Culture is future » Innovation and digital

The Forum d’Avignon interviewed 25 international artists on the theme of intellectual property - Wim Delvoye

To which extend have technology change the way you create? 

Technology changed everything and emancipated me as an artist. But at the same time, it also made me more dependent on other people. Technology obliges me to collaborate with specialists and I also have to be interested in more different subject matters. However, thanks to technology my works are more diversified and more ambitious. We are always as ambitious as the technology we use. Thanks to technology I can also be my own agent. And it also changed the relationship between the periphery and the centrum. I live in the suburbs of Ghent but thanks to the internet that artists can be both local and global. 

How do you perceive the subsequent use of your works? 

It is almost flattering. My x-rays for example have a separate life on the internet, an anonymous life as successful images to be downloaded to print flyers, postcards, etc. Of course, I am not happy to see that I am not mentioned as an author of these images but I like the kind of "freedom" the internet gave us too much  to be  worried about that. I used logo's of successful companies in my work myself, so I should not be too cranky about other people using my images.

In 10 years to who would you entrust the management of your rights?   

I would entrust my Trust the management of my rights. This Trust already exists. Guaranteeing the moral rights is most important, and then a wide circulation is second most important. I don’t have many illusions about revenues but they could help the Trust to be 'perpetual'. I am very interested in the recent success of the Smurfs. It has been a work of 40 years but now the Smurfs are the most famous Belgians. For me it is hard to choose between the success of an avant-garde artist and the success of the Smurfs. But it may be very 'avant-garde' to confuse these two different ambitions.