“Well I get an email submitted to Ubu anonymously– it says, “Here is a site you might like to look at. It’s called Understanding Duchamp dot-com.” Anything that is sent I look at, although most things don’t get on the site. I’m hit very hard with submissions, but I look at everything–everything is viewed or listened to. And this is a nice little site about Marcel Duchamp done well in flash. I wrote him a little note back and say, “Hey man thanks that’s cool. Good luck thanks for doing that.”

“He sends me another note that says, “Well if you like that you might like this.” And he gives me the URL to Aspen Magazine that is online and password protected. And I look at it and go, “Oh my god!” I write him back and say, “What is up with this? This is absolutely incredible!” He said, “Well, I spent years digitizing the entire contents of the Aspen Magazine boxes and put them online. But what happened when I put Understanding Duchamp online I got a legal threat from the estate of Duchamp. Who evidently have a copyright on his name, and used Duchamp in the URL, and they really wanted to shut me down. I figured if that was the problem I had with Duchamp imagine the problem I’m going to have with six hundred other artists when I put them up on the Web.” And I said to him, “Look you know what, why don’t you give it to me. I’ll take the risk, no problem, I know how to deal with cease and desists. You know I deal with them all the time.” I explained the mission, “It’s usually okay.” Whatever, whatever, whatever…

“So he gives me the whole thing and it’s absolutely incredible. And on Aspen Magazine there are fucking files by John Lennon and Yoko Ono! We have never heard from Lennon and Ono’s people. And those real–you know who has more–but again this is the avant-garde, it’s John Lennon’s radio play, it’s him twittering a dial and Yoko singing. Then the New York Times wrote up Aspen Magazine and they said to Merce Cunningham, who has an mp3 interview on there from one of the old records; “So Merce Cunningham, how do you feel about the fact that you were not asked permission but your work is up on UbuWeb?” And Merce said, “The educational value of having my words up on UbuWeb far outweighs any financial remuneration. I am thrilled that it’s there.” So that is the attitude, that’s the attitude. That is basically what Robert Wilson was saying as well. Now of course we have people like that coming to us that want their works up there. The Robert Wilson guy said, “Hey you know we’d like to talk to you about putting more stuff up.” And after this letter. [laughs] They understand the value of this site.”

Kenneth Goldsmith of the awesome UBUWEB interviewed at Archinet.