which elmere was a holocaust survivor yeah he was hungarian yeah as is orson wells's girlfriend and i believe orson wells like obviously he's not from hungry but i believe maybe his family lineage is hungarian or maybe i misheard the movie He seemed to be suggesting that, yeah. Yeah. He seemed to really be on that Hungarian train.

Yeah. But with the art thing, particularly like Italy, because I just learned recently that everything in the public domain in Italy, it's not that it's not copyright, it's that it's the state property of Italy. So if you are infringing on like national goods, I think is probably like where the whole art forgery stuff comes in. That would be my guess. This is like, this is the wealth of the country. And that's why also, like, you have to bring stuff back to our museums and stuff like that. That makes sense. So, yeah, it's just a different concept of, it's not even like intellectual property.

It's more just like national heritage ownership. And the part where he was talking about the cathedral, I was just looking it up. He's like, like, they don't, it doesn't have a signature. And I'm like, well, there are probably architects who, architects in these days who would fucking fist you over that kind of thing, you know? Like, that doesn't have a signature because maybe no, like, one person designed it. But I feel like that's probably very different nowadays. Like, architects are like, this is the firm.

This is the person who designed this building. And, you know. I mean, he's talking about, like, that specific cathedral. And that, like, obviously there was more than one person. But, like, we will never know the names of those laborers. Yeah. Well, yeah, and I get that. It just made me, like, stop and compare.

it to like the way architecture is treated today. Yeah. No, I was thinking something similar. I'm like, there was definitely like a bishop who started it. But like cathedral's take like over a century to build. Like they're not quick things. They are like intergenerational endeavors. That's why like they get, that's why they're so like over designed.

It's like they just keep building on to them and keep building them up and they take forever. I mean, they're fucking sick. So, you know. Yeah. Yeah, you can't, like, you can't, like, fix them either. Like, they're just big mounds of stone once you're done with them. That's why pyramids are the superior thing. You just start building a mound of dirt.

You just keep building it and keep building it. It's like, it's not going to sink because it's just a mound of dirt. But yeah, I love the cathedral little speech. Like, that's the one I've used in, like, a conference presentation to talk about, like, ideas of, like, anxiety over preservation. Because, like, we have this need, like, right? like this like at least in like western white librarianship and archival science and stuff is like and i i feel like we're starting to maybe feel see change in this but like this like everything has

to be preserved we have to keep everything like not as a hoarding libraries have to have everything but like things should be preserved right we should have a record you know we should archive every single web page we should at least have a record of all of these things right and there's like this anxiety of like, well, what if we missed something? Which is weird because we don't invest in actually doing that work. Right. We have the anxiety about it, but then we don't do it for whatever reasons. People get mad about book weeding.

They're like, oh, these books are being thrown away. It's like, these are books where hundreds of thousands of copies exist. Like, this is not a preservation issue. The preservation issue is some dude's papers sitting in the basement of that library. And the next time it floods, like, that could be it or gone. And it's just one copy. But even with that, like, that's also the kind of thing I'm talking about is like, it's important that like we preserve these things. But like this anxiety over, oh my God, if we don't preserve this thing, it will be lost forever. And the reason like I showed this, that clip at, like I was giving a little presentation on archival silence. I got invited to do it for the New Hampshire archives. Yes, you were. The New Hampshire Archives group workshop. I'm not an archivist, but they invited me.

And I talked about archival silence, which if you aren't aware, is where certain things were never collected or were erased in archives. So, for example, like the one I like to use is like in a collection that has a lot of stuff about like Native Americans, you'll have like a picture where it'll be like a named white colonizer and an unnamed, uh, indigenous person and the name of that indigenous person was never taken, for example. or things that are redacted in archives, like stuff like that. And often it has to do with like power and oppression and stuff like that. But sometimes I like, you know, we often frame archival silence as a bad thing.

But I also, I made the argument that sometimes archival silence is preferable. And then I ended it with going like, sometimes it's inevitable. And sometimes we have to be okay with things slipping through the cracks. Because guess what? The heat death of the, you know, is going to get everything in the end and we're all going to die.

Entropy is an extant form of life. What of it go on singing? Like all of this eventually is just going to go away. It doesn't mean we shouldn't try though. But also, that is something we need to make peace with. But what have it go on singing as well? That should be a deliberateness. I was just thinking, I'm like, what if I got a but what of it go on singing like tattoo?

It'd be fucking sick. Because I love but what of it go on singing. Like, it like gets me through tough times sometimes. Yeah, there should be a deliberateness about archiving and preservation. Not just archive it because, yeah. Yeah, not affording, not like a things person, but a people person who understands why things are preserved, which is for people. I mean, that kind of brings us to the discussion. We're a little late on this, but the whole soup discourse.

Soup discourse? Yeah, people, the environmental activists who were throwing soup at Van Gogh. Oh, I love this. throw soup on the on the van goff yeah maybe that'll get me canceled i'm i'm pro throwing soup on things i mean i don't think anyone who matter i we're first off we have to like get money from this to be canceled like they can't stop us like we're not making any money we can't cancel this show like kids direct action isn't the only valid form of action symbolic action is also important you needed a diversity of tactics this was getting attention and then they did shut down like a highway

bridge thing that was carrying oil like the next day or something. So it shut the fuck up. It reminds me of something you said, and I'm surprised no one else brought this up. Because I think Wade Mad did an episode where they talked about it. And it was the episode we had on with Jake, where you brought

up anarchist protests in that Oscar Wild book. And the absurdity of the protests was the point. I love being right all the time. And it was just like blowing up statues and symbols. And someone made the point, like, a guy burned himself to death in protest, and that got much, much less attention than people

throwing soup at paintings that were protected and behind glass and, like, didn't sustain any damage. It was the fear of property destruction. You expose the absurdity of it, and that's what these forgeries do. They expose the absurdity of how we value things, and, like, the purpose of cultural institutions of what we collect, and why we collect certain things. These forgeries expose the absurdity in it. And like, good, it is absurd. It doesn't mean it's not inherently bad. Maybe there is, like, there is value in saving things and preserving them some things.

Sometimes we need to be reminded of, like, the reasons why might be kind of dumb. We might need to reevaluate them. It's like, why is this important? It's good to be shaken up a bit. Yeah. I'm pro forgery. Yeah. Like the John D. Fuxmith Institute does employ people.

And like, I'm just saying it's also run by a guy named Fuxmith. So, I mean, there's an absurdity to it, but it's people make what they can out of it. People work within cultural institutions and, you know, they make a living out of it and they try and share cultural objects with people and they try and edify people. It doesn't matter whatever John D. Fuxmith got up to or how he got his money. Like, people just live with the legacy. And, like, yeah, you've got to play these dumb little prestige games and invite people over to see John D. Fuxmith's recreated office that you have to preserve. We have, like, someone's recreated office in one of our rooms in the library.

It's, like, just wasted space. It's just, like, old furniture. And it's just, like, it's how his office used to look. That's kind of ridiculous. Not kind of. That's absolutely fucking ridiculous. I hope it burns down. It's just so stupid.

I got in trouble. for daring to say my policy is to not accept donations, what do we do in this situation? Because I didn't realize that the people wanting to donate things were the people that our concert hall was named after. Oops. I didn't say this to them. I just very kindly asked the president, like, hey, I'm new here when this is my policy. What do we do in this situation? Not saying that I wasn't going to accept them, but like, what do we do? I got in trouble. about the John D. Fuxmith is you take all his shit because you want his money, right? So you have all his stupid furniture because you want his and you name the room. You have all this stupid sheet news. I'm going to get trouble. They're not going to listen. And if, yeah, this is how we ended up with like a really shitty porn collection at USF was we were trying to get money out of this guy.

So did my way. I'll take it. It was funny. I mean, but it was it was not good porn. It was like. It doesn't matter. My co-worker was going through it and he was like, this is just this guy's FAP collection. It's not good porn. He was a gay man too. So he was just like, it's not good porn. It's just junk.

But we were trying to get money out of the guy. Yeah. It just exists. And so that's what I'm saying about like special collections and donations. It doesn't serve the exact functions that we say it does. Because here's like the tension, I think. And I'm having to deal with this more now as like a library director and slash a solo librarian more than so than I had to do in my other positions. But the like reason and intent of something versus the outcome of something like, you know, the John D. Fuck Smith donation to make your dick look big.

but then also we get to share these really interesting cool cultural objects for our various like patron communities, you know, for research, for just connection, for interest, for whatever. Like, that is valuable, I think. I mean, I wouldn't be doing what I do if I didn't think that was a good thing. But it just happens to be connected to the John D. Fuxman's donation to make your dick look big. you know he was boxed in like a turtle's pecker the yeah you know what i mean uh i wanted to bring up a last point about art and well actually the i forgot to mention the whole editing style is not a dd inclusive oh my god and the a d r is real bad or orson wells you made citizen cane you can do better than this buddy i've seen you do it i actually i i was only like half paying attention through most of it just because I'd already had a day and could not keep track of shit.

So I like, yeah, saying it's not ADD friendly, like for some reason my brain had not gone there, but yeah, it is not. It jump cuts too much. So I've seen this really like five times. I own the criterion edition, you know, F for F slur over here. And I still have to read the Wikipedia after every single time I watch it. I'm like, wait, what the fuck happened? Yeah, the first half of this movie, I was just scrolling through various, like, Wikipedia articles trying to figure out who the cast of characters was and who I was supposed to be paying attention to.

And what was that woman's name? And who was she in relation to the, like, when they introduced, what is it, it was Irving's wife. Yeah, she's mentioned twice for no reason. Yeah, and I was just like, who's this woman that keeps appearing and why did they keep to ask talking, asking her about? Like, yeah. Oh, the blonde lady? Yeah, the blonde. At the dinner table.

lady yeah yeah also yeah the the restaurant scenes where it's just like i love those yeah okay oh here can you please yeah can you take this yeah i'm furs and wells i'm fat and i'm eating a steak and i'm drinking wine and i got a hot-ass girlfriend with a great ass and i'm like live your life buddy i support you in all of your endeavors us uh hosker wild they keep on Oscar wilds horse and wells I support you in all of your choices in life ever. You're the best to ever do it. How many people have OW is their initials, right? Right.

Mm-hmm. We know a little place in the American Far West, where Charlie Briggs chops up the finest prairie-fed beef and tastes. This is a lot of tripe. You know that. Is Orson Wells the straight, Oscar Wild? Is he straight? Question for the ages.

I think so. Maybe. Hmm. Anyway. Wait, art and AI, because this is a spicy meatball topic that I feel like I got, I had a bad, I thought it was a good hot take. People thought it was a bad hot take. So the thing people have been talking about with art and AI, there's one copyright aspect, which is you have to break copyright to take all the art that you need to build the model. Which I would argue is fair use.

Yeah. And I think copyright laws will be amended. Like, stay mad. Like, it's fair use. Yeah, probably. But the problem is that lives somewhere, and then people want open data sets for AI. So then you would have to open that. And would that also be a fair use, that's a little more dicey, because now you're sharing the copies you've made for research purposes, which does affect the fair use thing.

But also, it's the question of, are AI's copying work? Or are they copying a style? And if you're copying a style, can you copyright a style? So you could say like morally it's wrong to copy like Van Gogh's style. Is it? But I'm saying you can say that, but you can't say it's a violation of copyright because it isn't. Because you can't copyright an idea or a style yet. I mean, people have tried, but.

I mean, this is even ignoring should we have copyright. Like. Yeah, assuming we don't get rid of it soon. Yeah, like maybe I'm a bad. anarchist and like I don't think like intellectual property is it good as a concept but I do like the idea of like if we are going to live in a society because we live in a society where you might have to make a living off of selling something which I don't like then it maybe that should be protected for a certain amount of time but not the way it is now Disney fucking fucked

our our copyright system I'm very pro like copy wrong. types of statements and also like the creative commons. Creative Commons is great. But under our current copyright laws in the United States, which the Disney stuff is shit. I feel like most people haven't read copyright law. A lot of copyright law is how you get around copyright. To be honest, if you actually read copyright law. It's about like, okay, here's what copyright means and what it is. Here's all of the ways that you can legally get around this. And that's what the majority of like United States copyright law

is if you actually fucking read it, my dudes. I'm sorry, I'm a copyright nerd. I'm a terrible anarchist,

actually. I'm really bad at it. But yeah. It means a big part of your job eventually. I mean, it is so much a part of my job because of

having to buy pieces for ensembles to perform. Yeah, I'm going to mention that Corey Doctro just put out a book with Rebecca Giblin. I'm going to try my best.

Can we get Cory Doctor on the podcast? I'm going to try and at least get Rebecca on. Can we get Corey, though? They're pretty busy right now talking about it. But the book is about not so much how copyright is screwing over artists, but about more like market consolidation and market capture. And about payment schemes. And like, even if you left copyright in place, you could change contract law.

And it always comes back to contract law in my life. Law is so fucked, yeah. Like, whenever I was studying labor, I was like, oh, now I need to become an expert in contract law, apparently, because that's actually where it all goes. Like, so much of the, like, copyright law is bad stuff is actually contract law is bad. Yeah, and basically you can't, I can't remember what the main thesis was, but there was, there was something, it's a very simple fix in, like, state-level contract law that you could do to fix, like, a lot of these issues. And so... Yeah. Wait, what's the name of the Corey Doctoro book that you're talking about?

Showpoint capitalism. I just put the link in the notes. Okay. Oh. Okay. So, yeah, I've got it on audiobook. But the voice actor has a very deep voice and it's kind of distracting. Like in a sexy way?

It's just so deep. It makes your ears like vibrate and you're like, this is hard to listen to. Yeah, I'll tell you what's hard to listen to. I mean, look, if that's your thing, you'll enjoy this audio. book, but for me, I was just like, my ears are rumbling. Maybe I have to listen on shittier headphones, so it's more tinny. But yeah, like, art and AI and art forgery. Do I think the R.A.I. stuff, do I think it's in bad taste sometimes?

I think I'm about to get canceled. I largely don't think a lot of the RAI stuff right now is doing anything like illegal or morally bad or even like anything like that. It's because it's like douchebag right wing like accelerationists but in the right wing sense like bros obsessed with titties and not in the fun way who are who are doing this like Elon Musk NFT bros who are into AI art that are doing it that is causing such a stir because otherwise I don't see what the problem is besides people not understanding copyright law. I think the people who are making the best case against it right now are people who are looking forward to future problems, not so much what's happening now.

Yes, I agree with you on that. And so whenever I read someone saying like, look, this is where this is headed and that's why it's a problem, that's much more convincing to me than like open AI as a problem. I'm like, yeah, probably. Like, it will be a problem soon. But like if we don't like think about it. Yeah. I'm saying like, dolly many is not like. It's not. No. It's not a problem. It's not. It's really not.

But Open AI as an organization probably is a problem. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Like it reminds me of like, remember in that Anthony Bourdain documentary or something where they got an AI to read a thing he had written in like an email or a letter in his own voice and people lost their shit about it. people were like, this is disgusting, you know, this is an insult to his memory. He would hate this. And then other people were like, now hold on a minute. One, he's dead. And like we can talk about like memory of dead people and respecting that. Like, I feel like that might be another conversation. But then people are also bringing up like things Bordain had actually said and like attitudes towards it. And also like bringing up like some Herzog stuff, which I was like, all right, we're bringing Herzog into this. Okay. I agree. with it because I tend to agree with Herzog about like hyper reality or is it hyper something negative whatever of like is there actually a problem here or is it just that you're uncomfortable I feel like a lot of people aren't okay with being uncomfortable and they think

that if something is making them uncomfortable then it's inherently bad and something wrong must be happening now I'm not saying that there's not something wrong happening or there might be something wrong happening in the future. But I feel like anytime we're feeling uncomfortable with things, we might need to interrogate why it's making us uncomfortable before we jump to conclusions as to this is bad in the present and this is why, because I personally find it gross. How could Twitter exist, though? Yeah, it's like with like the art, like with art forgery and like special collections and shit, it's like, why does this make people uncomfortable? Yeah, at least learn how articulate that, right? Yeah. It's like what my therapist is.

tells me just because something upsets me doesn't mean someone did something wrong, you know. Doesn't mean I'm not allowed to be upset or that I'm wrong for being upset, but I have to look at like, did something bad actually happen? Did something bad actually happen here? Are you just uncomfortable? Yeah, and I think that goes back to the preservation thing you were saying earlier where people are afraid that we don't preserve things because they're uncomfortable with the idea of impermanence, I think, particularly being a... You're going to be boosted about this shit, my dudes. I was about to say, I think being in a Christian culture probably makes people not deal with impermanence very well. Yeah. And so you want, you know, you want the Bible to never change.

You want books to never change. Books embody ideas. Ideas are eternal. Bad ideas should not be in books, bringing it back to Emily Knox. So we've like... All come together, baby. We envue all of these things with meaning that doesn't really have. And I think that's why the John D. Fucksmith Collection is so alluring because it's like...

like this is going to become like a Magnus archive. We're going to like define and describe the John D. Fuxmith Institute. Can someone make us fan art of the John D. Fuck Smith Institute, please. It's just like a big cock on top of like Roman architecture. But it's like it's like a curvy cock and balls at the very pinnacle of like a Roman triangle shape at the top of the building. You know, I'm talking about courthouses look like that.

Yeah. It's just should this not be just the next art we can. We ever have a library punk merch? Sorry. I mean, make a sense of it. Yeah. I put it on a mug. Yeah.

Yeah. John D. Fuxmith Institute for Creative Arts and making your dick big. What was it getting your dick big? Make your dick look big. John D. Fuxmith Institute for Getting It in. No loads of you. All loads must be All loads must be deposited in the back.

We should let Roxy know that they can have a branch of the mandatory fuck cafe in the John D. Fuxman Institute for getting it in. The John D. Fuxman Institute for making it wet. I hope Orsa Wells is proud of us. Yeah. I think he would be. I hope he's listening.

Orson, my dude, my guy. Do they get podcasts in hell, you think? They must. Orson is like fucking three bitches at once in hell. Are you kidding me? He's having a blast. Oh, God. He's like drinking so much wine and eating so much rich food and fucking everyone and making

like incredible movies left and right. Like the king, best to ever do it. He was also so hot at any way. But, like, you've seen Orson Wells when he was, like, young, right? I've seen some of it. He looks very different without the beard. It's very hard to recognize him without the later in life beard. Orson Wells was a fucking babe.

Even when he was older and he shaved the beard, it took me a second. There was a scene where he had a shaved face. And I was like, is that? Who is that? That's the same fucking guy. Orson Wells could fucking get it. Hey, Orson, do you want the best of both worlds? Call me up, my dude.

Like, you can get it. You can have it, you can take it. A little cell phone telephone. Yeah. You can fucking have it, take it, get it, whatever you want. Let's talk. You can't be like a film nerd unless you want to fuck worse than else, I think. This is what I expect from this podcast.

Yes. This is why I never actually directly name who I am employed by on this podcast. I don't give a fuck. Plausible deniability. City works for the John D. Fucksmith's public library for getting it in. IT department is wild, let me tell you. I laugh like a witch. It's beautiful.

I laugh like the Vovic that we had in the Reddit question for one episode where they were trying not to be anti-Semitic. Did I pick that up from you? What? Laughing like a witch? No, how you said the title. The Vavich? The Vibch. I call it that and it irritates the shit out of my wife.

Yeah, because it's stylized with two V's the Vich. Every time they're like, it's the witch. It's just the witch. It's like, okay, it's funner to say the other way around. It's fun to say the Vuvich. I own the Vavich. Yeah, I said it on one episode. I don't remember what we were talking about though, but I was like the Vovich.

Now I know who to blame. It was one of us. Okay. I'm going to go fuck worse and Wells now. All right. How fun at hell. Good night.