FIBER Festival

FIBER and Raphaël de Courville present Art & Commerce: A panel discussion about how to create a sustainable art practice.

“The business model of fine artists is to produce objects that can serve as symbols of cultural capital, and sell them to those who are short on cultural capital.” Diske Suematsu – Why “Fine Arts” Can No Longer Be Culturally Relevant

“Shameful that, despite having the opportunity to own our privilege, we choose instead to trot out the same weary lines about hard work, good luck and best behaviour.” Gemma Germains – Work hard, be nice to people and have rich parents: addressing privilege in the creative industry

Festivals sometimes have this nasty side-effect of giving you the impression that every other artist is more successful than you are. The good news is: this is very likely NOT true. The bad new is: few artists actually make a good living out of their art. The worst new is: this actively prevents the less privileged from having their voice heard on the scene.

So, why is it so hard for artists to earn a living doing what they do best? How can we build a more inclusive ecosystem? Who pays for art and under which conditions? What alternatives are there to the traditional economic models for Art? When is it “artrepreneurship” and when is it “selling out”? Those are some of the questions we will try to answer during this priceless panel.

Raphaël de Courville is a media artist and creative technologist based in Berlin. He is a co-founder of NEEEU, an independent innovation studio specialising in the design of spatial experiences. He previously worked for ART+COM. He runs Creative Code Berlin, a community that promotes creative uses of computation.

Privilege check: I (Raphaël) was able to take two days off work to host this panel in exchange for festival tickets, travel and accommodation.

Raphael will moderate the panel. More information about the other panelists will follow soon.