Assembly of Practice #2: Whose artwork?

Emptor organises its second Assembly of Practice, a moment of collective reflection, and a public moment 'Access' at BUDA, Kortrijk

Highlighting how authorship, ownership, and usership in the arts could be reconsidered, we invite you to an encounter with Katya Ev, Clémentine Vaultier and TWIIID.

Whose artwork?

How do artists claim ownership of a work of art, when the assumptions of conventional intellectual property law (IP) about individual authorship, exclusivity, and originality are not matching the process of creation?

If IP was created as an economical right, what can we imagine as framework for an ecology?

Can we evolve towards a complex co-authorship that reflects the interdependencies underlying a practice as a means to share responsibility, control and distribute value, taking into account different sorts of contributors?

In an ambition to reorient our discussions to conditions for access and contribution rather than reproduction and distribution, we pay attention to (implicit) rules established throughout and within practices and how they represent forms of mutual collaboration.

To rid ourselves of the author function is a futile gesture as long as the art discourse remains tied to the concept of art as the circulation of ideas expressed as artworks, however immaterial they might prove to be. If the focus of the discourse would shift from the production of definable ‘works’ towards the ongoing and immeasurable acts of ‘practice’ that precede them, the game might change. … Practice is what comes before the work, it is the search while it is still ongoing and inconclusive. Practice might result in various forms of output, but it does not hinge solely on its public dissemination and reception to be of value to those who are engaged in it. It is not something you publicize and circulate, but still it can be shared.

Lisa Rosendahl, ‘The author stripped bare by its employees’, 2019

In a quest for ‘practicing property’ differently, we try to find new narratives, ways of working together, which allow to sustain practices instead of creating a star economy within the arts.

Emptor's events are free of charge, and everybody is welcome