BUY OR BURN
A durational performative artwork. 2021 — ongoing.
You are not a spectator here. You are a participant. And what you decide — or fail to decide — has consequences.
BUY OR BURN is a live auction in which unsold artworks are destroyed by fire before the eyes of the audience. There is no safety net, no reserve price, no institution stepping in to preserve what is left unclaimed. The work lives, or it burns. That choice belongs to the room.
The Concept
BUY OR BURN was created by Harmke Datema-Chang in 2021 as a durational performative artwork — a long-term, evolving project that stages the questions her entire practice is built around. What is art worth? Who decides what survives? And what does it reveal about us — as individuals, as collectors, as a culture — when we let something disappear?
The project critiques and plays with the value of art and the contexts that determine it. It is a whimsical, theatrical exploration of the ways we exhibit, share, and sell art — questioning the conditions that give an artwork its value in the first place. It probes ownership, display, and the consumption of art in contemporary society, exposing the fragile boundary between economic worth and cultural meaning.
The auction format is not incidental. It is the work. By placing art inside one of the most transactional systems we have, BUY OR BURN strips away the comfortable distance between viewer and object. The audience is no longer passive. Their presence, their bids, their silence — all of it becomes part of the piece. Each purchase becomes an act of preservation. Each unsold work is a conscious and irreversible loss.
The destruction is real. The fire is real. Nothing is symbolic.
Each edition features a guest auctioneer and new works — and every artwork that enters BUY OR BURN has exactly one moment. It is either claimed by someone in the room, or it is gone. There are no second chances, no returns, no storage. A work that burns here will never be seen again. That finality is not a side effect of the project. It is the point.
Auction as Performance
BUY OR BURN rejects the traditional auction structure. It functions instead as a live performative artwork — public, time-bound, and ceremonial. Economic transactions carry ethical and emotional consequences. The destruction of unsold works is visible and integral to the event. The act of destruction becomes part of the artwork's life cycle.
In a cultural landscape where artworks are increasingly treated as financial assets, this project turns the paradoxes of ownership, authorship, and responsibility back onto the buyer. What are you truly purchasing? What are you choosing to save? And what does your silence cost?
These are not rhetorical questions. They demand an answer before the fire is lit.
Why Burning?
In most systems — cultural, economic, and institutional — destruction happens quietly, off-stage, out of sight. Works disappear into storage, into neglect, into obscurity. BUY OR BURN makes that disappearance visible, immediate, and shared. The fire does not destroy value. It exposes the fact that value was never guaranteed to begin with.
Relics of the Future
Recent editions of BUY OR BURN have been preceded by the exhibition Relics of the Future, which frames the conceptual foundation of the event. Inspired by medieval rituals, relic culture, and the aesthetics of devotion and sacrifice, the exhibition asks what fragments of contemporary culture might survive into the distant future. Participating artists reflect on objects, narratives, and ideas that could become tomorrow's relics — presented with full awareness that their fate will be decided by the public.
2021 — Utrecht, Netherlands
First edition. Part of U? programme, Le Guess Who? Festival.
BUY OR BURN launched in Utrecht in 2021 as part of the U? programme at Le Guess Who? festival — featuring live painting sessions and performance by artists from Mexico and the Netherlands, closing with the auction. The format that all subsequent editions would build on was established here: a live auction, a public, and a fire waiting for what goes unclaimed.
2022 — Utrecht, Netherlands
Second edition.
The project returned to Utrecht in 2022, bringing a new set of works — and a new set of stakes — to the same uncompromising format.
2022 — Miami, USA
Art Basel Miami. Féria Clandestina x 7seasmotel.
BUY OR BURN made its international debut during Art Basel Miami — one of the world's most commercially charged art events — as part of Féria Clandestina at the 7 Seas Motel, an independent art fair hosting artists and projects from eight countries. Placing the project's radical logic at the heart of the global art market.
2025 — Rotterdam, Netherlands
Buy or Burn: Relics of the Future — Brutus, Rotterdam Art Week.
Presented with ODISSI — an initiative by Harmke Datema-Chang — and hosted by Brutus during Rotterdam Art Week. Works were on view for three days before the live auction and destruction event in the Brutus Garden, with actress Loes Luca as auctioneer.
2027 — Mexico City, Mexico (upcoming)
Next edition.
The next edition of BUY OR BURN will take place in Mexico City in 2027 — bringing the project to one of the most contested and vibrant art scenes in the world.
Press & Documentation
BUY OR BURN — Le Guess Who? Festival, Utrecht
Le Guess Who? / U? Programme, 2021
https://leguesswho.com/lineup/buy-or-burn
Féria Clandestina x 7 Seas Motel — Miami Art Basel
World Red Eye, December 2022
https://worldredeye.com/2022/12/feria-clandestina-x-7-seas-motel/
BUY OR BURN: Relics of the Future — Brutus, Rotterdam Art Week
Brutus, Rotterdam, 2025
https://brutus.nl/en/programme/on+view/buy+or+burn+relics+of+the+future/
Further press and documentation available on request.