A kopimist Walpurgis ritual, and a letter from Bill Drummond

This post can as well be in english, as it will mainly consist of a reposted letter from Bill Drummond. However, let’s first explain the context.

A few nights ago at April 30th, Piratbyrån (or The Bureau of Piracy) performed a very special Walpurgis Night ritual at the (arguably) highest mountain in Stockholm. It involved fire, music, book burning (of our own 2005 book Copy Me) and a communiqué, declaring the so-called “file-sharing debate” to be dead and buried.
Instead of talking about “file-sharing” as an isolated phenomenon, we will talk about the multiple ways of multiplicating files. Instead of talking about the rights or wrongs of copying, we will talk about good and poor ways of archiving, indexing, networking and copying. The communique explains why we must go on, in four points corresponding to four book burnings.

File-sharing has a potential to create meaning, community and context – a bigger potential than most other forms of reproduction. We want to keep talking about how that potential can be realized in the best manner possible, how cultural circulation can be organized and how the unleashed forces of the open archives can be used for more than stacking a pile of objects we care less and less about.
/…/
The files are already downloaded. The files are already uploaded. They’ve been going up and down and in and out in abundance. Instead of discussion how the forces of winter are going to sell snow to Eskimos, we want to talk about how to extract meaning from this abundance.

Four years ago, Piratbyrån more or less initiated a previously non-existing file-sharing debate in Sweden. Articles from the webpage were later printed in the book Copy Me, which came to be the only enduring and burnable document of a debate that took many important things to the surface, but must not stay at the same point any more.

The four main points of the communique are now up in English, as is a manuscript (in .txt) for the performance.
There are pictures on Flickr, and a short movie documentation:

Well, as you hear there’s music of The KLF. They were also specialists in the business of ending things, and I think our perspectives connect in pretty obvious ways. Some of the Piratbyrån people have also taken part in Bill Drummond‘s more recent project The 17, whiched also tried to go beyond the “music as content” deadlock in order to re-focus on the performative, contextual, and time-/space specific aspects of culture.
When noticed about Piratbyrån’s Walpurgis ritual, Bill soon responded, attaching another letter he’d written at the same evening. It’s powerful stuff:

AN INVITATION

A time has arrived where we can (in theory and almost in practise) listen to any recorded music, from the entire history of recorded music, wherever, whenever while doing whatever we want.

This has meant our relationship with music is rapidly and fundamentally changing faster than it has done for many decades.

This is good for numerous reasons.

But a by-product of this is, recorded music will no longer contain the meaning it once held for us. This will entail it no longer gives us what we need and desire from it. Once a music has lost it’s meaning it has no value.

Thus as we edge our way deeper into the 21st Century we will begin to want music that can not be listened to wherever, whenever while doing whatever. We will begin to seek out music that is both occasion and place specific, music that can never be merely a soundtrack. We will demand music where we are no longer just the consumers, unwitting or otherwise.

The era of recorded music is now passing and within the next decade it will begin to look and sound like a dated medium. Recorded music will be perceived as an art form very much of the 20th Century.

The above notions excite me. This excitement has brought about The17. The17 rejects all that the era of recorded music had to offer and attempts to embrace the unknown opportunities of what lies ahead.

Please accept my invitation to embrace the unknown opportunities of what lies ahead in whatever way excites you.

Bill Drummond
www.the17.org