The art café has now been around for about a year and perhaps it is an interesting moment to do a short recap. In brief, there are two pillars: The artists who have visited the art café and are trying to build a paid art practice and artists who have passed this point (whether by choice or not).

The theme of this meeting is economy.

– We can talk about the precarious situation many artists are in. Many contemporary artists are expected to be solely responsible for succeeding in their artistic practice. Everything has to be created at an ever-increasing pace, and more and more new/different artists are needed to accelerate the pace (inextricably linked to the demands of capitalism, whether neoliberal or hyper).

– Linked to this, we can discuss all the unpaid work we do. I naturally have five years of experience with this in the bicycle workshop, where we did everything as much as possible without money. The ambiguity and contradictions are glaring there.

– I read in the Guardian that 2000 artists in Ireland have received a basic income. Good news for them? My thoughts mainly go to the 6000 artists who will not receive a basic income. I don’t know what criteria were applied, but I can think of a few: productivity, quality, functionality…

– And I thought of a quote from Bojana Kunst: ‘a time might be coming when the most radical politicisation of art will be its detachment from any kind of economic value in order to reveal new affective and aesthetic articulations of the community.’