ALU - INFORMACIJE - Dnevne;;informacije i;;obavijesti - Gostujuće predavanje Daniela Palaciosa Gonzáleza

U srijedu 20.5.2026. u 17 sati dr. sc. Daniel Palacios González (UNED) održat će gostujuće predavanje “Gonna be, gonna be golden!” On art and labour na Akademiji likovnih umjetnosti. Predavanje će se održati na engleskom jeziku.

Srijeda, 20.05.2026., VELIKA PREDAVAONA, Ilica 85, 17:00-18:30

“Gonna be, gonna be golden!” On art and labour

“Mom, I Want to Be an Artist”, a 1986 Spanish musical comedy, features a now-famous anthem in which the protagonist declares: “There are only two kinds of people: artists and everyone else.” She longs for the courage to decide: “Oh! Mom, to be a star! … I want to be the most beautiful, singing on stage, walking daily on carpets of roses. So, Mom, please understand me, I want to be an artist.” Art, indeed, is big business. But can that little girl succeed? While a few artists command enormous sums of money, the vast majority are ignored or dismissed by critics. Why such a disparity? Is it due to differences in innate talent?

In this talk, we argue that differences in artists’ income stem not from so-called innate talent, but from the production of value in works of art and capital. Yet even that explanation is incomplete. Our relationship with artworks is fetishist, often obscuring the fact that the art world rests not on an elite vanguard, but on a vast “Dark Matter”: the workers whose labour is essential to the mainstream’s survival, exhibition installers, art fabricators, underpaid administrators, hobbyists, amateurs, activist practitioners, arts economy organizers, art school graduates, art teachers, museum visitors, event attendees... From K-Pop Demon Hunters (2025) to Dirty Dancing (1987), from Saturday Night Fever (1977) and Fame (1980) to A Star Is Born (2018) and Ratatouille (2007), we will explore how, even when every artist dreams of becoming “golden”, art is always, inescapably, about labour.

Daniel Palacios González is an Art Historian and Social Researcher. He is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher and Lecturer at UNED and previously a Postdoctoral Fellow at Birkbeck, University of London. He got his PhD in Art History from the Universität zu Köln, where he was an MSCA Fellow, after completing his postgraduate studies in Community Cultural Development at the Universidad de Oriente in Santiago de Cuba and Cultural Policies and Management at the Univerzitet umetnosti u Beogradu. He is a member of the research projects NECROPOL at the Universitat de Barcelona and PERMORIA at the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela.