We have scratched around and come up with enough money to place a small order of paint with a German colour merchant by the name of Gerrstacker. Two white, a prussian, an umber. Thanks to the recent political change in the UK1 we are unable to continue to use Jacksons because the price of delivery is too high. Having said that Gerrstacker has its own delivery cost but it is not as high as Jacksons. All will depend of the quality of the German colours. We got a roll of duk also which I have been assured by Herr Geerstacker himself, does not tear.
When all that arrives however is anyone's guess. It would usually be panic stations to run out of material with the spring campaign approaching but we have elected to give the blossoms a miss this season and to instead push on with the sensation painting a little longer. Also we have, during the course of the above work, stumbled in to a new artistic context within which we can operate and merge our Doing and this new work will become our spring campaign. Usually of course I would be dependent on your approval for any changes in direction and format but since I have taken the reigns this season I have made the decision to embark on a mission into the world of 'crypto' art. The videos above chart our thinking in this but in summary the new context is that of nft digital art. Nft means 'non fungible token' and that means something unique and original, like a Van Gogh, or the Mona Lisa. You can look it up for better explanations but suffice to say that until now digital art has been fungible, copyable, shared, in a zone where ownership meant nothing. Recall how those qualities were celebrated by all and sundry in a free culture euphoria that just a few years ago reminded one of hippies? Well now thanks to block chain encryption that has all changed and many people seem to be equally excited at the thought that suddenly all that is digital can be owned, sold, speculated upon and monetised in the most conclusive and broad sense imaginable. Look here, its a complex, confusing business this, with many pros and cons to weigh up before entering fully into it. The cons being firstly that it is quite an expense to encrypt ones happy, sociable fungible file into a stand alone non fungible one. The process is known as 'minting a token' and can cost as much as 1000kr. This same process also carries a significant environmental cost because of the amount of power required in the encryption process, again you might be best to look this up or ask some youth to brief you.2
The pros are for us, a new context to merge with that is relevant to our theme this year of the singularity and all things tech-future related. More basically, the rush and excitement of the nft marketplaces has created a new artistic context that is quite different to any art arenas thus far. It is a place where the type of art we are familiar with clashes with the internet cultures of gaming, fantasy and a strange aesthetic of cuteness that does nothing for morale let me tell you. This means also that there is a place in which the meme aesthetic can circulate, be experimented with and exhibited in a way different from the highly politicized and more often than not alt right context we saw during the post truth era years. There are many many implications of such a context emerging and very few of them have dawned on us but despite all that the fact is that we have lots of works on video and also text pieces, stuck on our drives, alone and in the dark and now they can potentially be exhibited due simply to their being announced as art as a result of being minted. Needless to say there are value games aplenty being played with people minting for example their soul, or a tweet, or a thought and of course this reminds any artist simply of conceptualism where similar games were played to turn 'regular' objects into 'art' objects. Now it is enough to turn them into nfts, indeed there is evidence already of a strange reverse art snobishness in which a curator will say 'well Duchamp minted a token of the urinal 100 years ago, its nothing new'. But that means not a jot to some nifty wag with their head stuck in the games. Anyway, it is a wild new bubble and the feeling that is solidifying in us is that if it were not for the carbon impact we would dive right in. We have no fear of those online slackers and besides when the gauntlet has been laid down before have we not always picked it up and taken it onward, at least a few paces?
But the carbon impact is real and cannot be glossed over although there has been an announcement by a man called Joseph Lubin, the founder of the Ethereum crypto currency, of a new nft marketplace by the name of Palm which claims to reduce the environmental impact of minting by 99 percent! So that would change everything but this is all very new and there is no information about when this Palm platform will be launched. All we know is that Damian Hirst has been resuscitated to produce work for the launch4 and we are told he has been busy for the past 5 years on this and is expected to 'drop' no fewer than 10,000 works on launch day to get the bun fight started. Until then the next best thing we can do is to lay low and keep an eye on things, perhaps just have a think about how we might merge. I do have some text pieces, one liners in the spirit of the neon light work of the likes of Holzer or Martin Creed that would fit the new bill, and you know I did once inquire to a young lad at El Giganten as to how one might create the effect of a neon light flashing digitally and he happily informed me that it may be best to make a GIF file animation, the problem is that I wouldn't know a GIF file if one fell on my head so here is my question to you: would it be possible for you to arrange for some assistants with good techmind to transfer some texts into some sort of GIF work of their choosing and we could make a collection to respond to the new nfty context without actually having to mint the bastards?
With a high five,
John
1 One of the effects of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union is that delivery prices have risen sharply.
2 We have asked an assistant to look into this.
3 Here he talks as if this is finished.
4 The work referred to is The Currency.