Leida

The history of design and art is not only a history of originals. The original is made possible by a constant field of tension with its copy. Although the relationship between a copy and the original is irreconcilable – the original is stripped of copying, culturally institutionalised and legitimised by copyright – they mutually affect each other.

If the original appears, through its hard-earned “aura”, as if it has nothing to hide, a copy tends to conceal both what it is and how it came to be – especially when copying has not been carried out to increase accessibility, for learning a technique, for facilitating artistic explorations of form, for preserving the original, or for challenging its supremacy. Even then, copying often remains unacknowledged.

Beyond the more or less hidden manifestations of copying, it lacks a history of its own. In his book Bootlegging as Creative Practice, Ben Schwartz writes about creative bootlegging, noting that because of its ‘existence underground and resistance to any clear definition, it remains impossible to compile anything close to a comprehensive chronology of it’, and furthermore, the borders between ‘related gestures such as “appropriation,” “copying,” “pirating,” “sampling,” and “remixing”’ become blurry as well. While the original bursts with confidence, it remains unclear how and even whether to discuss the copy. A copy is a bootleg that silently changes its owners.

The 8th issue of Leida, Copy Work, brings together stories of different times, cultures and geographical contexts. The focus is on copying as a way of production, adaptation and appropriation: from answering the needs of the consumer and exploiting nature and cultures, to virtual environments, new technologies, communal practices, and aesthetic methods shaped by repressive conditions.

The cover image, selected by Jordan Weaver, a master’s student in the graphic design department at the Estonian Academy of Arts, explores the idea of the copy through biological duplication, synchronised poses, matching handmade costumes, repeated patterns and choreography learned through imitation. Leida’s graphic designers Fernanda Saval and Haron Barashed bind the cover design and the issue’s central topics into a coherent visual whole.

The issue opens with design historian and curator Heng Zhi’s interview, where she talks to Taavi Hallimäe about the influence that Chinese producers have on the Global South, connecting this both to the practice of learning by launching a product on the market, as well as to the shanzhai copy culture between Western companies and Chinese factories that still recently captivated the attention of many designers. Designer Ott Metusala draws from archival materials, and in his visual essay, he introduces modes of seeing centred around lamp design sketches by designer Kirsti Metusala for the offices of the Kremlin subsequently produced by the USSR Experimental Plant Estoplast.

Using Soviet Lithuanian graphic design as an example, graphic designer Nerijus Rimkus describes the translations of Western design aesthetics across the Iron Curtain despite technological and cultural isolation. Designer Muj Abdulzade takes a critical look at the visual identity of the 1968 México Olympic Games, which mixed pictograms from the Nazi Germany Olympics with geometric patterns used in Mexican cultural heritage.

The essay by design historian Triin Jerlei dives into science and digital fiction, looking for links between the opportunities and restrictions of augmented reality and the real-life actions of big tech companies. In an interview with Justin Zhuang, architect Immanuel Koh describes his project that, through using artificial intelligence and a monobloc chair, investigates new ways of translating two-dimensional images into physical objects. Graphic designer Rita Davis introduces the annual festival of “Bumba Meu Boi”, deeply ingrained in Brazilian culture, focusing on its months-long preparations and the operational logic of preparing for the festivities anew every year.

The article by designer Vitali Valtanen rethinks human-centric design practice, pointing out design’s historically exploitative influence on nonhuman animals, who in design processes are systematically reduced to mere material. Sergio Dávila, who works at the intersection of urban studies and bio design, introduces the reader to mimicry as a play between species, which, rather than simply copying, creates a space for interpretation and meaning-making. The issue Copy Work ends with artist Mia Tamme’s story, partly based on archival materials and using fiction as a method, about Malle, an Avinurme rug-maker, whose creative work depended on materials sourced from the Narva Kreenholm textile factory.

A copy is an effective conversation starter. There are many reasons for this – those of practical accessibility and efficiency, but also intrinsic human curiosity, a need to mimic our inspirations, shame, the feeling of inferiority when encountering the original, and the hope of achieving wealth with minimal cost. A copy that disassembles the original, to then reassemble it, sometimes in a different form, does not emerge out of nothingness. Copying always starts with learning the operational logic of the original (or a previous copy). Even if this process is often so automatic that the traces of copying remain unseen, copies nevertheless run through our current era in an all-encompassing flow.