An independent research space concerning contemporary issues. This is neither a formal academic publication nor an opinion column: it is analytical work supported by data on topics I consider relevant and worthy of rigorous examination, even when they fall outside specialised academic circuits. Open to co-authorship. Proposals to: hola@juanesteban.art
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Entries: 246
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They may be right
There is a sentence, within a 2024 United States federal court ruling, that encapsulates the chasm which may open between the just and the legal more effectively than any essay. A court, reviewing the claim of a Jewish collector’s heirs regarding a painting which, according to the account accepted for procedural purposes,...
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Doubt is a choice
En octubre de 1940, cinco meses después de la invasión alemana de los Países Bajos, se subastó en Ámsterdam «Mujer con abanico», un cuadro cubista de Jean Metzinger pintado en 1913. Había pertenecido a Emanuel Lewenstein, coleccionista judío que dirigía una fábrica de máquinas de coser. Nadie sabe hoy quién lo puso a la venta…
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The needle in the haystack: how scale dilutes individual attribution
A painter discovers that an artificial intelligence model was trained on their paintings, without permission or remuneration, and initiates legal action. Should a portion of their claim depend upon linking a generated image to their specific works, they may face an exceptionally arduous task: demonstrating that those works causally influenced what the machine produced...
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Reserving your rights in a language the machine understands
A German photographer, Robert Kneschke, brought a claim against the organisation LAION regarding the downloading of one of his photographs during the creation of an image-text pair dataset usable for training generative artificial intelligence systems. In December 2025, the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court of Hamburg dismissed his appeal. Among the grounds for the...
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Málaga Museums: the contract is traceable, but working conditions are not
Externalización, mediación y trabajo cultural. De la serie iniciada en «Contra la vida optimizada». La Administración ha publicado cuánto paga por la gestión de visitantes de los museos municipales de Málaga y cuánto previó destinar a sus servicios de mediación y educación. Con la documentación recuperada no puede reconstruirse cuántas personas prestan esos servicios, qué…
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Who decides culture in Málaga's towns and villages
Territorio, decisión y transparencia en la política cultural provincial. De la serie iniciada en «Contra la vida optimizada». Advertencia inicial Este texto se construye solo con información pública accesible: la publicada por la Diputación de Málaga en su web y la localizada en la Base de Datos Nacional de Subvenciones y el Boletín Oficial de…
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Warhol v. Goldsmith: the same image, two uses
In 1984, Andy Warhol used a photographic portrait of Prince, taken by Lynn Goldsmith, to create the Prince series. Thirty-two years later, following the musician's death, the foundation managing his estate granted Condé Nast a licence to use one of those works, Orange Prince, on the cover of a…
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Being on the internet is not being seen: ‘Banana and Orange’ and ‘Comedian’
En 2001 Joe Morford publicó «Banana and Orange»: dos paneles verdes, una naranja arriba, un plátano abajo, sujetos con cinta adhesiva. En 2019, Maurizio Cattelan presentó «Comedian»: un plátano pegado a la pared con una tira de cinta. En enero de 2021, Morford demandó a Cattelan por infracción de derechos de autor ante un tribunal…
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Banksy before the EUIPO: two readings of anonymity
In February 2014, Pest Control Office, the company holding the trademarks linked to Banksy, applied for the image of the flower thrower as a European Union trademark: the figure of a protester throwing a bouquet. On 14 September 2020, the Cancellation Division of the European Union Intellectual Property Office…
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The Druet-Cattelan case: the question the court did not answer
Several of Maurizio Cattelan's most celebrated works feature wax figures at their centre that were modelled by another man. The figure of John Paul II lying beneath a meteorite, the kneeling child with the face of Hitler, Cattelan himself suspended from a coat hanger: those effigies were modelled by Daniel Druet, a French sculptor at the…