Alain Servais (BE): “New Media Art Collecting Practices” lecture // M17 Art Collectors’ Forum. Day ІII [the video is available]

On July 9, 2021, at 15:00 event #6 in the M17 CAC, on the ІІI Day of the M17 International Art Collectors’ Forum, there will be Alain Servais’s (Belgium) lecture “New Media Art Collecting Practices”

Languages of the event: Ukrainian and English
Event format: live broadcast organized in the M17 CAC

About the lecturer:

Alain Servais, the Belgian businessman, is a collector with almost 25 years of experience. He was one of the first who started collecting digital art and supporting young digital artists by offering a residency program in his The Loft artspace in Brussels. Alain spends most of his leisure time visiting museums, biennials, galleries, and art fairs for sharing his knowledge of art then, inter alia. He opened The Loft in 2000. There, he holds annual exhibitions of works from the Servais Family Collection. The collection has one notable distinction: there are no paintings.

The full schedule of Forum events can be found at this link

UPD: A video of the event is available for viewing on our YouTube channel!

Key abstracts:

• While the culture of appropriation online and on social media is undeniably powerful, it does not answer the question of whether that copying is infringement, fair use, or something else. And as the Basquiat sale highlighted, it does not account for moral rights, either.

VIDEO OF THE EVENT:

Key abstracts:

• Art is not about comfort zone or uncomfortable situations, but it is about brining us to the new. Art is not useful. Though, art’s value is myth-making.
• Digital art is the same art but in the form of a digital file. It has copyright as a bundle of rights which authors have over their artistic work.
• As a creator, an artist can give the whole copyright away, or allow others to use some or all of these rights through licenses.
  NFT is a protected link to a file. Though there is always a threat of technological obsolescence.
• NFT is a product of fashion popularized during COVID-times. It is not new because digital art has existed for more than 20 years now. Not all NFT is a piece of art.
• NFT cannot be deleted, it is permanent. Though in some countries and at different marketplaces, NFT can be burned — this right depends on a country’s or marketplace’s legislation.
• I collect and sell digital artworks for about 20 years, this is not something new or difficult.

• original language (English)

• Ukrainian translation

M17 International Art Collectors’ Forum was organized jointly with the Ukrainian Club of Contemporary Art Collectors and the Modern Art Research Institute of the National Academy of Arts of Ukraine within the “An Open Opportunity: Ukrainian Contemporary Art from Private Collections” project.