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Arkadi Lavoie Lachapelle: fabuler & renaître
March 9th – April 22nd, 2017
Opening and presentation Saturday — April 8th, 2pm
In 2016, the close alliance between Jean-Frédéric Ménard’s bioethical rights practice and Arkadi Lavoie Lachapelle’s performance practice has produced a contract for the acquisition of an artwork. This contract positions the buyer in an equitable relationship with the artist. The history of the creation of this Feminist Contract (2016) is presented at Skol with the photographic work Jour de fête!.
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“The ONLY trouble will come when you are selling to someone who is not a friend. Since surely 75% of all art that is sold is bought by people who are friends of the artist or dealer-friends who dine together, see each other socially, drink together, weekend together, etc.-whatever resistance may appear will come only in respect to some portion of the 25% or your work that is being sold to strangers. Of these people, most will wish to be on good terms with you and will be happy to enter into the Agreement with you. This leaves perhaps 5% of your sales which will encounter serious resistance over the contract. Even this real resistance should decrease toward zero as the contract comes into widespread use.
In a manner of speaking, this Agreement will help you discover who your friends are”.
—Seth Siegelaub, excerpt from The artist’s reserved rights transfer and sale agreement introduction (Provjanski agreement), 1971, p. 3.
“ I will not continue to seek out poetry until I have proof that it was a game and nothing more, like gathering flowers or mounting Morella…”
– L’art de la joie, Goliarda Sapienza, 1996, p.475.
“I acquire an artwork out of love, and not as a financial investment” .
– This is the historian’s story. The beginning of a story. A momentum-sentence.
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– I would like to encourage you and buy your video.
– Alright, I thought. Seeing as you claim to collect artworks for their own sake, why not draw up a contract where 100% of the surplus value generated during the resale of a work returns to the artist? Such an approach embodies a direct critique of the art world’s speculation-based market system, as well as the exploitation on which this system is based. It would also lay the groundwork for a fairer relationship between artists and collectors. The value of this gesture would be largely symbolic for the moment, but would represent a real and significant engagement. Exciting, isn’t it? What do you think? Are you ready to sign?
– I’d rather hold off for the moment.
From encouragement to the fabulated wait;
From practitioner of art and joy to lawyer/ethicist/researcher;
From neonatal intensive care to day of celebration;
From storage problems to scrambling for framing money;
From resale royalties to 100% of the surplus value;
From the Provjansky Contract (1971) to the Feminist Contract (2016);
From well, it won’t stimulate the market to no, but it will encourage solidarity;
From the artwork to the tool;
From the talk to the walk;
From use to the artwork;
This is where the image and
its spiritual agency
are reborn.
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Artist’s special thanks:
Warm and special thanks to Jean-Frédéric Ménard, Isabelle Brabant, Mathieu Jacques, Martin Schop. François Rioux, Michelle Lacombe, Stéphanie Chabot, Adriana Disman, the Skol team, the Espace projet team, Espace Sud-Est (Gham&Dafe), l’EAVM, Luce Decelles for the Jeune Volontaire program and the invisible team.
I acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of (what is now called) Montréal, where I live and work, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy comprising the Mohawk, Onondaga, Oneida, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora peoples.
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