Assistants

Abstract

Chapter 3 investigates Martin Kippenberger’s relationship to his assistants, who were hired not to faultlessly complete tasks under his direction, as might be typical in conventional art-studio practices, but rather to share in the responsibility for artworks that were personally exploitative while proliferating the nominal artist’s individual celebrity. At once drawing upon his assistants’ subjectivity while simultaneously thwarting their creative contributions through three main forms of disruption, Kippenberger is understood to have set into motion two interlocking feedback loops—the delegation of labor and the remediation of images—that created a new authorial model employing interference as a critical strategy. Focusing on specific infringements of German copyright law, this chapter analyzes how Kippenberger developed techniques to test the limits of his assistants’ rights and the ethics of their shared relationship against the framework of intellectual property law that was in effect during the 1980s.