GALLERI NICOLAI WALLNER

 

 

 

 

njalsgade 21 • building 15 • 2300 copenhagen s • denmark • phone:
+4532570970 • fax: +4532570971 • contact: nw@nicolaiwallner.com

 

 

 

there's something...

by Christian Schmidt-Rasmussen

There's something strangely psychedelic and occult about W.T.O. (World Trade Organisation)'s chapter on intellectual rights (the ownership of knowledge). It doesn't recognise collective ownership; that society or people can own something on a collective basis, it only recognise the individual. Apart from being unreasonable, it also has led to some confiscations of knowledge, which has quite a few perspectives which gives the stateless capitalism possibilities as to transcending linear time, and also it's attachment to capital. A large medical firm has patented ayvascha. Therefore now, the Ecuadorian shaman is prohibited the intake of ayvascha or to capitalise on the knowledge he's got about ayvascha except if he pays a fee. The plant has for quite a period of time been used as a kind of optic for collective knowledge. An incredibly important tool for co-ordination of knowledge about the forest, the fields about social interaction. A bit like confiscating Poul Nyrup, S¿ren Ryge Petersen and Hans Christian Andersen all at once. No matter what kind of rational arguments the firm may have, it, along with the confiscation of the Indian Temple tree, makes me glimpse further ambitions, for instance the conquest of the universe in a large-scale psychedelic war. (1996)