Dear possible participant, friend, family, curious visitor,

This page acts as an invitation/open-call to participate in the Co-Ownership project.

I am Wannes Cools, a Belgian based visual artist.

IN SHORT!

The Co-Ownership project invites people to become a co-owner of one of the hundred and two  works I made during one month. I made a minimum of 3 works a day and sometimes more depending on the mood, feeling, etcetera. All of them on the same A-5 size mostly due to lack of space. If you are willing to partake in my mission to find 102 co-owners for my works. Don’t hesitate participate. And become one of the people to help realize the booklet.

HOW TO ORDER YOUR ORIGINAL WORK FOR FREE IN 3 EASY STEPS?

1: SELECT THE WORK YOU WANT BY TITLE.

2: MAIL ME YOUR TITLE CHOICE AND YOUR  ADRESS OF CHOICE TO THIS EMAIL ADRESS: co-ownership_project@hotmail.com 

3: BE PATIENT CAUSE POSTAL SERVICE IS NOT THE QUICKEST WAY OF SHARING ANNO 2017!

 

This project mainly found it’s way in my head due to a serious lack of space. After graduating the education at Sint Lucas Antwerpen I felt more attracted to make bigger works when I would finish my final year. But as it goes with everything you plan in life it never ends up exactly as you would expect. I could not really afford a space big enough to do the work I first intended. And so I started making a lot of smaller works with the same function as a sketch or a setup for a bigger body of work. As I progressed I realized that these small works I made are actually of quite a lot of value to me. Or at least the idea I projected on the A-5 paper. This came to be a turning point in my practice of art. As well as getting into books, comics and magazines a lot. This gave me a possibility to still work small and yet very big in a sense. I later scanned all of the work I made and this for me is enough connection with the works. I have these works digitalized forever on my computer. They became in a way immortal. I remember thinking what is the next step with this pile of works? How can I make people see them in the same kind of sense I saw them when I made them. So that is when I actually started thinking of making the pile of work into a form of booklet. But just filling blank pages with works I made didn’t feel like much to me. The decision to give all of the original works away to people and take it is as far as possible was an exciting idea I remember. Invite old friends, new friends, strangers, famous people even. I then planned out a small little folded manual with instructions if someone decided to become a co-owner. In the sense that you actually just ask me for one of the original works and in return you pay me with some of your time as you follow some of the instructions or rather guidelines and become a co-owner of a work I made. The works are send for free as I see no good reason to not do so since I already claimed the works in a digital way already. If you do wish to participate then all I need is a title of your choice of work and of course an address I can post the original work and instructions to. Because you get the original I therefore can not send you the work digitally of course if you where wondering. If the project succeeds and I find 102 co-owners I would really like to make an even larger scaled version. As a co-owner you get to become a 50-50 partner in a way. More of that will be instructed in the folded manual. Yet you are not obligated to do any of the things I ask of you nor are you stuck to any form of contract of any kind. So it is kind of a big leap of faith of me towards you for having respect for my hard work. And also to not just let me send out works into nowhere. That would just be a little bit shameless and disrespectful. Yet there is nothing that I can control in that matter. There is also a big sense of discretion involved I would say and mutual respect is merely one of the anchor points to this project. After all the works are out of my hands then I would like to organise one or more exhibitions with the shared work and the booklet. This idea will be more specified in folded manual.

(Do take note that there is just one original of each drawing/work so there is the possibility that one or more people want the same work. So the rule is like first one to come is the one who gets the work. Simple as that. The info is also translated in dutch if you have difficulty reading English just scroll further down.)