Entering the words ‘Florian Waldvogel’ into a Google search, the first listed result is an open letter entitled ‘Intellectual theft as a curatorial method‘. It is the attempt to reproduce the well known ‘miserable failure’ google bomb that exploded damaging theGeorge Bush google presence. In this case the ‘victim’ is Florian Waldogel, one of the curators of the exhibition ‘Just Do It – The Subversion of Signs from Marcel Duchamp to Prada Meinhof’ made at Lentos Museum in Linz, better known as one of the Manifesta 6 curators. According to Arns, the curators abused of the concepts of ‘culture jamming’ and ‘subversion of signs’ publishing a catalogue in which none of the authors of the texts has been credited. The publication is then sold violating copyright laws. Even if the contributors are listed in the ‘Thanks’ section, they are removed from the economic value chain. In her open letter Arns proposes to donate all the money made from this book sales and curators’ honorarium, to make the text a freely downloadable PDF and to anonymize the curators on all the related documents. If it is true that the subject of the exhibition focuses on the appropriation as a practice to subvert the authority of large corporations, it doesn’t allow plagiarism (in the most basic sense) and exploitation. The Inke Arns answer is the best reply to a dishonest strategy that damages the practices that claims to promote or, at least, to ‘cure’.

Valentina Culatti