How to defend the access to knowledge in the current intellectual property regime? Interfacing the law is an attempt to experiment with and to openly discuss shadow libraries, piratical text collections and other forms of disobedient sharing. Interfacing each in their own way with legal and political frameworks, we want to consider those vibrant practices as experiments with the social contracts that link libraries, librarians, readers and books.

After a welcome by the Nieuwe Instituut library staff, students from the XPUB program present four projects developed in the context of Interfacing the law. Followed by a discussion with Aymeric Mansoux and Séverine Dusollier. Moderation: Femke Snelting

Projects: Clàudia Giralt Monedero, Franc González, Giulia de Giovanelli, Max Franklin, Nadine Rotem-Stibbe, Kimmy Spreeuwenberg, Margreet Riphagen, Emily Buzzo, Karina Dukalska

Séverine Dusollier is doctor in Law and professor at SciencesPo, Paris. She has carried out research in several European and national projects, namely for the Belgian Government, WIPO, the Council of Europe, UNESCO, the European Commission and Parliament. Her current research relates to intellectual property, copyright and IP limitations, the public domain and the commons.

Aymeric Mansoux is an artist, musician and media researcher. His research deals with the defining, constraining and confining of cultural freedom in the context of network based practices. He is currently a PhD candidate at the Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London on the creative misunderstandings between art, politics and the law within free culture.

Interfacing the law is developed by Constant for the Experimental Publishing programme at Piet Zwart Media Design (Rotterdam), in collaboration with Memory of the World. The project is part of Society for Library Access (SLAX), a coalition of people and organisations that want to publicly address the antagonism between the access to knowledge and the current copyright regime.

Recording of the discussion: http://sound.constantvzw.org/interfacingthelaw/mansoux-dusollier.ogg