Arts Centre Vooruit, Ghent, Belgium

Art costs money. And artists can’t live off their passion alone. This conference is not intended as an accusation or a pamphlet, but wants to shed light on the versatile and often ambiguous relationship between art and money.

Which mechanisms determine auction prices and share prices? Last summer, Damien Hirst sold a platinum, diamond-studded human skull for a record amount of 100 million dollars. Is this an interesting provocation or perverse speculation? You could argue that the work of hacker artists is more effective because it has a bigger impact. If art becomes an investment, does art education have to form it students according to the rules of the art world or protect them from these rules? And finally, is the art market only interested in the visual arts? And how do other artists survive?

The afternoon’s programme will include a varied series of lectures from the point of view of art philosophers, collectors, gallery owners and the government. In the evening a heterogeneous group of artists will share their views during two debates.

With: Frank vande Veire (philosophy, KASK, Ghent), Herman Daled (Collector, chair Wiels), Julian Dibbell (media theory), Stefaan De Ruyck (director, Vooruit), Hans Martens (artistic director, HISK), Hans Op de Beeck (fine art), Guillaume Bijl (fine art), Koen van den Broek (fine art), Johan Pas (art theory, Academy of Antwerp), Eugene Chadbourne (composer), Christophe Bruno (media art), Superamas (live art), Koen Gisen (musician), Evi Werkers (jurist, KULeuven) ...

Take a look at the programme and schedule