"In 1996, during the relatively early days of the web, Kenneth Goldsmith created UbuWeb to post hard-to-find works of concrete poetry. What started out as a site to share works from a relatively obscure literary movement grew into an essential archive of twentieth- and twenty-first-century avant-garde and experimental literature, film, and music. Visitors around the world now have access to both obscure and canonical works, from artists such as Kara Walker, Yoko Ono, Pauline Oliveros, Samuel Beckett, Marcel Duchamp, Cecil Taylor, Glenn Ligon, William Burroughs, and Jean-Luc Godard. In Duchamp Is My Lawyer, Goldsmith tells the history of UbuWeb, explaining the motivations behind its creation and how artistic works are archived, consumed, and distributed online. Based on his own experiences and interviews with a variety of experts, Goldsmith describes how the site navigates issues of copyright and the ways that UbuWeb challenges familiar configurations and histories of the avant-garde. The book also portrays the growth of other "shadow libraries" and includes a section on the artists whose works reflect the aims, aesthetics, and ethos of UbuWeb. Goldsmith concludes by contrasting UbuWeb's commitment to the free-culture movement and giving access to a wide range of artistic works with today's gatekeepers of algorithmic culture, such as Netflix, Amazon, and Spotify"--

"In 1909 Francisco Ferrer founded La Escuela Moderna with a curriculum based on the natural sciences and moral rationalism, freed of all religious dogma and political bias. Although students received systematic instruction, there were no prizes for scholarship, no marks or examinations, indeed no atmosphere of competition, coercion, or humiliation. The classes, in Ferrer's words, were guided by the "principle of solidarity and equality." For this he was murdered in 1909 by the combined forces of Spain's ruling Church and State." "Outraged by Ferrer's execution and influenced by his teaching methods, anarchists, artists, and educators joined forces to carry on his work. Between 1910 and 1960 anarchists across the United States established more than twenty schools where children might study in an atmosphere of freedom and self-reliance in contrast to the formality and discipline of the traditional classroom. These "Modern Schools" sought to abolish all forms of authority, political and economic as well as educational, and to usher in a new society based on the voluntary cooperation of free individuals. Their object, during an era of war, social ferment, and government repression, was to create not only a new type of school, but also a new culture, a new life, a new world." "Among the participants in the Modern School Movement were anarchists Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, feminist Margaret Sanger, authors Will and Ariel Durant, and groundbreaking artists Robert Henri, George Bellows, and Man Ray. Based on extensive interviews with former pupils and teachers, this work is an investigation into the potential of educational alternatives."--BOOK JACKET.