Better Than Gold

A hybrid documentary about a matchbox that wants to burn by Leen Michiels

A small cardboard matchbox, made by artist Ben Vautier in 1965, carries an instruction on its belly: "use these matches to destroy all art… and use the last one to destroy me."

Sixty years on, nobody has done it. It sits patiently in the collections of MoMA, New York and Centre Pompidou, Paris.

Better Than Gold gives that matchbox a voice. Burnart, its animated version, wants exactly what her instruction says. The art world wants the opposite: to keep her safe. What plays out is strangely familiar: the everyday art of finding your way through a system when the odds are stacked against you.

Along the way, real artists and other art world figures offer her playful, inventive ways to move through that world. Those and the rules of the market form her invented life story.

Shall we burn her?

Info

Art Documentary

Length - 75’ & 52’

Language - English/Dutch/French

Credits

Writer - Leen Michiels

Director - Leen Michiels

Producers - Krater Films

Status - development

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