Terms and Conditions: “Monopoly, Monopsony and Fear: The Legal Clusterf*ck of Images”, a presentation by Maryam Jafri, April 1, 2025, 6.30 pm, Berlin Artistic Research Programme, Uferstr. 13

Monopoly, Monopsony and Fear: The Legal Clusterf*ck of Images

April 1, 2025, 6.30 pm, at Berlin Artistic Research Programme, Uferstr. 13, 13357 Berlin

Invited in the framwork of HaFI’s “Terms and Conditions. The Legal Form of Images”, Maryam Jafri will present several works that situate contemporary image culture at the intersection of art, law and ethics. Jafri’s talk will address a range of topics including the role of originality, artist labor and copyright in our culture of sampling and remixing, the expectation that artists must shoulder any legal risk on their own, the status of the archive as a visual commons and the enclosure of that commons by commercial image banks via digitization and networked distribution. The increasing entanglement of art and artists with the law is occurring during a time when the status of the legal has never been more precarious, given the far right’s aim to nullify, hollow out, or simply abolish the judicial apparatus altogether as part of its ongoing evisceration of the postwar liberal democratic order.

Followed by a conversation with Tom Holert (HaFI) and the audience.

Maryam Jafri is an artist working across diverse media including photography, video, installation, and sculpture, with a specific interest in questioning the cultural and visual representation of history, technology and economy, often through a global and postcolonial lens. She holds a BA in English & American Literature from Brown University, an MA from NYU/Tisch School of The Arts and is a graduate of the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. https://www.maryamjafri.net/