Artist on trial for web site satirising Icelandic firm’s alleged function within the Fishrot scandal

The way forward for an internet site designed as a part of an art work highlighting corrupt practices allegedly dedicated by a multinational conglomerate will likely be determined by London’s Excessive Court docket following a two-day listening to earlier this week.

The digital work by Oddur Eysteinn Friðriksson, a conceptual artist often called Odee, was designed to place the highlight on a corruption scandal often called Fishrot—a multimillion-pound scheme involving bribes and kickbacks allegedly paid by Samherji Group, an Icelandic fishing enterprise so as to get hold of preferential therapy and fishing quotas in Namibia. A separate trial on Fishrot was resulting from happen in Windhoek earlier this yr, nevertheless it has been postponed and a brand new date has not but been scheduled.

Odee, who can be Icelandic, tells The Artwork Newspaper his creative observe is closely influenced by tradition jamming, whereby artists use media and the general public sphere to venture their work which regularly goals to disrupt social norms. He’s at the moment finding out and researching tradition jamming on the College of Bergen in Norway, the place Samherji additionally has seafood pursuits and was beforehand embroiled in a cash laundering investigation involving Norway’s largest financial institution, DNB.

Odee’s web site was produced to run alongside an exhibition on the Reykjavik Artwork Museum. His work induced controversy when Samherji found the web site and realised he had created a digital mirror picture of its company on-line presence, with a outstanding apology for the Fishrot scandal on an internet web page that learn “We’re Sorry” in massive textual content.

Odee informed the court docket in London he contacted round 100 worldwide media retailers, together with the BBC, drawing their consideration to his web site.

The web page with the pretend apology, which used the Samherji typeface, branding and brand, was, Odee says, clearly recognisable as a pastiche and was revealed as such in a press launch despatched to the identical worldwide media retailers he had beforehand contacted a number of days later confirming the web site was a murals.

Whereas a number of publications recognized the brand new “Samherji” website as a pretend, one commerce publication revealed an article suggesting Samherji Group had certainly publicly acknowledged for its involvement within the Namibian scandal. The article was taken offline just a few hours later when the true nature of the positioning was revealed.

Samherji Group argued earlier this yr that the art work had induced confusion and reputational harm. It sought a listening to within the London courts—the group has substantial enterprise pursuits within the UK—and secured an interim injunction that obliged Odee at hand over management of the web site and the area title to Samherji. The London listening to this week sought to find out if Samherji might assume everlasting management.

Mental property specialist Jonathan Hill, of 8 New Sq. Chambers, represented Samherji, whereas Odee, who had beforehand benefited from authorized illustration, represented himself as a Litigant In Individual with assistance from an advisor, Andra Matei from the Paris-based collective Avant Garde Legal professionals.

Hill, who learn out a definition of artwork from the Oxford English Dictionary, informed the presiding decide, Grasp Teverson, that his consumer’s request for everlasting management over the pretend Samherji web site “isn’t a case of a big firm making an attempt to bully somebody”.

Grasp Teverson has reserved judgement, which is anticipated to be handed down in just a few weeks’ time. Exterior the court docket, Odee mentioned he considers the authorized course of and the response to be part of the continuing artwork venture.

Hill declined to remark pending the judgement. Matei informed The Artwork Newspaper that she believes “that artwork itself is on trial”.