:MENTALKLINIK-03. [COPY]-İSTANBUL2003
COPY-RIGHT / COPY-LEFT
:MENTALKLINIK SPACE

ALİ AKAY, MARCH 2003
Independent Curator / Philosopher

If we consider 'copy', working as a chain of singularity and for today if we agree to Leibniz who claims that every new series will bring forth a new singularity, the thing which is going to be told is to suggest many potentialities, ideas existing before individuality will follow their own proper line and also in every chain of singularity there could be a one-sided individuality. Ideas become current in types and in sections by connecting to this field of individualization. Therefore the types and the sections present us the materials being used while creating a work and the pieces of new inventions. Every kind of material will create the relationships of difference with others; but how will the singularities which are going to constitute the process of individuality work when this material or these forms are copied? If to constitute singularity means to say the differentiation of a series from another series, as at the situation of 'copy' in arts, also the live cells copied by cloning will constitute difference from a series to another series. As the differences between genes and species occur, how will singularity distinguish itself from the other? What will happen when the series of individualities which have the meaning of to constitute a series as much as material problem are copied? Will the same individuality be able to occur? Or will the differences from the copies of the same gene continue reproduction?

We can think of the answers for these questions in an argument which Henri Atlan sets forth. According to Atlan, the nucleus of the cells of adults can be transferred into the enucleated ovule. Thus, in laboratory it is possible to create, in vitro, embryo cells. As these taken ones are put into uterus, a pre-natal or childbirth will not happen. This is not a perfect clonage but it will be the copies made of the origins of the cells. It will be possible to achieve medical progresses by obtaining the tissues and the cell lines genetically same in human being. In that case according to Atlan's declaration in Le Monde (07.01.2002), there is a cloning which is not similar to create 'Dolly' and this is ethically correct as well. This is a process which belongs to body more than cloned mammals should be called as the somatic nucleus transfer. Genetically it is possible to do researches which will be able to cure the ailments of the patients. The tissues or the cell lines taken from the origin cells and planted will be able to be realized on human being.

In that case cloning is not only the creating of human being or animal, but also it will be the name of a process which will be good for being realized of processes which will provide the possibilities of re-birth of illnesses and disappeared cells due to the changing of a tissue. That means we are talking about a new evaluation period. This will have a similar structure to the medical re-evaluation of the human replacing God. This also means that we are coming closer to what Nietzsche meant when he said that with the death of God the human figure also must disappear and that we are beginning to enter a new type of evaluation which is inhuman with the cyborg culture.

This human is rather than a nihilist Dostoyevskian suicide human, interested in the world of Nietzsche which mixes with Dostoyevsky a lot. Being copied, in that context is not a nihilism; but it will be the name of the culture of creating a new value. The subject under discussion is the changing of only "cyborg culture" and as Gilles Deleuze has suggested before is the changing of power relationships of human being. Now the thing being talked of is that the resultant of human being and human being consisting of the power relationships of 19th and 20th centuries with machines. It is neither a fiction; nor an utopia which belongs to the future. The only thing which is discussed is nothing than a breaking of human, called as the last pasteur by Nietzsche with the ethics of new values.

This ethical breaking has carried the technological reflection of the community culture of 1968 with itself. At the beginning of the year of 1970, when Richard Stallman have started his career at the laboratory of artificial intelligence at MIT, he encounters with the problem an indecipherable software code. Like all hackers he complains not to figure out a source code of Xerox, as well and when he wanted this source code from a researcher friend of him; the copyright agreement which had been made with Xenox furiates Stallman. He develops a new free software for the community by leaving laboratory: a new agreement called GNU becomes the founding of the Free Software Foundation in October 1985. In conclusion, the copy-left system is opposed the copyright system and by being involved to the free circulation of the source code, it is put forward the right of using and even the right of modification and distribution, as long as everyone lets this source code. This corresponds to a re-modified organizing as a part of the new formation of the new economy of the flexible capitalism and by deterritorializing the source code.*

Cloning interests in pharmacology as much as bio-genetic. Recently, as the turning towards of disappearing of Africa by being destroyed with AIDS, the number of destroyed people because of AIDS has been increasing. Without accepting the patent rights of the international pharmaceutical companies, drugs with a new anti-copyright movement, South Africa is producing cheap medicine and providing these to the destroyed people. In this situation because of the rights of property and patent, the international companies try to send South Africa to the court and to make this an international case. As Richard Stallman calls our attention, here the "bio-piracy" stands like an alternative approach. However as the writer mentions, the issue of "giving rights" is instead of restricting the existence of the biological monopolies in the new situation of capitalism which it becomes different now, it makes new rights to appear. The "bio-pirate" approach means to give and to deliver some rights of the pharmaceutical firms and bio-technological companies under the monopoly of trans-national capital to other people but in the same time in reply of the genes taken from the people and the plants of the south and east countries containing gene differences, it requires these bio-technology companies to pay back.** In this meaning copy corresponds to a musical, visual and a plastic value transformation. This transformations relevant to the environment which is the product of our humane environment design. Therefore to be re-evaluated will certainly serve a new possibility of analysis to the transformation of the capitalistic world.

*In the 90s, a Finnish researcher Linus Torvalds establishes Linux system. This corresponds to the period of internet distribution and usage. In this distribution, the importance of internet and free software has appeared. Thanks to this, the users and the transformaters start to become widespread to the international area and all the occupations. This free distribution was like the discussion of public property and private property which are discussed at the end of the 18th century mid 19th. While the system in 1793, which Condecet and Siyes were developed in France, recognized the rights of the author as the property right. It also aimed to control, who the authors of erotical and pornographic novels are. The making of an issue of a copyright to prevent the prohibited books conveyed by the junkmen to the people, which is also known as Colportage literature corresponds to the system, which Foucault called "bio-political", and envisaged as "discipline society" before.

**R. Stallman, "Biopirates ou biocorsaire?" Multitude, No:1 2000. Here, Stallman talks about the truth of non-presence of the different characters of genes everywhere.

 

curator: yasemin baydar, birol demir
editor: ali akay
participants: yazbukey, aziz sarıyer, derin sarıyer, eren pultar, ayşe erkmen, murat avcı,
giray pultar, ufuk kayserilioğlu, emi kayserilioğlu, mehmet irdel, ozan adam, gülizar çepeoğlu,
aysun pelvan, dilek winchester, aykut erdoğan, ethem özgüven, emre doğru, yasemin baydar, birol demir
assistants: kerem akıllıoğlu, kerem sürmelihindi, nusret polat
supported by: wall, netone, sony, mimeray, jotun, first, stil matbaacılık, timeout, 2M,
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