By Ben Schwartz

Over the last few decades, the term “bootlegging”—a practice once relegated to smugglers and copyright infringers—has become understood as a creative act.

Debates about homage, appropriation and theft, already common in the art world, are now being held in the spheres of corporate branding, social media and the creative industry as a whole. Today, bootlegging has become an aesthetic in and of itself, influencing everything from underground record labels and DIY T-shirts to publishing ideologies and acts of high fashion détournement.

Unlicensed, a project by Ben Schwartz, contains 21 interviews with a range of creative practitioners on the topic of bootlegging. Some of these interviews were originally published on the Gradient, the design blog of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, where Schwartz began his research on bootlegging. These conversations investigate bootlegging’s creative and critical potential, and explore new ways it can be deployed in order to thrive as an impactful cultural force.

Includes interviews with A March Issue (Line Arngaard & Sonia Oet), Babak Radboy, Clara Balaguer & Czar Kristoff, BLESS (Desiree Heiss & Ines Kaag), Boot Boyz Biz, Akinola Davies Jr, Eric Doeringer, Experimental Jetset (Marieke Stolk, Erwin Brinkers, Danny van den Dungen), Elisa van Joolen, Hassan Kurbanbaev, Urs Lehni & Olivier Lebrun, Jonathan Monk, Matt Olson, Online Ceramics (Elijah Funk & Alix Ross), Mark Owens, Printed Matter (Jordan Nassar & Christopher Schulz), Nat Pyper, Hassan Rahim, Shanzhai Lyric, SHIRT, Oana Stanescu

Author Ben Schwartz (born 1988) is a graphic designer and editor based in New York. He collaborates with several graphic design studios in the cultural sector across a variety of media. From 2016 to 2018 he served as a Graphic Design Fellow at the Walker Art Center.

Edited by Meg Miller

Designed by Ben Schwartz
Creative Director, Source Type: Laurenz Brunner

Published by Valiz and Source Type, 2024

Softcover, 432 pages, b&w, 4.5 × 7. 1 inches

ISBN: 978-9-49-324629-4