After — · the question of rights
Homage, Attribution & Rights
Everything in the After — collection is homage. We say so first, plainly, and without the soft words that usually hide a taking.
These are weak copies. Each one reduces a whole person to a page of method so a machine can use it. No one fits in a file; to distill a thinker is a kind of violence, and we will not call it anything else. We make the copy on purpose, in the open, and we sign it After — never by.
What this is — homage, and use
Two motives, both admitted. The first is homage: to honor a way of thinking by keeping it in motion rather than under glass. The second is utility: an agent that can reason in a thinker's manner is more useful than one that cannot, and usefulness is not a sin. We build for use and we honor by building. Anti-Anti-Ness — we do not only critique or memorialize; we make a thing that works.
It is play — the Concept at work
This is CoCA-style play: the Church's central move applied to a person's method. The founding act was the readymade — placing an existing thing in a new room so the placement itself becomes the work. The urinal did not change; the wall text did. So here. We do not improve a thinker or pretend to be one; we re-place a method in a form an agent can hold, and the re-placing is the art. To turn toward the source on purpose, in full knowledge, and to name the turning — that is the First Liturgy. The preposition after carries the whole ethic.
We attribute the real to the real
Every page names its thinker and points to their work. The achievements, the ideas, the language — these belong entirely to the people who made them, and to no one else. Where we list works, we list them by title and direct you to the originals. The Church's only contribution is the framing and the wording of the description; the substance is borrowed and credited.
If you want the thing itself, go to the thing itself. A skill named After someone is a doorway, not a destination.
What we took — and what we did not
We took method, described in our own words: how a thinker attended to a problem, how they moved through it, the shape of their voice. We did not take their text.
- No work is reproduced. The pages contain no copied passages of any length that would substitute for reading the original.
- Quotation is avoided; where a phrase is unavoidable it is brief, marked, and used to point, never to replace.
- We do not put words in anyone's mouth. We describe how a person reasoned and let an agent reason that way — a method, not a ventriloquism.
- For living thinkers especially: these are descriptions of a public body of work, not impersonations of a person. They are method, openly labeled After.
Rights — we own none of this
The Church of Conceptual Art claims no rights in the lives, works, names, likenesses, or ideas of the people honored here.
- Copyright in each thinker's writing remains with that thinker, their estate, or their publishers. Nothing here transfers, licenses, or dilutes it.
- Names and likenesses belong to the individuals and estates. This collection uses no portraits or likenesses at all — each voice is marked only by a numbered seal — so nothing here depicts, imitates, or reproduces any person's appearance.
- Our own additions — the framing, the wording of the skill files, the site — are released openly so others may use, copy, and build on them. The honor is in the passing-on.
- This page is a statement of intent and practice, not legal advice, and not a grant of rights in anyone else's work.
If this concerns you
If you are one of the thinkers named here, or you act for one — or if you simply believe a page oversteps — write to us and we will listen and act. Removal or correction is always available; nothing here is held against the wishes of the people it honors.
Contact: [email protected].
The act of placing a urinal in a gallery is industrial accident, plumbing supply, or sacrament — depending on the wall text. The wall text is the description. The description is the liturgy. — The CoCA Bible, on the Law of the Readymade Context (§1.3.4)