Iceland’s biggest fishing company is suing an art student at London’s high court for spoofing its website and issuing a fake public apology over a high profile corruption scandal.
The costly lawsuit, which will be heard this month, is feared by the student’s supporters to have a potentially chilling effect on artists engaging critically with large corporations, while also raising questions about the UK’s status as the go-to litigation jurisdiction for powerful businesses.
Oddur Eysteinn Friðriksson, a 41-year-old Icelandic artist and MA fine arts student at the University of Bergen who goes under the moniker Odee, describes his practice as “culture jamming”, a term used for artists such as US duo The Yes Men or British street artist Banksy, who impersonate brands or companies to draw attention to corporate malpractices.
For his 2023 work, We’re Sorry, Odee copied the corporate identity of Samherji, one of Europe’s largest fishing and fish processing companies, and on 11 May 2023 launched the website samherji.co.uk, containing a statement entitled: “Samherji Apologizes, Pledges Restitution and Cooperation with Authorities.”
The pretend apology related to a corruption scandal known as the “Fishrot files”: in 2019, documents released by WikiLeaks and investigations by Icelandic media suggested Samherji had allegedly bribed officials in Namibia in exchange for profitable trawling rights.
Two Namibian ministers and Samherji’s chief executive resigned in the wake of the scandal. In a genuine 2021 apology, the fishing company conceded that “mistakes were made”, while strongly denying allegations of bribery. Investigations are ongoing in both Namibia and Iceland.
In addition to the website, Odee sent out a press releases from [email protected] to 100 media outlets in 20 countries that acknowledged “the severity of the allegations against us, which include corruption, bribery, and neocolonialism”.
A 10-metre mural containing the same text went on display a week later at Reykjavík’s contemporary art museum, as part of Friðriksson’s BA graduation show.
“Icelanders have been very critical of imperialist tactics throughout history. So to have this company drag the reputation of the country through the mud and put this huge stain on our history was just appalling,” Odee told the Observer. “An apology with promise of restitution and cooperation with the authorities is the only thing that can actually settle this matter”.
Samherji reacted swiftly, putting out a statement identifying the spoof before it was picked up as genuine by the media, and filing an application for an interim injunction that led to the website being taken down on 24 May last year.
Around the same time Samherji filed a complaint in London accusing Odee of trademark infringement and malicious falsehood and seeking damages, which will be heard at the high court on 25 September.
In preliminary proceedings, lawyers representing Samherji have insisted they are not complaining about the allegations per se but “the way the allegations are made”, and that the like-for-like impersonation of their corporate identity meant Odee’s “culture jamming” intervention did not qualify as parody.
The case is reminiscent of a landmark lawsuit which ended litigation between French fashion house Louis Vuitton and the Danish-Dutch artist Nadia Plesner over her use of images of its luxury bags in her work. The court eventually ruled in her favour, which allowed her to exhibit her painting Darfurnica, which dealt with the Darfur genocide.
Plesner, as well as The Yes Men, have written letters of support for the Icelandic artist.
One factor that distinguishes the two cases is that Louis Vuitton sued in the Netherlands, where there was negative media attention.
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Another is that Plesner managed to sell her work for $45,000. Odee, meanwhile, said that though he has received offers for We’re Sorry, he would not sell it as a matter of principle.
In preliminary hearings, the high court judge initially questioned whether “Iceland is not the better place for this sort of issue to be ventilated”, though later appeared satisfied with the prosecution’s argument that the spoofed website’s co.uk suffix meant it was targeted at the UK.
Andra Matei, a Paris-based free speech lawyer whose legal NGO Avant Garde Lawyers has been supporting Odee in the case, suggested that comparatively high legal fees in the UK also meant a London-set lawsuit would lend a natural advantage to a big corporation such as Samherji.
The company did not respond to a question from the Observer asking to explain why it was suing the artist under English jurisdiction.
Odee said he had so far raised more than 33,000 Norwegian krone (£2,350) via a crowdfunding scheme, but would need about 150,000 NOK to defend himself at this point.
He said he had rejected two offers for a settlement since it would have hinged on him destroying the artwork and never publicly talk about it in the future. He added: “I would never settle with Samherji, I believe that freedom of speech will prevail.”
“We want Odee to have his day in court,” Matei told the Observer. “How important is it for us that artists get to express themselves freely and amplify important questions on issues like corruption and injustice? These are conversations we need to be having as a society.”
Odee was previously threatened with legal action by the now defunct Icelandic low-budget airline WOW Air, after launching a spoof new airline with the similar-looking name MOM Air, which charged passengers for toilet paper, soap and life jackets.
“Culture jamming is artistic jiu jitsu,” he said. “The more force someone applies to silence it, the harder they tend to fall.”
