Report of Caveat Reading Room #12: Is it simply a conversation?

People present:
Jesse van Winden
Julie Van Elslande
Stijn Van Dorpe
Ronny Heiremans
Katleen Vermeir
Yasmina Reggad
Nikol Wellens (Kunstenpunt)
Kobe Matthys
Elisabeth Lebailly
David Berger (Platform 0090 Antwerp)
Joost Rekveld
Steyn Bergs
Grace Ndiritu

The texts can be downloaded as PDF here:
Steyn Bergs, Implied in the Contract. Occasional Reflections on Caveat
Luke Mason, Labouring under inauthentic conceptions

00:00
Steyn Bergs, Implied in the Contract. Occasional Reflections on Caveat, 2019 Steyn reading from "The artist's contract i a bundle of ideological tensions"
Ronny contextualizing the fragment, recapitulating Caveat and the present status of artist's contracts in Belgium.

04:42
Katleen reading from "Implied in the contract"
About Seth Siegelaub’s and Bob Projansky's The Artist's Reserved Rights Transfer and Sale Agreement.

08:10
What did we learn from conceptual art about artist's contracts?
Kobe: Seth Siegelaub’s and Bob Projansky's The Artist's Reserved Rights Transfer and Sale Agreement was used very little, and parts about resale rights were always scratched out by the gallery. Hans Haacke was almost the only one.
Julie: But it did make it to legislation.

14:20
Ronny reading from "in many of the discussions within Caveat"
About the "ugly side of law"

26:00
About Caveat's potential future challenges

28:00
About colonialism, Adrian Piper's stipulation “No single work by the Artist shall be sold by the Dealer at a percentage discount…since it is already subject to the 50% Off Black Artists Discount and the 25% Off Women Artists Discount”.
About Patrick Bernier & Olive Martin weaving practice.
About Grace Ndiritu's experiences in Canada with Native American rights

34:00
Elizabeth about Maori tattoos as indicators of Native people's rights

38:01
Reading from "Briefly put, the important point here"
About abstract equality

43:50
Group of artists refused to exhibit in Bozar in the context of Belgian graffiti retrospective (3 years ago)

46:02
Yasmina: When does the contract start? From the invitation? From the discussion that precede it?
About a collective of troublemakers

52:35
Nikol about solidarity, collective refusal, Handvest voor de podiumkunstenaar.

55:39
Reading from "After such critical reflections"

57:55
Kobe on Guattari's relationship between aesthetics and ethics

59:20
Closing remarks about Steyn's text

1:02:40
Luke Mason, Labouring under inauthentic conceptions: Some caveats to the predominant visions of artistic and contractual freedom, 2019

1:04:40
Ronny reading from "If this authenticity-driven artist"

1:09:02
What might it look like to make changes outside self-reflective forms of practice?
About changing paradigms of practice versus changing paradigms of art
Elisabeth: for me, it's about embodying the things you're speaking about.

1:14:45
Discussion about contracts as models, Daniel Buren. Formulating possibilities.

1:18:10
Reading from "A labour lawyer’s reaction"
How can we bring the conversation to another level?
Stijn: When reading this text, it feels like a very large scale perspective.
Nikol: Did you take into account collective labour agreements (CAOs)?
Ronny: We did, but those perspectives often don't take into account that artistic labour really isn't same as labour in other fields.
Elisabeth: It is believed that artistic labour menaces conventional definitions of 'work'.

1:29:22
About platform economy

1:31:15
About museums as platform economies
What is not work?

1:36:50
Last remarks
Elisabeth on Flemish budget cuts as a form of firing people.

1:42:00
End