Lets go to where this all began. Local Vancouver blogger “Hipster Designer” recently posted a eulogy on his blog for Vancouver Indie Drummer, Devon Clifford. Mr. Clifford essentially died on stage of a brain hemorrhage, but he died doing something he loved. However the Hipster Designers comments on the event may have seemed to some to be a little insensitive.
It’s safe to say that music is probably the most important part of a hipster designer’s life, after money, drugs, booze and sex. So today, we’d like to honour our fallen comrade, musician, Devon Clifford, who died on Friday during and all ages show. His frenetic drumming reflected his love of music as much as his love of cocaine and amphetamines.
He played for famous BC hipster band, You Say Party! We Say Die”
If that’s not ironic, we couldn’t tell you what is!
Here’s to you, Devon. Say hi to John and Keith for us!
I’m not sure exactly where the offence comes in. I doubt is the reference to Mr. Clifford joining the likes of John Bonham, or Keith Moon, I know if I was a drummer I would love to be placed on that pedestal. Surely it can’t be the reference to his band, and the whole event being ironic, because it was. Maybe it was people reading and thinking the Hipster Designer was linking Mr. Cliffords death to drugs. Seeing as the post came out before it became clear to most what the cause of death actually was, how is that wrong. I mean we’ve all done it, we’ve all thought someone died because of drugs, and the younger, and more famous, the more realistic the possibility. What were your initial thoughts on the death of Brittany Murphy? Your first thoughts of Heath Ledger? Did Devon Clifford die of drugs? Well no he didn’t, we now know it was a condition he had from birth. Did he do drugs? Nobody has said he hasn’t, so there is a possibility of that, given age, given social demographic, given a certain degree of rock stardom, most signs point to yes. Could that have played a part in his ultimate demise? I don’t know I’m not a doctor. What I do know is that the Hipster Designer never once said that Mr. Cliffords death, and drugs were related. Did he intend a link? I’m not sure, you would have to ask him, and reading the comments on his page, no one else has, they have only assumed.
The page has since been taken down. I’m not sure who took it down, but I doubt it was the Hipster Designer. I don’t think it was taken down for the content, or the wording of the post. Perhaps it was for the the threats of Harassment, or the threats of Violence posted by one commenter. In all reality I think it was the photograph used, which brings me to my next point.
Is something like this acceptable, is it fair dealing? (the photograph would have been here, but Miss Garden forced tumblr to take it down.) The photographer Fiona Garden, asked that the photo be taken down, along with some of the more vocal commenters. However these commenters have all (to my knowledge) attended art school, which means they have all learned of appropriation art, and in fact they themselves have used photos that other people took for their own interests in a public forum without giving credit to the original photographer. They seem to think appropriation is okay when it suits them, but not when it infringes on their own work. What is so different here from a work by Richard Prince. The photo is altered from the original. It’s being used in an editorial or critical setting. Sure perhaps it’s a little cynical, perhaps it’s a little insensitive, but the people arguing for it to be taken down, should be arguing for it to stay up. It’s their rights to freedom of expression that they are ultimately hindering, a point that one of the commenters seems to fight for in his own work through photos of graffiti removal. What we have here is a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
What bothers me the most is that through all the venting and complaining, through all the name calling, the challenges to bare-fisted dust-ups in blood alley, the call to arms that the hipster designer be socially ostracized, even the most outspoken of opponents could not even muster up any sort of real intelligent addition to the broader discourse. All that Sean Orr has achieved is to out someone who chose to remain anonymous through all his posts. Whether you want to see the Hipster Designer as being the bad guy, Mr. Clifford is most Certainly the good guy, but where does that leave Mr. Orr, perhaps worse given that his solution seems to encourage illegal behaviour. But thats just my two cents.
