Forgery, Fakery, Fraud

German physicist Georg Christoph Lichtenberg once said, “The most dangerous of all falsehoods is a slightly distorted truth.” In our multimedia–driven society, where photographic and video evidence enjoys an epistemologically unique status, this observation is exceedingly ominous.

In search of specific national traditions nineteenth-century artists and scholars did not shy of manipulating texts and objects or even outright manufacturing them. The essays edited by János Bak, Patrick Geary and Gábor Klaniczay explore the various artifacts from outright forgeries to fruits of poetic phantasy, while also discussing the volatile notion of authenticity and the multiple claims for it in the age.

It. Falso; Fr. Contrefaçon; Germ. Fälschung, Span. Falsificación. The origin of the word is unknown, although it is attested in English criminal slang by the end of the 18 th century with roughly its modern meaning. The term possibly derives from the German fegen (or Dutch vegen), meaning "to polish", "to

Focusing on the account book of the MP and antiquary Sir Edward Dering (1598–1644), which covers the decade of his life in which he came of age, was knighted, and embarked on an ambitious political and courtly career, this article argues that his account book was a space in which Dering recorded momentous life events and meditated upon his purchases. Dering reveled in his attire, spending a great deal of money on it, as well as taking the time to record each element of its construction and decorative design in minute detail. Purchasing luxury goods – particularly clothing – was an important way for an ambitious politician to express his social, emotional and political links to patrons, and to show his suitability for promotion. While he begins the account book in 1619 by chastising himself for spending too much in a “prodigal year,” by the end of the account book in 1628, Dering seems content to buy expensive goods, including a costly linen damask tablecloth depicting the story of the prodigal son. This article traces Dering’s acquisition of luxury goods at home in Kent, in London and overseas, and places him in relation to contemporary discourses of luxury and prodigality. It argues that Dering’s consumption of luxury goods was part of a wider project of self-definition, which included having his portrait painted, and even forging his family history.

The paper deals with some linguistic aspects of the spread of fake news in social media communication, an issue which is connected to the sociological concept of post truth and to its impact, among other things, on political propaganda. Following the observation of some major trends in texts published on social media platforms in Italy and in the use of a selected group of lexical items, a possible connection between specific linguistic instruments and the general tendency to post truth is then highlighted and briefly described.

We do not propose to simply expand old definitions of academic fraud to make room for post-production manipulations. Nor do we suggest that they are a lesser evil than traditional misconduct, or that they should be labelled as "questionable practices" rather than misconduct because they do not necessarily affect the core of a publication-its evidence and claims. The line between misconduct and questionable practice is notoriously hard to draw (Steneck, 2004; Biagioli, Kenney, Martin, and Walsh, 2019), and, more importantly, we cannot be positive that the different definitions of fraud and misconduct adopted by different countries, agencies, and academic institutions are accurate or fully commensurable with each other. This is not meant as a criticism but as an acknowledgment that the thinking, definitions, and policies about misconduct have been and continue to be the work in progress of hundreds of concerned practitioners in universities, governmental institutions, funding agencies, and journals (Jacob, 2014). Our goal is neither to question nor to uphold existing views about traditional misconduct, but to call attention to and provide a first analysis of a recent dramatic development: the emergence of a range of new Melbourne Business School pays $A15,000 cash for every paper published in the Top 40 list compiled by the Financial Times. The scheme at Queensland University Business School is more complicated.

The Design Politics of the Passport presents an innovative study of the passport and its associated social, political and material practices as a means of uncovering the workings of 'design politics'. It traces the histories, technologies, power relations and contestations around this small but powerful artefact to establish a framework for understanding how design is always enmeshed in the political, and how politics can be understood in terms of material objects. Combining design studies with critical border studies, alongside ethnographic work among undocumented migrants, border transgressors and passport forgers, this book shows how a world made and designed as open and hospitable to some is strictly enclosed, confined and demarcated for many others-and how those affected by such injustices dissent from the immobilities imposed on them through the same capacity of design and artifice.

Convegno organizzato nell’ambito del master biennale di secondo livello “Esperti nelle attività di valutazione e di tutela del patrimonio culturale”,  attivo presso l’Università degli Studi Roma Tre, in collaborazione con il Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali e il Comando Carabinieri per la Tutela del Patrimonio Culturale. Roma 25-27 ottobre 2018, Museo Nazionale Romano – Palazzo Altemps, via di S. Apollinare 8.

The study is Identify and describe the characteristic features of the art marketplace, determine organizational functions and key stages of the development of international art market. Particular attention payed to the economic and legal aspects, Defined the specific features of the approach to the articles of the Uniform Commercial Code of the United States. In priority shown aspects of legal regulations of the New York General Business Law, which is focused on relationships of art market parties. Established interrelationships between economy and art in a row with the large-scale volumes and forms of the art market. This study additionally raises questions about the pricing of contemporary art in the art market. The article reveals the problems of unregulated art market, the lack of transparency in prices, as well as in transactions. Discussion keep on the issue of circulation of forgeries in the art market, that leads to pay more attention for the authenticity. The article examines trends in the US’s art market, it’s investments potential and contribution to the country’s economy through private and public income, which leads to the leader position at the international arena of art industry.

Using the term parafiction to name situations in which a fiction is temporarily experienced as fact, this essay examines the aesthetics, ethics, and politics of contemporary art  that puts viewers through such experiences. Why has this kind of art become so common?  Works by Walid Raad, Michael Blum, the Yes Men and others. Sometimes funny, frequently moving, and arguably cruel, parafiction exemplifies art's culture-shifting power, pushing alternatives from the possible to the plausible. (N.B. I now start discussions of this geneaology in the early 1990s, finding in the work of Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gomez-Peña, Andrea Fraser, Fred Wilson and others a model of epistemological critique).

Today, standing in situ or displayed in museums, are several classical and post-classical copies of works of art. In contrast, fakes are usually locked away in museum stores. This dichotomy sparks a reflection on the authenticity attached to fakes and to copies of classical artworks. Building upon Denis Dutton’s work and drawing on a series of examples, this article contends that, although neither fakes nor copies are (the) original, copies are ‘nominally authentic’ regarding their authorship, origin, findspot, and/or provenance, whereas fakes are not. Also, copies are ‘expressively authentic’ in so far as they honestly fulfil the function for which they were created, are situated in the context of the original, or somehow speak of continuity with artistic and art historical traditions. On the contrary, once spotted, fakes lose their purpose and their intended audience, proving expressively inauthentic. Therefore, what fakes and copies have in common is their non-originality, explored here as both creativity and exemplarity or fecundity, that is, the capacity to originate an artistic or figurative tradition. The article concludes by asking what we are to do with fakes and contends that, as historical documents, they warrant exhibition since they can contribute to unlocking the multiple narratives surrounding originals.

Elek Benedek (1859 –1929) published a multi-volume collection of folktales and legends entitled „Magyar mese- és mondavilág” (’Hungarian Folktales and Legends’) between 1894 and 1896 adjusted to the contemporary national commemoration process addressing the  1000th anniversary of Hungarians’ arrival to and settlement in the Carpathian basin. This collection, which included texts that Elek Benedek collected and also texts that he borrowed from earlier publications, became immensely popular in Hungary (approximately  300000 copies were sold until 1945). It made a definite impact on oral storytelling as well, and the way Benedek „re-told” the tales became the standard narrative style of  folktales for generations of Hungarian readership. While Elek Benedek’s name nowadays is almost a synonym for tale telling in Hungary, his birthday became the national day of tale telling; conferences, books and websites are dedicated to his oeuvre, and his tales are highly welcome at the cash register as well,  the attitude of folklore studies that was institutionalized as a discipline in Hungary at the end of the 19th century has been ambivalent to this oeuvre from the very beginning.
The paper in detail presents the debate between Elek Benedek and Lajos Katona (a literary historian, philologist, folklorist) in the last decade of the 19th century on the authenticity of the tales Elek Benedek published, as Katona, in the name of the new discipline, publicly declared  these tales as 'apocryphal' ones that cannot be subject to academic scrutiny as they are not authentic literary versions of folktales. According to Elek Benedek what he did was not forgery, but rather, a „resurrection of the dead corpse of tales” recorded by people who were unaware of the power and impact of well-narrated stories. The paper presents this clash of two differing concepts of textual authenticity, presenting the changing attitudes of folklore studies (from ignorance, silence, rejection through condemnation to apology and gratification)  as well.
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F For Fake (1972), que no Brasil ganhou o título Verdades e men- tiras e em Portugal foi exibido como F de fraude, é o último filme lançado em vida por Orson Welles. Talvez possa ser considerado como o seu testamento. É um filme seminal para quem pensa hoje a questão do filme-ensaio (ou do ensaio fílmico). Apesar de ser considerado genericamente um documentário, é inqualificável. Tem parentesco com o chamado mockumentary (documentira), tipo de documentário cômico, construído sobre informações falsas ou faceciosas. É também um ensaio sobre a questão da cópia e do falso na arte, portanto, uma espécie de tratado audiovisual de estética. Mas pode ser também considerado, ainda, como uma homenagem à tradição da magia, ou, enfim, um filme autobiográ- fico (ou autoficcional, como se diz hoje). Talvez seja tudo isso ao mesmo tempo, pois a heterogeneidade é constitutiva desse filme.

Charles Ponzi 1893 yılında henüz 15 yaşında iken geldiği Amerika’da kısa yoldan zengin olma yollarını aramaya başladı. 1900’lü yılların başına gelindiğinde, Uluslararası Posta Birliği’ne üye olan ülkelerde değişimi yapılabilen geri gönderim pullarından (reply coupon), bu ülkelerdeki fiyat farklılıklarından istifade ederek kar elde edebileceğini düşündü (Walsh, 1998:1-2). Kısa anlatımla plan, posta pulunun ucuz olduğu ülkeden alınarak pahalı olduğu ülkede bozdurulması temeline dayanıyordu. Ponzi bu teorisini, Birinci Dünya Savaşı nedeniyle yüksek enflasyonun bulunduğu İtalya ile ABD örneğinde denemeye başladı. Ancak teori, paranın geri dönüşünün zaman alması ve bürokratik engeller nedeniyle pratikte bir karşılık bulmadı. Ponzi, posta pulu aracılığıyla para kazanma fikrini gerçekleştiremese de bu süreçte çok daha önemli bir şeyi keşfetti: fikrini paylaştığı insanların teorisine olan inançları paraya dönüştürebilirdi. Bir başka deyişle, plan çalışmasa da insanlar planın çalışabileceğine dair fikri satın almışlardı.

«Papà, a che serve la storia?»: questa era la domanda che quasi 80 anni fa Marc Bloch poneva all'apertura di Apologia della storia, un libro che ha segnato generazioni di lettori. Oggi, di fronte a un tempo radicalmente diverso dal passato, dove le categorie di continuità tra le generazioni appaiono saltate, la risposta più semplice sembra essere: «a nulla». La storia sembra diventata nient'altro che un racconto suggestivo, da rendere il più possibile spettacolare, intrigante e misterioso. Se poi ci si inventa qualcosa, pazienza, tanto è sempre più arduo distinguere tra fatto e racconto, tra avvenimento e propaganda, tra vita reale e virtual reality. Ma è proprio per questo che la storia serve, anzi è imprescindibile. Il suo metodo critico è fondamentale per riprendere a orientarci, distinguendola da tutto ciò che le somiglia. Un libro sorprendente che restituisce alla storia il ruolo che le compete nella società contemporanea.

This article evaluates the creation myth of the pizza margherita as presented by those texts which presume to describe its history, as well as an alternative possibility for the story’s genesis. It begins with a description of the contested historiography of Italian unification, then examines evidence for the veracity of the story, concluding with some questions about the assumed boundaries between folklore and history.

A signature is considered as an individual and identifying mark made by a person and is often used to authenticate or identify any document. Therefore it becomes necessary in some matters to ensure that a particular signature is genuine or forged and is challenging when questioned and admitted both or any one of them is a photocopied. This happens when either original copy of signature is lost or not available due to any kind of reasons, for examination and comparison purposes. In the case where original copy of signature is not available, then only its photocopy can be considered as secondary document evidence. It is well known fact that a photocopy cannot reproduce all the details of the original document but in the cases where the original documents are either lost or damaged, then photocopies are considered as the best possible evidence. In the present paper an attempt has been made to examine two cases of the signatures from the non-original documents and reported.

Täuschung und Betrug in der Wissenschaft, sowie Fragen rund um die Begriffe „Original“ und „Fälschung“ mit repräsentativem Beispiel die Fälschungen des Konstantinos Simonides sind die thematischen Schwerpunkte rund um die sich das Symposium dreht, das vom Institut für Byzantinistik und Neogräzistik der Universität Wien veranstaltet wird. Das Symposium findet vom 13. November 2014 bis zum 14. November 2014 in der Aula am Campus der Universität Wien (Hof 1) statt und wird durch eine Ausstellung begleitet (Vernissage: Mittwoch 12 November 2014, 20:00, Institut für Kunstgeschichte, Hof 9).
Organisation: Andreas E. Müller, Lilia Diamantopoulou und Christan Gastgeber.

There has been a long tradition of imitation in the calligraphic and painting traditions in East Asia but, it is arguable, the history of forgeries is just as long. And sometimes it seems that the same masters who created some of the finest works of art, were also teasing their audiences – and the market – by creating forgeries. Two thousand years ago a cache of 'ancient manuscripts' found in the wall of Confucius's family home gave rise to an acrimonious debate among scholars over their genuineness which lasted for over a century and defined much of Chinese orthodoxy for the next millennium. The discovery of numerous caches of ancient manuscripts along the Eastern Silk Road in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, most notably Dunhuang, has again raised the debate of forgeries among scholars and, despite the scientific advances of the last two millennium, the matter is not yet resolved. This paper will discuss these two examples of forged texts in China and the way scholars have approached them to show the similarities and differences between the East Asian and other traditions of forgeries.

In this paper we study the characteristics of the most spectacular archaeological hoax carried out in Spain in recent decades: the epigraphic findings from Iruña-Veleia, noting both the most unique traits as those which it has in common with other cases. It deals with the two axes used both by the forger to build his imposture as by the critic to remove it: the plausibility of the findings and the credibility of evidence and agents.

Neue Untersuchungen zum zählebigsten Dokument des modernen Antisemitismus.
Unter dem Titel »Protokolle der Weisen von Zion« ist eine Schrift bekannt, die die Juden bezichtigt, auf konspirativ-subversive Weise nach der Weltherrschaft zu streben. Entstanden um 1900, dürften die »Protokolle« das noch immer am weitesten verbreitete Dokument des modernen Antisemitismus sein. Bis heute sind die genauen Umstände ihrer Entstehung ungeklärt. Vor allem die Fragen, wer an der Abfassung beteiligt war und welche Absichten dabei verfolgt wurden, sind noch immer offen – und Gegenstand weitreichender, oft phantastischer Spekulationen. Aktuell erzählt Umberto Eco in seinem Roman »Der Friedhof in Prag« eine fiktive Version der Fälschungsgeschichte. Die hier versammelten Essays präsentieren neue Erkenntnisse zur Herkunft und Verbreitung der »Protokolle«. Es werden bislang vernachlässigte Aspekte des ominösen Textes untersucht: seine Resonanzen mit politischen Utopien, aber auch mit den Verschwörungstheorien des 19. Jahrhunderts; die Verwendung der plagiierten Quellen und sein Status als Plagiat; und nicht zuletzt die Struktur eines Textes, der zwar viel zitiert, aber selten gelesen wurde.
Mit Beiträgen u.a. von: Carlo Ginzburg, Stefan Gregory, Richard S. Levy, Cesare G. De Michelis, Ulrich Raulff