A significant share of contemporary production is not identical to its material support. An installation is assembled from components, a work may consist of a protocol accompanied by a certificate, a piece may provide for its elements to be replaced at each showing. The question this whole certification has asked so far, what damage did the object suffer, then becomes badly posed, because one no longer knows what the object is.
One must therefore start by identifying what is insured, and there are three candidates of unequal weight. The components, that is, the matter present in the crate. The artist's certificate, where it is that which makes an assemblage the work rather than a pile of objects. And the right to realize the work according to its protocol. Destroying a fluorescent tube destroys nothing if the protocol provides for its replacement; losing the certificate destroys everything, although nothing material in the work itself was harmed.
This observation produces a curious result whose reach must be measured. The line's cover requires PHYSICAL damage, and a certificate is a physical object: its destruction in a fire is therefore a perfectly ordinary loss, whereas the loss of the ability to realize the work, arising otherwise, would not be. In other words the paper is covered and the concept is not, and it happens that the paper carries the value. This is not a drafting anomaly: it is what happens when cover written for things meets a work whose thing is not the subject.
The ratio between insured value and material substance reaches extremes here met nowhere else. A work agreed at several hundred thousand euros may consist of industrial components worth a few hundred. One and the same small physical event therefore produces either a total loss or strictly nothing, depending on which of the three objects it touched. The severity of a loss ceases to be proportionate to its violence, which disorients every intuition acquired in the previous modules.
Obsolescence adds a deterioration that is not an accident. A work relying on a particular projector, a cathode ray tube, an abandoned playback medium, slides toward unshowability with no event occurring at all. That is inherent vice in the sense of the line, but an inherent vice not residing in the work's matter: it resides in the disappearance of an external supply chain. Insurance covers accident and not ageing, and here the ageing is that of the world around the object.
That leaves re-fabrication, which decides the economics of the loss. Some works may lawfully be remade by the owner following the protocol; others may not, and an unauthorized re-fabrication is not a repair but a forgery. Where it is permitted, the real loss is the cost of re-fabrication rather than the value of the work, so that settling at agreed value would over-indemnify. Where it is not, destroying the components is a total loss despite their derisory value. The same policy, the same components, two opposite economics, and what separates them is a clause in the acquisition contract rather than in the insurance one.
In practice the file must say which of the three objects is the work, and the certificate must be treated as the most precious item in the collection, because it is. That means it does not live in the same place as the components, that it is reproduced and deposited, and that it appears on the schedule of values for what it carries rather than for what it weighs. It is the only case in this certification where sound conservation practice consists in physically separating the work from its support.
A collection includes an installation by a contemporary artist, agreed value 380,000 euros. It consists of twelve industrial light modules, replacement value 4,200 euros in total, accompanied by a certificate signed by the artist setting out the assembly protocol and expressly authorizing the identical replacement of defective modules. Water damage in the store destroys the twelve modules and the archive box in which the certificate was kept with them. The insured notifies a total loss at 380,000 euros. The insurer replies that the components can be replaced for 4,200 euros.
Both positions are wrong, and the gap between them is 375,800 euros, which is enough to show the question asked is not the right one. The insurer is right about the modules: the certificate expressly authorizing their identical replacement, their destruction is not the destruction of the work, and the corresponding loss is indeed 4,200 euros. The insured is right about the total, but for a reason he does not advance: it is not the loss of the modules that makes the total loss, it is the loss of the certificate. Without it, an assemblage of twelve industrial modules is no longer the work but twelve industrial modules, and the protocol that allowed it to be reconstituted disappeared with the paper. The loss is therefore indeed total, at 380,000 euros, and it is perfectly covered since a certificate is a physical object whose destruction is physical damage. The paradox deserves stating: cover responds here because the value rested on a sheet of paper, whereas it would not have responded had the same ability to realize the work disappeared otherwise. And the failing that created the loss fits in one line of housekeeping: the certificate was stored in the same box as the components, in the same store. The only good practice this module adds to the previous ones is to physically separate the work from its support, because here they are not the same thing.
- 01Three objects can be the work: the components, the certificate, or the right to realize it under its protocol, and an event touching them does not have the same reach.
- 02Cover requires physical damage, and a certificate is physical: the paper is covered when the concept is not, and it is the paper that carries the value.
- 03Severity ceases to be proportionate to violence: one small event produces either a total loss or strictly nothing depending on what it reached.
- 04A component's obsolescence is an inherent vice residing not in the work's matter but in the disappearance of a supply chain.
- 05The right of re-fabrication decides the economics of the loss, and it sits in the acquisition contract rather than in the policy.