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Arranging Tangerines Episode 14 - A Conversation with Ben Sloat Part 1
54 Plays4 years ago
In this episode, we spend some time trying to convince artist and educator Ben Sloat that NFTs have any degree of merit through discussions around cheap money and exotic financial instruments, the question of who is actually being empowered by crypto-art, the parallels and non-parallels of the traditional art world, the importance of free cultural content, the (in)accessibility of video art, and the power of viewing art in person.
Ben Sloat often uses elements of the vernacular in his works; generating hybrid social meanings and reflecting the artist's multiracial Taiwanese-American background. Working across mediums, the projects frequently find themselves considering the capacity of iconography, image, or light based material, in a wide and inclusive definition of the "photographic". Cultural vocabulary is commonly used as a medium in the work, oscillating between an intimately personal voice and a larger societal one.
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Transcript
Introduction to Arranging Tangerines Podcast
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to Arranging Tangerines, presented by Lady and Stater.
00:00:05
Speaker
Conversations with contemporary artists, curators, and thinkers about the intersection of art, technology, and commerce.
00:00:10
Speaker
Your hosts are me, Alessandro Silver, and Joseph Wilcox.
00:00:13
Speaker
I know what to do.
00:00:14
Speaker
I know what to say.
00:00:17
Speaker
I just know I don't want to be like you.
00:00:20
Speaker
I know what to do.
00:00:20
Speaker
I don't know what to say.
00:00:22
Speaker
I just know I don't want to be like you.
Meet the Guest: Ben Sloat
00:00:33
Speaker
Our guest this week is Ben Sloat.
00:00:36
Speaker
All right, so we are recording.
00:00:39
Speaker
Are we doing a bio thing, an intro?
00:00:40
Speaker
I have one.
00:00:41
Speaker
Oh, you do?
00:00:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:00:42
Speaker
Okay, well, then that's yes.
00:00:45
Speaker
All right, so we're going to introduce this gentleman.
00:00:48
Speaker
We actually know him very well.
00:00:50
Speaker
We go way back.
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Speaker
As a professor, director of the program that we both were in at one point, mentor, friend?
00:00:58
Speaker
Sure.
00:01:00
Speaker
Sure.
00:01:00
Speaker
Sure.
00:01:03
Speaker
So I'd love to introduce Ben Sloat.
00:01:05
Speaker
I'm going
Ben Sloat's Background and Multiracial Heritage
00:01:06
Speaker
to read his bio.
00:01:06
Speaker
Ben Sloat often uses elements of the vernacular in his works, generating hybrid social meanings and reflecting the artist's multiracial Taiwanese-American background.
00:01:15
Speaker
Working across mediums, the projects frequently find themselves considering the capacity of iconography, image, or light-based material in a wide and inclusive definition of the photographic.
00:01:26
Speaker
Cultural vocabulary is commonly used as a medium in the work, oscillating between an intimately personal voice and a larger societal one.
00:01:33
Speaker
Born and raised in New York City, Ben Sloat earned degrees from UC Berkeley and SMFA Tufts.
00:01:39
Speaker
His work has been shown in venues such as the Havana Biennial, Matanzas, Radium Arts Center, Busan, Kunsthall Charlottenburg, Copenhagen, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,
00:01:50
Speaker
Dublin City Gallery, the Hugh Lane Dublin, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, and the Queens Museum, my favorite.
00:01:59
Speaker
Sole exhibitions include those at Dauss-Klauchischen something, Munchen, Munich, Stephen Zavata's Gallery, Boston, Co-op Gallery, Nashville, Gallery La Roche, Junkus in Montreal, Gallery 126, Galloway, Front Gallery, Oakland, and the American Cultural Center, Taipei.
00:02:19
Speaker
He's director of the MFA and Visual Arts Program at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a father, and recently a contestant on Jeopardy.
00:02:29
Speaker
Welcome, Ben Sloat.
00:02:30
Speaker
Thank you.
00:02:30
Speaker
Thank you for having me.
00:02:32
Speaker
I feel like you practiced the first half of that bio and then never read the second half until just now.
00:02:37
Speaker
Yes.
00:02:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:40
Speaker
Yeah, welcome.
00:02:41
Speaker
Thank you.
00:02:42
Speaker
Your view is so hypnotic.
00:02:43
Speaker
I just keep watching the cars go into the Queensmontown Tunnel.
00:02:46
Speaker
It was like amazing.
00:02:48
Speaker
The last time we were in here doing, we were recording on Thursday.
00:02:52
Speaker
And at night, it's just like lights too.
00:02:54
Speaker
And it's like, it's the best.
00:02:56
Speaker
I like made a video of it.
00:02:57
Speaker
Oh, great.
00:02:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:57
Speaker
Yeah.
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Speaker
It's super, super pretty.
00:03:00
Speaker
Yeah.
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Speaker
Nice views down here.
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Speaker
So yeah, and shout out again to Hunter's Point Studio.
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Yeah.
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Speaker
Who's been gracious enough to give us a nice space.
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Speaker
Yeah, it's beautiful.
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Speaker
Yeah.
00:03:11
Speaker
Well, thanks again for coming.
Are NFTs a Novelty?
00:03:13
Speaker
I thought we'd start off with NFTs.
00:03:15
Speaker
That's something you love to talk about, I'm sure.
00:03:19
Speaker
Not really.
00:03:20
Speaker
I think it's part of a larger strain in our culture, which maybe combines the cultural and the financial and how value is generated.
00:03:32
Speaker
I don't think they're that interesting, personally.
00:03:34
Speaker
I wouldn't be surprised if we don't hear from them anymore in a couple years.
00:03:39
Speaker
And I think they're a total function of
00:03:42
Speaker
a kind of newness, a novelty, technology, and a kind of new form of scarcity in the midst of easy money.
00:03:51
Speaker
So, and then what they are, are not actually, like the thingness of it, people want to talk about, but no one is actually having an amazing experience with an NFT.
00:04:00
Speaker
Yeah, I think that we have this conversation often, which is like, it's like, is it going to stick around forever?
00:04:07
Speaker
Or is it going to just be this thing that like disappears in a year because it was a fad or a trend and it like had its course and it made all the money it could.
00:04:14
Speaker
And then it like goes away, right?
00:04:16
Speaker
Well, it's a kind of branding scenario.
00:04:18
Speaker
I just read a thing where one of the early innovators of what became NFT wanted to call it something like monetized animation.
00:04:28
Speaker
And so that has no appeal to it.
00:04:30
Speaker
But because it sounds like an exotic financial instrument, then it creates a kind of cachet.
00:04:39
Speaker
But what it is, aside of that, I don't think is that interesting.
00:04:43
Speaker
And just because folks are willing to throw real money at it doesn't mean it has substance.
00:04:50
Speaker
And then when we're past this moment of really cheap money, you can borrow cheap money and throw it at different things and hopefully one sticks and then hopefully one thing...
00:05:03
Speaker
becomes increasingly valuable.
00:05:04
Speaker
I just feel like it's part of that world.
00:05:06
Speaker
Maybe it sticks around, maybe it doesn't, but I'm not sure it's that interesting either way.
00:05:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:11
Speaker
Yeah, I think when we first started
00:05:16
Speaker
this project.
00:05:17
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It was like at the height of the NFT craze back in March of 2020.
00:05:21
Speaker
And we were, and part of, I mean, I would be lying if I said part of it wasn't the idea that there was money out there for artists to get, right?
Initial Interest in NFTs and Redistribution of Wealth
00:05:29
Speaker
Because there was all this like, there was all this cheap money and people were throwing it at anywhere that they thought would stick.
00:05:35
Speaker
And we were like, well, maybe we can grab some of that and
00:05:37
Speaker
and filter it down to some artists making good work as like kind of a way to redistribute as much as we, as two people could.
00:05:46
Speaker
And I think that was kind of our initial drive was like, let's get some of this cheap money into the hands of people who actually need it instead of like, you know, the ultra wealthy and corporations who kind of like control that system.
00:05:59
Speaker
But yeah, but the culture around it was definitely not something we were drawn to.
00:06:05
Speaker
This like kind of like hyper
00:06:08
Speaker
hyper-capitalistic type thing.
00:06:10
Speaker
Yeah.
Critique of Cryptocurrency Philosophy
00:06:11
Speaker
You know, and I think a lot of, there's so many elements where things are sort of, oh, this is empowering, and therefore it builds a kind of branch.
00:06:25
Speaker
But I just wonder how sustainable that is, or ultimately, who is it really serving?
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Right, just like cryptocurrency, who is it actually serving?
00:06:36
Speaker
For what benefit?
00:06:37
Speaker
And I think there are all these...
00:06:39
Speaker
sort of philosophical premises around it, that it's, oh, it's not national and it's self-regulating to a certain degree and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
00:06:48
Speaker
But there's also an element of it where ultimately a smaller group of very powerful folks can control what it does and therefore it undermines its kind of quasi-utopian ideal, which I don't even find sincere.
00:07:08
Speaker
I mean, one of the things in describing that, not that I'm pro or against or whatever, but that description could also be about the art world in general, like the
Art World vs. NFT Space: A Comparison
00:07:19
Speaker
traditional art world.
00:07:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:20
Speaker
It's also a rarefied thing that creates scarcity and is controlled by these few entities.
00:07:25
Speaker
And they're the ones that put out the content that supposedly is the cultural capital.
00:07:32
Speaker
Yes and no, because what I like about the art world, if you compare it to like the music world, right?
00:07:40
Speaker
So we're not up against like Warner Brothers music and Live Nation and Ticketmaster and all these like giant horrible corporations.
00:07:48
Speaker
It's much more human scale and it's much more...
00:07:52
Speaker
So if you think about what's happening at a mega gallery, they're actually pretty responsive to larger cultural gestures.
00:08:00
Speaker
And like the shows I saw yesterday, you know, Hauser and Wirth has this amazing show called The New Bend.
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Speaker
It's a kind of update of, you know, G's Bend quilts.
00:08:11
Speaker
So you couldn't even imagine 20 years ago that the largest mega galleries in the world is really focused on cultural output from this like tiny place in Alabama, you know, with artwork made by people who are considered artists and are certainly marginalized and tend to be, you know, African-American women of color, older women of color.
00:08:34
Speaker
So like, that's an extraordinary thing.
00:08:36
Speaker
Or Zwirner has a show called The Black Book, curated by Hilton Knowles, who I think is like a cultural giant.
00:08:43
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And everywhere I turn, it's Hilton Knowles, and he's doing something incredible.
00:08:47
Speaker
But that, to me, is really pushing the content of African-American culture into this very central space.
00:08:55
Speaker
So, you know, it's easy to say...
00:08:59
Speaker
that these places are problematic, which they are in a lot of ways, but also they're providing legitimate free content.
00:09:06
Speaker
And we get to participate as viewers.
00:09:10
Speaker
And I forget, it might have been Zerner who said, you know, these galleries are the densest collection of free culture in the world.
00:09:18
Speaker
Sure.
00:09:19
Speaker
Yeah, I think we also we should mention, I think this is our first NFT skeptic that we've had.
00:09:25
Speaker
Well, we've had skeptics.
00:09:27
Speaker
Skeptics.
00:09:27
Speaker
Like artists.
00:09:28
Speaker
But I think they were like, I don't know a lot about it.
00:09:31
Speaker
And now we have somebody who knows and is not necessarily for, right?
00:09:37
Speaker
Right.
00:09:38
Speaker
It's just I don't find it interesting.
00:09:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:40
Speaker
Like I'm not enamored of it.
00:09:42
Speaker
You know, I think people were like, I can make this crazy thing and make six figures from it.
00:09:47
Speaker
I think that kind of lottery dream is there.
00:09:50
Speaker
But fundamentally, artistically, the NFT to me is not interesting.
00:09:53
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:09:54
Speaker
I mean, the idea of like free cultural content, I think, is
NFTs as Free Cultural Content
00:09:59
Speaker
very much interesting.
00:10:01
Speaker
You know, there's a lot of artists who have made work who wouldn't have made it because NFTs existed that are available like for view for everybody.
00:10:11
Speaker
They're not in the same world as kind of like the Hauser and Wirth's and those types of things, but it is free cultural content that's available that wouldn't have normally been available, which I just think is a parallel to the traditional art world.
00:10:24
Speaker
Yeah, and I'm a huge fan of the GIF as a form.
00:10:27
Speaker
You know, I think some artists have done
00:10:29
Speaker
really interesting things with it.
00:10:30
Speaker
And I think about someone like Paul Chan made some interesting GIFs back in the day when this idea of a kind of circular video situation that is elastic and can be shared in many forms and doesn't have an inherent like price value or like early Paul Pfeiffer works where these kind of looping kind of Daryl Birnbaum-esque videos.
00:10:51
Speaker
I thought they were fascinating and I'd watch, I could watch those forever.
00:10:57
Speaker
Do I need that to be slapped with some brand and title and shared?
00:11:03
Speaker
None of those mechanisms to me I find interesting.
00:11:07
Speaker
So you don't even, as far as the NFT as a tool of provenance, where the blockchain, the permanence and having this authenticator that's saying this is the thing that the artist produced such and such date.
00:11:22
Speaker
Is that even interesting?
00:11:23
Speaker
Not at all.
00:11:24
Speaker
That's so funny because you embrace so much other technology as not even like an aesthetic, but as like a way of making it.
00:11:33
Speaker
Oh, of course.
00:11:33
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:11:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:34
Speaker
No.
00:11:35
Speaker
And I think it's reasonable to be drawn to certain technologies and to be...
00:11:41
Speaker
not interested in other technologies.
00:11:42
Speaker
Sure.
00:11:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:43
Speaker
Like provenance, like that just totally smells of the secondary market.
00:11:47
Speaker
Right.
00:11:47
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:48
Speaker
Well, I mean, provenance is an issue in the, in the art world
Ownership and Authenticity in Digital Art
00:11:52
Speaker
in general.
00:11:52
Speaker
Like I think of the Warhol foundation.
00:11:55
Speaker
Um, there's, I've read plenty of instances where people actually worked alongside Warhol in the factory and,
00:12:01
Speaker
can't get their work authenticated that was given to them whatever because the warhol foundation says no yay or nay and it's an arbitrary decision it's like there's no obviously there's no way to make it a proof because but uh outside of like warhol like fingerprinting the thing or having some kind of like dna thing but
00:12:22
Speaker
Or even going back to 15th, 16th century painting.
00:12:25
Speaker
It's like, it's like, it's all up to the decision of some arbitrary foundation that says yay or nay.
00:12:33
Speaker
Right, but that's all surrounding a kind of monetization and value, right?
00:12:38
Speaker
If you don't really care, like I grew up with these Kathy Colwitz prints on the wall, which are kind of disturbing, but there are re-strikes from after her death and someone had the plate and just made more and it's like, okay, that's what it is.
00:12:52
Speaker
I think that's interesting.
00:12:53
Speaker
Or I just purchased, I'm not a big art collector,
00:12:56
Speaker
But Talbot Auerbach just spoke in the program in January.
00:12:59
Speaker
That was a great talk, by the way.
00:13:01
Speaker
So super interesting.
00:13:02
Speaker
And they have a project called Diagonal Press.
00:13:06
Speaker
And you can buy these kind of books and other kind of handmade materials, but they're unsigned and they're not editioned.
00:13:15
Speaker
So it's just like if you want this and you find value in it, you can buy it for a very reasonable price, but it's not meant to be flipped or sold or anything like that.
00:13:27
Speaker
And I just find that gesture really generous because, and also they could have made fold paintings for decades, but they stepped away from that.
Generosity in the NFT Community
00:13:38
Speaker
It wasn't part of their level of interest, and I find that really admirable and interesting.
00:13:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:44
Speaker
Yeah, who's the abstract painter that you really love who does zines for most of her shows?
00:13:49
Speaker
Amy Silman.
00:13:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:51
Speaker
I love that too.
00:13:51
Speaker
You buy them for a dollar.
00:13:52
Speaker
Then I went to the Amy Silman show and I bought this cool zine for a dollar and like that's something for me that's really valuable.
00:14:00
Speaker
yeah i i also sorry god i was gonna say again that it's funny because there are a lot of artists in the nft space kind of doing that generous act that you're saying where they're giving things away um one of the things about um nft is once you have somebody's wallet address if they do purchase something from you you have that address and there's frequently sometimes the artist will just send you something unannounced and say hey check out your wallet and there's another piece of artwork
00:14:25
Speaker
So there is a lot of generosity.
00:14:28
Speaker
The NFT space does also remind me a little bit of Web One, where people were just sharing tech, not worrying about monetization.
00:14:37
Speaker
A lot of people, and most, we read about the peoples and the packs that make the $90 million sales, but most people are not making a lot of money in the NFT space.
00:14:46
Speaker
It's a space where people are,
00:14:52
Speaker
have been allowed to be creative that might not have had that allowance and then been able to curate an audience.
00:15:00
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, that part's great.
00:15:02
Speaker
And if that provides a meaningful platform, all the better.
00:15:07
Speaker
But it's not a way for me.
00:15:10
Speaker
I haven't been super interested in looking at the work.
00:15:14
Speaker
I don't find it like really challenging.
00:15:16
Speaker
It just seems really like a flavor that goes away quickly and that's fine.
Utopian Ideals in Art: Authenticity vs. Sincerity
00:15:22
Speaker
That's what it is.
00:15:23
Speaker
And you know what I mean?
00:15:25
Speaker
It's like, yeah.
00:15:26
Speaker
There's some memes are great, like they have a half-life of four seconds, but like, those are some good four seconds, right?
00:15:32
Speaker
I'm not...
00:15:34
Speaker
like that's a valuable thing to share.
00:15:36
Speaker
So good.
00:15:37
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:37
Speaker
I, when we're, when we're like, um, cause most of the artists we've like worked with so far have never, have never made an NFT.
00:15:44
Speaker
They don't know what it is.
00:15:46
Speaker
And so a lot of what we're doing is kind of like pitching them this idea that we think is cool, that they should, that we, we think they should do.
00:15:53
Speaker
And one of the things I'll often bring up is that like NFTs don't inherently have an aesthetic, right?
00:15:59
Speaker
They're not even, they are a medium.
00:16:01
Speaker
You can use like
00:16:02
Speaker
you can use the code and artists do that, but they don't have to be like the aesthetic of them doesn't have to be what the majority aesthetic looks like.
00:16:12
Speaker
And so there is, you know, there's like already starting these branches starting to form where there's different communities that are making work that has different flavors.
00:16:21
Speaker
And so, you know, you can easily avoid the stuff that you don't want to see and start to get into the stuff that you do if you're interested in it.
00:16:32
Speaker
And so we've been using Tezo's blockchain to make most of the works that we've been doing with artists.
00:16:39
Speaker
And there was a website, and it's actually back online now, called HEN.
00:16:44
Speaker
And it was like super stripped down, made by this dude in Brazil.
00:16:51
Speaker
And it was like artists could just put everything up there.
00:16:53
Speaker
And some of it was garbage.
00:16:56
Speaker
And some of it was really, really interesting.
00:16:58
Speaker
But the community around it that formed was really, it was fun to watch it grow.
00:17:02
Speaker
And it was the reason why it pulled offline was because it started getting too, there was too much influence from Europe and America because it was really kind of like a South American platform.
00:17:14
Speaker
And so the community started pushing it in a direction that the founder wasn't interested in.
00:17:18
Speaker
And so he basically just like pulled it one day.
00:17:20
Speaker
He just like pulled it offline.
00:17:23
Speaker
And then the people who were still interested in it basically like took the open source software and they are now like rebranding it as a new thing for artists who want to continue working on the platform.
00:17:33
Speaker
But there was this, there was lots of stories of artists from
00:17:36
Speaker
from South America who were able to kind of like engage and make money through this like platform that they wouldn't have been able to otherwise, which I just thought was a really, like when you talk about the utopian vision that is really hard to do because things get co-opted and everything else, it was like a little snippet that like, you know, reminded me of, you know, like DIY venues from back in the day or whatever.
00:17:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:59
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:59
Speaker
And I mean, even the issue of utopian, I think is,
00:18:03
Speaker
problematic because I've been thinking a lot about how, I was talking to my friend last night about this, you know, often that is wedded to a kind of monotheistic thinking, this kind of all encompassing like final solution and then it all be utopian and everyone's happy.
00:18:22
Speaker
And that to me seems really limited by a kind of set of singular trajectories, very linear, it's very kind of outcome driven.
00:18:34
Speaker
And so even the idea like this thing is going to, you know, it ends up being many things.
00:18:40
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:18:40
Speaker
And I don't use the word utopia.
00:18:42
Speaker
I don't actually mean it very often.
00:18:44
Speaker
And so I just think it was a really good example of community building, like authentic community building where people were sharing ideas.
00:18:52
Speaker
That was cool.
00:18:54
Speaker
See, I hate the word authentic too.
00:18:55
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:56
Speaker
Because to me, that is a kind of judgment of goodness.
00:19:02
Speaker
And, you know, I was talking to a student about this is like, I could try to make pad thai.
00:19:10
Speaker
It won't be authentic, but I could be sincere in the making of it because it's a very complex flavor profile and it's very technically difficult.
00:19:20
Speaker
But so I can't say, okay, that's authentic.
00:19:23
Speaker
And then the word authentic to me assumes a power structure.
00:19:28
Speaker
It assumes values and judgments.
00:19:31
Speaker
It's become a kind of simple thing that's just like stamped like that's authentic and da, da, da, da.
00:19:35
Speaker
And it's like, well, who gets to decide that?
00:19:37
Speaker
I just find that...
00:19:40
Speaker
There's a kind of element of certainty around it, which I reject.
00:19:43
Speaker
And I like the word sincere better because it's about the attempt.
00:19:47
Speaker
Like, I am sincerely attempting to do something.
00:19:50
Speaker
It may not be good, but, like, I am trying within my limitations to do this thing, you know, like, made pad thai, which...
Curating NFT Spaces
00:19:58
Speaker
is you know what i can do with what i got and you know what i mean yeah yeah no i like i like sincere yeah i think it's way better yeah we were sincerely trying attempting to cut a small space in the nft world where we bring in interesting traditional artists and pair them with um work that you know works in that space and makes it a little bit more interesting
00:20:21
Speaker
I think that is really to be applauded because I think, you know, my concern with the NFT space is that it's a little bit canned and predictable.
00:20:31
Speaker
So it has a kind of
00:20:32
Speaker
illustrative aspect to it.
00:20:34
Speaker
Like, I made this thing, it's going to do this thing, and then it's up there and it's doing the thing I thought it was going to do.
00:20:39
Speaker
Whereas I think to be somewhere and to have to really deal with yourself and the space and the entire experience, and obviously it's a privilege to be able to like go to Chelsea because many people don't have access to New York.
00:20:55
Speaker
to do something like that.
00:20:56
Speaker
But I think it as a kind of discursive space could be more interesting.
00:21:00
Speaker
But I guess unfortunately the main conversation I hear about NFT is about some kind of like subversive instrument to, you know, outwit some of the existing structures in a way to empower oneself against that.
00:21:18
Speaker
And I find that a little bit suspect.
00:21:22
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:21:23
Speaker
But as a forum to communicate, that sounds really interesting.
00:21:28
Speaker
Especially the format, like you said, you have the privilege of going to Chelsea.
00:21:34
Speaker
Most people don't.
00:21:36
Speaker
A digital file is a digital file, whether it's on your phone, your laptop, or anywhere.
00:21:42
Speaker
So the ability to see this work as intended in the palm of your hand, I think it's a very powerful thing.
00:21:51
Speaker
Especially when done with sincerity.
00:21:53
Speaker
Sincerity.
Future of NFTs in Video Games
00:21:55
Speaker
However, it could be done with sincerity, but still be terrible.
00:21:57
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:21:58
Speaker
There's plenty of terrible, sincere work.
00:22:01
Speaker
But to me, you know, like going to Hilton Owls, putting together work by Toni Morrison, like some elements of her archive, her interest in making the Black Book, which is kind of collecting African-American culture at a time where that, you know, now that seems really familiar with folks like Theaster Gates and et cetera, author Jafa.
00:22:23
Speaker
But, you know,
00:22:24
Speaker
To see that, to him going into history to have this multi-faceted presentation, it'll have a catalog, so that's available if you're willing to spend the money for it.
00:22:39
Speaker
I feel no guilt that I have the ability to go to New York.
00:22:41
Speaker
I think it's...
00:22:43
Speaker
I'm not able to do other things, but that's one thing I'm able to do and I shared some things on social media so if other folks can kind of see it too or kind of dive deeper if they would like.
00:22:56
Speaker
But yeah, so I think the kind of exchange scenario sounds like it could be interesting, but
00:23:03
Speaker
It sort of keeps, to me, the NFT leans into the kind of cryptocurrency kind of libertarian Finbro, tech bro space.
00:23:12
Speaker
And I'm like, that's not interesting.
00:23:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:15
Speaker
The other thing I was going to mention was you have a child.
00:23:19
Speaker
Does she play video games?
00:23:22
Speaker
um she does some yeah because i think one of the things about the nft space that's going to be interesting is not right now because we're in the whatever um in the future um my nine-year-old like she plays whatever minecraft and roblox and stuff um the ability to carry digital assets from outside of the game
00:23:42
Speaker
world outside of it where they can then either exchange it for something other or keep it.
00:23:49
Speaker
I find very interesting in the sense that now you can have this thing where, let's just say you buy an avatar skin or something in Roblox, it no longer just stays in that ecosystem.
00:23:58
Speaker
It now, as an NFT, becomes yours and you can do as you wish.
00:24:02
Speaker
It could in the future.
00:24:03
Speaker
In the future, right.
00:24:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:05
Speaker
And also the technology is so for anybody born within this whole metaverse thing where it's easy for my daughter to put on a VR headset and navigate.
00:24:19
Speaker
It'll be interesting to see what is done with technology such as the NFT contract in the future by the younger artists.
00:24:27
Speaker
Yeah, I could see that.
00:24:28
Speaker
I mean, my daughter's into Minecraft.
00:24:30
Speaker
She's like really into video editing, which is amazing.
00:24:33
Speaker
She's 12, almost 13.
00:24:35
Speaker
And just like that kind of ability to kind of recut things.
00:24:38
Speaker
And she's into anime so she can get pieces of different anime clips and then make her own thing out of it.
00:24:46
Speaker
I think that part is interesting.
00:24:48
Speaker
I mean, that sense of ownership...
00:24:51
Speaker
Or maybe the sense of yourself inside that space could be interesting.
00:24:59
Speaker
Tell them about the, what was the thing that your daughter wanted to buy in Roblox?
00:25:06
Speaker
Oh my God.
00:25:07
Speaker
But you weren't going to justify paying for it, but then she got the image of it and was like looking at it one day.
00:25:14
Speaker
Like caught her like looking at the JPEG of like this thing that could only be available for one day.
00:25:18
Speaker
What was that?
00:25:19
Speaker
It was called the Headless Horseman.
00:25:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:21
Speaker
And it only came out during Halloween.
00:25:23
Speaker
And it was like a limited... They created scarcity in the Roblox market.
00:25:29
Speaker
And it was like $350 to purchase this.
00:25:32
Speaker
And if you purchase it, you can see it anytime you want.
00:25:35
Speaker
Right?
00:25:35
Speaker
Right.
00:25:36
Speaker
No, you could see it on your, on yourself, but you could always see it.
00:25:38
Speaker
You could always see it.
00:25:39
Speaker
But she, she wanted the cloud of ownership.
00:25:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:42
Speaker
She, she wanted to have that thing.
00:25:44
Speaker
And I'm like, you could look, you can, we could watch it all day.
00:25:46
Speaker
You could, we could actually, I actually did the thing where we did a, I video edited the stupid headless horseman on her avatar, but that wasn't enough.
00:25:54
Speaker
She had to play with it in the actual game real time with her friends for it to be a thing.
00:26:00
Speaker
I know, but maybe she doesn't care about that like two weeks later.
00:26:02
Speaker
She didn't.
00:26:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:04
Speaker
So.
00:26:07
Speaker
That's just similar to like sneakers or fashion, right?
Cultural Desire: NFTs vs. Traditional Collectibles
00:26:10
Speaker
It's like something that you get to wear for a while that makes you feel good.
00:26:13
Speaker
And then you sell it to, I mean, there's going to be like thrift NFT stores in the future.
00:26:18
Speaker
Right.
00:26:18
Speaker
But I think the mechanism behind that is similar to any other cultural piece of it.
00:26:24
Speaker
Right.
00:26:24
Speaker
It just maybe has a different audience.
00:26:26
Speaker
Like I just went to a like a store in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and it was all just like you could buy old video games, you could buy old records.
00:26:35
Speaker
It was all just culture.
00:26:36
Speaker
It was books and it was enormous.
00:26:38
Speaker
Right.
00:26:39
Speaker
It was like the size of a supermarket.
00:26:42
Speaker
And you could buy Pokemon cards, you can buy, I mean, so like that, that's those same desires is similar, right?
00:26:51
Speaker
And I remember a friend of mine was like, he had a Pokemon game on his Game Boy and then he really wanted this Pokemon card.
00:27:00
Speaker
And so he and his friend traded and then like he got it, he's like so happy.
00:27:05
Speaker
And the next day just like, he's looking at this card and like, that's it, right?
00:27:09
Speaker
And then a friend has the game and can like do things with it.
00:27:12
Speaker
So I'm not sure if the sensations around it are really any different.
00:27:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:17
Speaker
I mean, that's.
00:27:19
Speaker
Um, so, I mean, the one thing that I loved about and I loved and hated about NFTs when I was first learning about them is that, so like this idea of ownership and clout, I, I don't like, I don't like the idea of like things being scarce if they don't have to be because a digital file can be copied a million times, right?
00:27:38
Speaker
There's no reason it needs to not be accessible.
00:27:41
Speaker
Um, but I also like the idea of artists being able to addition their work in a, in a, a smart way if you're a digital artist and, uh,
00:27:49
Speaker
And so one of the nice things about the NFT is that it's accessible to everybody, even though like somebody owns it, anybody can see it, which is not true for a lot of digital art in the traditional art world.
00:28:02
Speaker
You need to either go to the place to see it if it's in a museum or a gallery, or if you're the owner of it, you're allowed to show it, but otherwise it's like pretty exclusive.
00:28:09
Speaker
It's true.
00:28:11
Speaker
And that's annoying because, you know, video art went from being the most like democratic and open to being the less accessible.
00:28:20
Speaker
But part of what I like is people responding to the limitations of the time.
00:28:27
Speaker
And then they make really interesting decisions.
00:28:29
Speaker
So William Eggleston made Stranded in Canton.
00:28:33
Speaker
He puts like an infrared lens on it.
00:28:36
Speaker
He can film people at night.
Historical Context in Digital Art
00:28:38
Speaker
It's a Sony port-a-pack.
00:28:39
Speaker
He makes this really interesting thing.
00:28:40
Speaker
He has to push himself in new directions towards that.
00:28:44
Speaker
Or like a Joan Jonas performance or Nim Jun Pei using...
00:28:49
Speaker
different technologies available to him at the time.
00:28:52
Speaker
So I like that part.
00:28:53
Speaker
It would be awesome to see all that work online though, you know, like all of those things you just described, if I could go on Vimeo and watch them without the artist worrying about losing value.
00:29:02
Speaker
Oh yeah.
00:29:02
Speaker
Well you can watch Serenity and Canton online.
00:29:04
Speaker
Oh you can?
00:29:05
Speaker
On YouTube, yeah.
00:29:05
Speaker
Okay, that's cool.
00:29:07
Speaker
That just reminds, we just interviewed a gentleman who does generative art.
00:29:11
Speaker
And there's this platform called Artblock.
00:29:15
Speaker
which you should probably check out.
00:29:16
Speaker
Yeah, I think you would be into this strand of the current kind of like NFT trends because it's code-based and it uses the smart contract as a medium.
00:29:26
Speaker
And yeah, sorry.
00:29:27
Speaker
And the gentleman who started actually, he headquartered in Marfa on purpose because there's a lot of Donald Judd.
00:29:35
Speaker
And
00:29:36
Speaker
The artist we spoke to, Alex Supke, he, uh, him and his partner actually were flown to Marfa so they can get a historical perspective of generated art starting from the sixties, um, stuff that's hanging in the Metropolitan Museum currently.
00:29:52
Speaker
Um, so they, it's almost as if they were acknowledging the quote unquote art world.
00:29:58
Speaker
Um, this is where this kind of work comes from and let's build upon it.
00:30:02
Speaker
And positioning themselves close to it to try and become a part of the lineage as the kind of like arbiters of the canon decide, right?
00:30:10
Speaker
Because they're like, this is where we think we come from, but nobody else believes us yet.
00:30:14
Speaker
But we're going to like try and like push ourselves into that space because it is very much in the lineage of...
00:30:21
Speaker
minimalism and Judd's work, which I just, I thought was a really fun part of that conversation with Alex.
00:30:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:28
Speaker
But then my critique there would be a lot of that work, like the Judd work or the minimalists, they're dependent on a kind of industrial system that they don't critique.
00:30:39
Speaker
Right.
00:30:41
Speaker
So I'm going to get these things made perfectly and who cares where it comes from or the source of it or Bitcoin and crypto and NFTs are like high demand for energy sometimes.
00:30:57
Speaker
But it's just sort of like that's just sort of there and it's in the background.
00:31:01
Speaker
So yeah, I think to me, my dilemma with minimal art is it's so lacking in context.
00:31:09
Speaker
completely that it doesn't really address some of the mechanisms.
00:31:14
Speaker
I mean, some of the artists do.
00:31:16
Speaker
Like I think Gordamana Clark is so much about that.
00:31:18
Speaker
And though he is not a minimalist, but he's contemporaries with Judd and Smithson as well.
00:31:23
Speaker
It's like there's something very human that they're addressing.
00:31:27
Speaker
And I guess maybe another concern I have for NFTs and that whole world is that it's very, there's a real separation.
00:31:34
Speaker
There's a real relationship.
00:31:38
Speaker
disconnection or disembodiment.
00:31:40
Speaker
In what sense?
Power Structures in Art and Digital Spaces
00:31:42
Speaker
In the sense that it's like, oh, all these things just sort of happened and there's no implication on the mechanisms that make those things happen.
00:31:51
Speaker
So like anybody can just hop on and use it and not have to think about the fact that like there's electricity farms in China that are taking all these resources to like build this thing that they're just like clicking on.
00:32:01
Speaker
Yeah, or it's like all the mechanisms that's like the rare earth mining and like, you know, who made the phone and what are they doing right now, right?
00:32:12
Speaker
And like, what is that entire operation that is so hidden?
00:32:18
Speaker
I just feel like that could use more attention directly.
00:32:21
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:32:22
Speaker
Similar to like the art world, like the getting the Sacklers taken off of like the board of directors of like a museum or something or.
00:32:30
Speaker
Or just general institutional critique and like how did, you know, and I think.
00:32:34
Speaker
Or how about the whole, I mean, the art world is what, 75% white male?
00:32:39
Speaker
Right, because it's so embedded with power structures, but I think it's important to address that.
00:32:45
Speaker
You know, like rather, you know,
00:32:47
Speaker
these folks put their money into art and not super yachts or whatever.
00:32:51
Speaker
So it doesn't mean we need to clean their name.
00:32:55
Speaker
So if you go to David Koch Plaza in front of the Met, you're like, that guy's a piece of shit, but I'm glad he paid for this and not something even more awful that he could have done.
00:33:04
Speaker
So we can still think he's a piece of shit and...
00:33:08
Speaker
Like, you know what I mean?
00:33:10
Speaker
So we can hold two truths at once.
00:33:12
Speaker
Yeah, I think that cognitive dissonance, I think, is really important.
00:33:15
Speaker
And I'm concerned it's not there in this digital space enough.
00:33:20
Speaker
People just assume it's just all in a kind of neutral.
00:33:22
Speaker
And you just mean like the internet in general, it's not there enough.
00:33:25
Speaker
Yeah, and all kind of technological exchanges.
00:33:27
Speaker
Yeah, I agree.
00:33:29
Speaker
How do you feel about Pace Gallery opening up their own NFT little thing?
00:33:34
Speaker
I don't know.
00:33:35
Speaker
Art Basel Miami with the whole Tezos.
00:33:37
Speaker
I mean, that whole thing is so fraught, right?
00:33:40
Speaker
So it's like, which part of it are we the most concerned with, right?
00:33:45
Speaker
Like the fact that, you know, United Bank of Switzerland is using Art Basel as a way to connect with or like cultivate new anonymous clients and...
Financial Interests in Art Events
00:33:57
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:33:58
Speaker
Like that was a big controversy that went away quickly.
00:34:02
Speaker
It's like, oh right, you know, but like why else would they be interested in supporting art venues in these very specific places, Hong Kong, right?
00:34:10
Speaker
And Miami and...
00:34:14
Speaker
Basel.
00:34:15
Speaker
But I don't know.
00:34:17
Speaker
It's too bad.
00:34:18
Speaker
You know, it's interesting to see where these mega galleries go.
00:34:23
Speaker
And Pace has some really fantastic artists on their, you know, that they represent on their roster.
00:34:31
Speaker
But, you know, I walked by Pace yesterday and they made this like weird tower that they renovated on...
00:34:39
Speaker
I think it's 25th Street and I didn't wanna go in there.
00:34:43
Speaker
It's like this weird high rise experience even though other galleries are also on multi levels.
00:34:49
Speaker
But there's something very uninviting about a lot of that and I just feel like their programming isn't the same from before this mega space.
00:34:59
Speaker
Because it's like an arms race for them to sort of keep up with the Joneses.
00:35:07
Speaker
It would make sense that they would go sniff out if they can find monetization there, they would go there, right?
00:35:16
Speaker
But is that interesting for the viewing public?
00:35:20
Speaker
Probably not, you know?
00:35:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:23
Speaker
Or not yet.
00:35:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:25
Speaker
Whereas I think with Zwerner, I love that Zwerner's working with Helen Molesworth to put together shows and Helen Halls to put together
NFTs Beyond Cryptocurrency
00:35:35
Speaker
shows.
00:35:35
Speaker
It's really creating a really rich conversation in the wider culture, which I think adds a very different kind of value, which from my position, I appreciate enormously.
00:35:47
Speaker
I mean, our goal is to work with people like Ellen, bring her into the NFT space.
00:35:52
Speaker
But it would be like that.
00:35:53
Speaker
It would be a partnership where you kind of work with the person in the most sincere way where you bring something to the table that is actually interesting and novel and thought-provoking and considered.
00:36:05
Speaker
And maybe the NFT is still in the kind of 1.0 situation.
00:36:09
Speaker
I mean, it is.
00:36:10
Speaker
It's so new.
00:36:11
Speaker
I think that it'll be like in two years from now, if it's still around, which I think it will be.
00:36:17
Speaker
in some form, it's gonna look, I think it'll look so different.
00:36:21
Speaker
Or at least will be expanded, where it will no longer be this,
00:36:25
Speaker
singular, like when you think of NFTs, it won't be this singular narrative that you've heard.
00:36:29
Speaker
It'll be lots of narratives where it'll become just like a different type of device to do things with, like YouTube was when it came out, right?
00:36:39
Speaker
It's not like YouTube has one aesthetic anymore or one thing that they pitch.
00:36:45
Speaker
It's just a platform that anyone can use.
00:36:47
Speaker
And I feel like NFTs will be that once there's more mass adoption
00:36:51
Speaker
And it's not just art.
00:36:52
Speaker
I mean, art was the one of the first ones that kind of blew up as far as because it's easy to see and describe and sell.
00:37:00
Speaker
But music is the next thing that's kind of booming as far as NFTs.
00:37:06
Speaker
And some of the things that are happening in that space, especially with musicians that haven't been able to
00:37:12
Speaker
earn their living recently um being able to sell like 50 of the royalties to get their their their music going um now you have you have this share not now not only am i a fan but i have a share of these this uh this album i mean not just that but you can buy the stem so like in the edm scene you can buy the like artists will release tracks but they'll release every stem as like its own nft and you can buy it and it gives you the right to remix it and so you can like buy your favorite artists
00:37:41
Speaker
like part of their tracks and then like use them, which like, I don't know that much about this kind of development.
00:37:46
Speaker
We were speaking with somebody at this conference that was in town and it sounded really fun and interesting.
00:37:51
Speaker
I mean, it's still very esoteric and like very hard to like get into if you're not familiar with it already.
00:37:57
Speaker
But I think it could be,
00:37:59
Speaker
it could be a thing that it would be as easy as logging on to Bandcamp and downloading it.
00:38:04
Speaker
That seems more liberating, honestly, than the art version of NFTs.
00:38:07
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:38:08
Speaker
Because the musicians are so controlled and their product is so widely used all the time everywhere.
00:38:15
Speaker
I'm just assuming every single one of these cards is listening to music or a podcast right now.
00:38:21
Speaker
And musicians are so sort of exploited in that equation, especially...
00:38:28
Speaker
you know, and then they were dependent on touring and now you can't really tour easily.
00:38:33
Speaker
So that to me seems really liberating in all the ways that it's promising for art.
00:38:40
Speaker
And the form of music in a digital environment to me is totally fine.
00:38:48
Speaker
Right.
00:38:48
Speaker
And I guess maybe that's another thing is
00:38:52
Speaker
I want to be challenged as a viewer.
00:38:53
Speaker
Like I want to be in the world of this artist and I just haven't had that experience in the palm of my hand or, you know, even though some of the YouTube stuff art is interesting, it just doesn't have the same impact.
00:39:10
Speaker
Like I'm not going away really emotionally intrigued or pushed or thinking about it in the way I do with
VR and Immersive Digital Art Experiences
00:39:20
Speaker
other forms.
00:39:20
Speaker
And it's hard to do, too, when you're looking at a device that you normally use for so many other things that are not meant to be thought provoking or change your kind of like perception as opposed to like, you know, you can't.
00:39:33
Speaker
It's hard to compete with going into a space that's been curated that has work on the walls that you get to like be surrounded by.
00:39:40
Speaker
Which is why I do think the kind of VR stuff is somewhere where that might be able to bridge the gap for the digital art where you can put on a headset and go into a space, you know, quote unquote, go into a space that might be able to mimic the real world experience of going to a really powerful show.
00:39:59
Speaker
in the future.
00:40:00
Speaker
Which is sort of like, I saw this amazing Kerry James Marshall painting yesterday at Hauser & Worth, I mean at Zroyner in the Hilton Alls curated show.
00:40:11
Speaker
But so much of the work is about like, I went there and I'm going to the show and I know what this is.
00:40:17
Speaker
And then you read the text and you're sort of, you enter into the atmosphere of this exhibition and the logic that this person has put this together.
00:40:26
Speaker
And it's Hilton Alls thinking about Toni Morrison
00:40:29
Speaker
and her legacy with artists who kind of connect with that now with a lot of historical paraphernalia like photos from her
00:40:39
Speaker
estate and then letters where she's like, I'm going to write this book called Beloved and these are the major and you're like, oh my goodness, like this is the actual document.
00:40:46
Speaker
They didn't let you photograph that, which I thought was interesting.
00:40:50
Speaker
And then after all that, you build towards this painting.
00:40:54
Speaker
But if I'm walking down the street and that same Kerry James Marshall painting is just hanging on a fence
00:41:01
Speaker
it's the same thing, but how it affects me would be totally different.
00:41:06
Speaker
And maybe there's something about the digital thing where it's like, there's an equivalence between, you know, some silly meme you saw and like your grocery list on your notes and your voicemail and this NFT that I think maybe deflates the experience quite a bit.
Generational Differences in Art Experience
00:41:23
Speaker
No, I agree.
00:41:23
Speaker
There's some work to be done in the digital space to kind of like, uh,
00:41:27
Speaker
Bring it to a level where you can have like an experience like you're describing.
00:41:31
Speaker
And that might be us privileging our, I mean, we're probably closer to the same age, but there might be instances where youth don't feel that same way, where it might bring them to tears where they see some NFT.
00:41:42
Speaker
Of course.
00:41:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:44
Speaker
Or some digital file that, but I mean, that's, I think it might also be the stance that we're from because the white gallery cube thing is, is still persisting, even though it's been critiqued.
00:41:56
Speaker
Yeah, but there's plenty of forms where art can create, and I guess it's a question of atmosphere, right?
00:42:04
Speaker
Like I was talking to my friend yesterday, I was like, most bars are essentially the same, but it's a different atmosphere.
00:42:09
Speaker
Like they make you feel differently about yourself and the surroundings and what kind of like, you know, customer base it attracts.
00:42:17
Speaker
So that becomes a really central piece of the whole thing.
00:42:21
Speaker
Just like if you saw the same artwork, but you traveled to a new city,
00:42:26
Speaker
it might impact you differently.
00:42:28
Speaker
Or I think it's interesting that people may not go to see art in their own environment, but if they travel to like London, then they have to go to, you know, the Tate.
00:42:38
Speaker
And if they go to Paris, they have to go to the Louvre.
00:42:41
Speaker
But I think for me, I like to be surprised.
00:42:43
Speaker
So like that piece I did at the, you know, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts was an animated GIF piece, right?
00:42:50
Speaker
Which, but it was projected on the side of this huge building.
00:42:54
Speaker
It was like,
00:42:55
Speaker
an animation of the redlined maps of Richmond from 1940 showing like the actual racist policy making to, you know, privilege certain neighborhoods and marginalize other neighborhoods.
00:43:09
Speaker
And I wanted folks to see that and then feel situated and be like, oh, I know that.
00:43:15
Speaker
Oh my goodness, this is what happened there.
00:43:17
Speaker
And let me think about where it is now and how this policy directly relates to their own experience, but have it to be this giant physical thing.
00:43:26
Speaker
to make this like lowly gif, like an actual physical experience.
00:43:31
Speaker
And so I guess that's what I'm looking for a little bit in some of these digital spaces.
00:43:37
Speaker
And I think Paul Pfeiffer, some of his early works where it was only meant for one viewer.
00:43:42
Speaker
So you get- Right, they were like four by five inches on the wall.
00:43:45
Speaker
Yeah, or they're coming off the wall and you have to put yourself between the wall and there's like a little monitor.
Versatility and Immersion in Digital Art
00:43:51
Speaker
That's really, really interesting.
00:43:53
Speaker
Or, you know, some newer digital gestures, which are about a kind of immersion, like Pipilotti wrist or...
00:44:04
Speaker
There's an amazing piece at the Glenn Kino piece at Mass Mocha where it's this choreographed, multi-sensory thing.
00:44:15
Speaker
That's one of the things that I like about animated GIF works is that they can exist in so many different
00:44:22
Speaker
kinds of contexts like you can watch it on your phone and it can have a thing it can feel a certain way you could view it in a virtual reality gallery and it would feel different or you could like go and see it projected on the side of a building and it's going to feel even even more different but it's all the same work it's all the same file right uh and so i i just like digital work because it can exist in all those spaces at once and so then like you can hit the people who are there to see it
00:44:48
Speaker
in Virginia, right, Virginia?
00:44:51
Speaker
Or it can if people can't get to that place, they can kind of see the documentation, which is how I experienced it, and kind of get an idea of it, but then I can actually see the actual file too on my phone or an iPad or whatever.
00:45:02
Speaker
I just like the kind of like the way it can shape shift into different spaces.
00:45:08
Speaker
I just think it doesn't happen enough.
00:45:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:10
Speaker
No, I agree.
00:45:10
Speaker
Because that opportunity of continuity and ancillary documentation and information that could live on the internet as opposed to it could be in conjunction with, say, your typical gallery show or just like that show you mentioned where you're projecting, where somebody can look online and say, oh, this continues, you know?
00:45:32
Speaker
So our next exhibition, one of the artists is creating a work that's a video piece and it'll be sold as kind of like an edition video as an NFT.
00:45:42
Speaker
But then in the gallery, it's installed on a projector that projects through these cheesecloths that then hits another projection screen on the other side.
00:45:52
Speaker
And so you can actually get inside of...
00:45:54
Speaker
the cheesecloth and the projection screen and be kind of in the video, even though the actual work exists as a file on the blockchain or whatever.
00:46:06
Speaker
And so it can kind of exist in those different spaces, but it requires for a gallery installation a different kind of installation than a screen or something like that.
00:46:17
Speaker
So I think that
00:46:19
Speaker
I just think you're right that those kinds of installation, immersive installations need to happen more, even if they're going to be connected to an NFT or a digital file.
00:46:28
Speaker
Or maybe there's a scenario where they're not just showing the work, but they're showing how the work can be experienced.
Democratic Nature of Art Installations
00:46:35
Speaker
Like I think about something like Olafur License Weather Project at Tate Modern, which I will never see.
00:46:41
Speaker
And it's funny, he went to MIT, he was like, you know, this piece, which is amazing, and it's like, it's
00:46:47
Speaker
essentially a digital piece, because it's like a half light of circle with a mirror, so it looks like a sun, and then they like put in some haze and people just would watch it.
00:46:57
Speaker
And it was just like totally hypnotic.
00:46:59
Speaker
And he kept talking about how open it is and democratic it is.
00:47:02
Speaker
And I raised my hand, I was like, I'll never see this piece.
00:47:04
Speaker
Like it happened X number of years ago.
00:47:07
Speaker
It's not available now.
00:47:08
Speaker
It'll never, you know, I don't think you're gonna reinstall it.
00:47:11
Speaker
So it's not really, it's not democratic because it's gone.
00:47:16
Speaker
But yet other artists find that to be a huge asset.
00:47:19
Speaker
Like Christo, you know, talked about the gates.
00:47:21
Speaker
He's like, I made the gates.
00:47:24
Speaker
It's something everyone had in common.
00:47:26
Speaker
People try to buy it.
00:47:27
Speaker
He refused to sell it.
00:47:28
Speaker
He wanted to live in memory.
00:47:30
Speaker
So it was totally equivalent.
00:47:31
Speaker
And there was no, there's nothing about it that one person could have
00:47:36
Speaker
more of an experience than anybody else.
00:47:38
Speaker
So I think that gesture is quite interesting too, where it's like temporal.
00:47:42
Speaker
Right, that is democratic.
00:47:43
Speaker
It's democratic that like nobody gets to experience the real thing, right?
00:47:47
Speaker
Everybody has to like experience it secondhand.
00:47:49
Speaker
Right.
00:47:50
Speaker
Or you did and you had that in common.
00:47:52
Speaker
Like, oh, remember when that was installed in Central Park in 2005?
00:47:57
Speaker
So I think that temporality part is really interesting.
00:48:00
Speaker
Or on the other hand, there's artists like John Gerard, like the Irish kind of animation artist.
00:48:07
Speaker
mixed media artist, he did this video that's like a 30, it's programmed to play for 30 years.
00:48:15
Speaker
And it's like this pig farm in, it's a commentary on like factory farming.
00:48:20
Speaker
And it's like really mundane.
00:48:22
Speaker
You know, you see the outside of this thing, you can move around it, like a truck shows up like once a week, but it's programmed to like go through 24 hour cycles every day for 30 years.
00:48:33
Speaker
Like that I find really interesting.
00:48:35
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:48:35
Speaker
because there's a kind of boundary and when you see it, it's not ingratiating itself to you.
00:48:41
Speaker
It's not like, look at me and watch me again.
00:48:44
Speaker
It's like, oh, you're here in this moment in real time with this piece in real time.
00:48:49
Speaker
And then there's a finite boundary to what this piece is.
00:48:52
Speaker
I've been reading a lot of Agnes Martin's writings.
00:48:57
Speaker
And that especially reminds me of a quote where she was talking to this little girl and she showed her a rose.
00:49:05
Speaker
And she's like, is the rose beautiful?
00:49:07
Speaker
And the girl's like, yeah, it's beautiful.
00:49:09
Speaker
And she tells the girl to close her eyes and imagine the rose.
00:49:14
Speaker
And she asks, is it still beautiful?
00:49:15
Speaker
And she's like, yeah, it's still beautiful.
00:49:17
Speaker
So it's still, there's a latency, what you take away from art as far as it's not necessarily has to be the object in state.
00:49:30
Speaker
You also take it with you, right?
Transcendental Qualities of Physical Artworks
00:49:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:33
Speaker
And another example of that with Agnes Martin is when you look at her work, it's like it's just a bunch of squares, but it has this tremendous spiritual impact and you can't figure that out.
00:49:45
Speaker
You're like, how is this working?
00:49:46
Speaker
Right?
00:49:47
Speaker
It has an atmosphere about it that is so transcendent of its subject matter.
00:49:54
Speaker
And I'm concerned that the digital world can't quite do that.
00:49:59
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:50:00
Speaker
At least for you.
00:50:02
Speaker
Yeah, for me, you know, sure, like that Paul Pfeiffer with the Larry Johnson like screaming, that thing is amazing.
00:50:09
Speaker
I think that works as an NFT, by the way.
00:50:11
Speaker
It's true.
00:50:12
Speaker
I'll watch that forever.
00:50:12
Speaker
It's like so great.
00:50:15
Speaker
But I think...
00:50:16
Speaker
that's not a space I find a lot of digital material trying to go to where there's something about it.
00:50:24
Speaker
There's a quality about it that is so beyond it's, you know, literal subject matter or the, the kind of mystery of technology because technology becomes as a subject becomes really boring really quickly.
00:50:37
Speaker
But when you see an Agnes Martin and it just has this otherworldly quality, you get transfixed.
00:50:43
Speaker
You get into a much more,
00:50:47
Speaker
kind of philosophical space, which is extraordinary.
00:50:49
Speaker
Like, you can't believe this is happening.
00:50:51
Speaker
And you're not going to get that from seeing an image of an Agnes Martin.
00:50:54
Speaker
To experience an Agnes Martin, you have to actually see the painting, because you see the pencil marks and you see the hand.
00:51:01
Speaker
Or this, you know, and I hate the term aura, but there's something about the original that is
00:51:07
Speaker
holding that for you.
00:51:10
Speaker
In addition to all of the other kind of like constructs around, like you described, right?
00:51:14
Speaker
Going to the place, being in the space, being with other people in the space, seeing it or, or not depending on like how the, right.
00:51:20
Speaker
And some, some works are better with other people and some works are worse, you know, like watching a movie in the theater versus at home.
00:51:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:51:28
Speaker
Like I remember, yeah.
00:51:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:51:30
Speaker
I remember going to the Mirakami show at the MCA and it was on the free day.
00:51:34
Speaker
So I knew it would be,
00:51:37
Speaker
super packed and I was like I thought it would be fun to see all of these like giant paintings with all these people and I got there and I was like I I like wanted to be by myself in the space more than anything I like don't I don't even think I like went through the whole show because there was just too many people and it was one of those it was one of those situations where my idea of what I wanted the like ideal viewing circumstances were not we're not right
00:51:59
Speaker
Well, he's an interesting person to bring up because I wonder โ he's a person that, for me, there was a lot of interest and then it, like, crashed.
00:52:07
Speaker
Because it's like, Murakami, he's doing a Brooklyn Museum show.
00:52:10
Speaker
Kanye's, you know, playing the opening.
00:52:12
Speaker
There's a Louis Vuitton store inside.
00:52:15
Speaker
Now he's doing a cover for Kanye.
00:52:17
Speaker
Now he's doing the thing for Louis Vuitton.
00:52:19
Speaker
And it was, like, quite interesting for a moment.
00:52:21
Speaker
And now โ
00:52:24
Speaker
the kind of language of that work just feels like we're totally past it.
00:52:30
Speaker
I think because we are, right?
00:52:31
Speaker
It's like things have changed.
00:52:33
Speaker
It's like looking at Donald Judd after CB2.
00:52:35
Speaker
Because it's been completely co-opted, that language.
00:52:40
Speaker
And Mirakami was going to do an NFT series when everything was blowing up.
00:52:44
Speaker
And it got like to the day before the launch when they were going to like drop all the NFTs.
00:52:48
Speaker
And he pulled everything because he was concerned about his collectors, the value of his works that his collectors had bought, his physical work.
00:52:59
Speaker
And they were concerned that this was going to devalue the other work that he made.
00:53:04
Speaker
And that's sad that he can't push into new fields because this kind of system is built around him.
00:53:12
Speaker
And his studio is probably not too far from here somewhere, right?
00:53:15
Speaker
In Long Island City.
00:53:18
Speaker
But you know, to me there's something
Market Pressures on Famous Artists
00:53:20
Speaker
tragic there.
00:53:20
Speaker
Like he did this amazing show at the Japan Society in 2006 called Little Boy.
00:53:25
Speaker
where he was comparing the infantilization of Japanese contemporary culture, like Hello Kitty, with their sense of trauma from World War II.
00:53:38
Speaker
So one little boy was represented by Hello Kitty versus Godzilla, which is an embodiment of their post-war anxiety.
00:53:47
Speaker
And Little Boy is also the name of one of the nuclear bombs dropped on... Wow.
00:53:52
Speaker
Japan, I'm like, here's a guy doing some rigorous, serious thinking, but then it's almost like he's unwilling to put that content into his work because he's worried about this much larger value structure surrounding it.
00:54:08
Speaker
And that's really too bad.
00:54:10
Speaker
You can imagine he's become this industry because he's probably providing for 50 plus people that are working in this industry.
00:54:17
Speaker
as studio assistants or whatever managers.
00:54:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:20
Speaker
And like, he can't, that's the easiest way to make an art is less interesting.
00:54:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:23
Speaker
You can't make a misstep.
00:54:24
Speaker
No.
00:54:24
Speaker
And it's like, Oh, I have to, I'm responsible for all these people's jobs and I got to keep this, this machine afloat.
00:54:31
Speaker
Um, yeah, it's, it's, that sounds really terrible.
00:54:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:35
Speaker
Yeah.
NFTs: Separating from Hype for Empowerment
00:54:38
Speaker
Well, we have five.
00:54:39
Speaker
We're approaching the one hour mark for the NFT portion.
00:54:42
Speaker
We have like five minutes left.
00:54:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:43
Speaker
If we're going to do a second segment, we should we should cut and restart.
00:54:48
Speaker
So in closing, is there anything else you'd like to ask about NFTs?
00:54:52
Speaker
I mean, have we have we opened your mind at all to the possibilities of NFTs being more interesting than you thought they were?
00:55:00
Speaker
I think it could be interesting as a platform.
00:55:04
Speaker
I just think it needs to maybe divorce itself from the kind of cryptocurrency conversation.
00:55:11
Speaker
You know, I think when people are so stunned that people spend, you know,
00:55:15
Speaker
seven, eight figures on NFTs.
00:55:17
Speaker
They're like, what is this?
00:55:18
Speaker
And how do I get into it?
00:55:21
Speaker
And that to me is not where the excitement lies.
00:55:27
Speaker
So how can that conversation be guided towards the sort of sense of a
00:55:32
Speaker
a wider form, a wider kind of exchange about actual empowerment on the ground level and not about this sort of high value situation, which most people are just not involved with.
00:55:48
Speaker
It's funny because we just got
00:55:51
Speaker
Granted, uh, so Lydian state or our company can now trade cryptocurrency from fiat to crypto back and forth on the Gemini platform.
Money Laundering and Regulatory Challenges in Art
00:56:01
Speaker
Um, and they had, there was a holdup because they're asking us for anti money laundering policy.
00:56:06
Speaker
They're like, what, what is your anti money laundering policy?
00:56:09
Speaker
And we're like, what the hell is that?
00:56:11
Speaker
So he was looking it up and he was doing all this research.
00:56:13
Speaker
So he wrote one.
00:56:14
Speaker
I mean, we have one now.
00:56:15
Speaker
Um,
00:56:15
Speaker
Because of the whole crypto, you know, history and people doing things that are not necessarily on the up and up.
00:56:22
Speaker
But then we're thinking, what's the art world has been notorious space for money laundering.
00:56:27
Speaker
Oh, it's like the worst space for that.
00:56:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:56:29
Speaker
The most unregulated, probably one of the biggest unregulated markets in the world.
00:56:35
Speaker
Oh, totally.
00:56:36
Speaker
And there's no contracts sometimes.
00:56:38
Speaker
And I mean, that talk I did June 2020 with Jerry Saltz on art value and social abstraction, I was thinking a lot about Hito Sterl's book, Duty Free Art, where art can be put in these spaces where it's in transit.
00:56:57
Speaker
Right.
00:56:57
Speaker
So there's like...
00:56:58
Speaker
There are these free ports and airports in Switzerland, and so the art is technically in transit, even though it's in this climate-controlled warehouse in the airport facility.
00:57:09
Speaker
And it's such a great way to launder money across different countries and from dubious provenance, and you can be an anonymous buyer and...
00:57:20
Speaker
who knows where the money came from or where it's going or whatever.
00:57:25
Speaker
I mean, it's good that they're concerned about that.
00:57:27
Speaker
I think the art world use of money laundering is a different animal, but I'm glad that they're concerned about that.
00:57:34
Speaker
And it's not this like unregulated free for all.
00:57:37
Speaker
Yeah.
00:57:37
Speaker
And it might, I mean, for the traditional art market, it might change pretty soon.
00:57:41
Speaker
I don't know if you're familiar with the recent legislation, but it, it basically made it so the antiquities are now going to be regulated like
00:57:49
Speaker
securities like stocks and bonds.
00:57:51
Speaker
And the art market somehow kind of like skirted that regulation this time around.
00:57:55
Speaker
But there's definitely people who would like it to extend to art dealers that would have to kind of like follow all the FINRA policies around anti-money laundering.
00:58:04
Speaker
I think there's way too many powerful people in the art market that it's probably not going to happen.
00:58:07
Speaker
I mean, I assume that's why it hasn't yet, right?
00:58:10
Speaker
But the same thing is like, is cryptocurrency a commodity that lives independently from the stock market?
00:58:16
Speaker
Or is it a total function?
00:58:18
Speaker
Or maybe it's a little bit of all of this, of all the cheap money that's gone around.
00:58:22
Speaker
And that once that's out of the system, Bitcoin returns to where it was four years ago.
00:58:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:58:28
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:58:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:58:28
Speaker
I mean, that is a daily conversation amongst people who are invested is like,
00:58:33
Speaker
is this bubble going to pop?
00:58:37
Speaker
Like all bubbles.
00:58:38
Speaker
Yeah, or when is the bubble going to pop is probably the better question.
00:58:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:58:41
Speaker
I mean, built into the whole, our economical system, is the market crash.
00:58:47
Speaker
It's almost a necessary...
00:58:49
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it has to happen.
00:58:50
Speaker
And that place of speculation, to me, I'm really fascinated with because the fact that you could imagine money, put it into the system, and then it creates real impact is like really shocking, right?
00:59:07
Speaker
And the federal policy was literally called qualitative easing, right?
00:59:13
Speaker
We are diminishing the quality of the American dollar.
00:59:18
Speaker
And the direct response to that is inflation.
00:59:20
Speaker
I mean, that's just like 101.
00:59:23
Speaker
But in the meantime, it so my thing the other day was, well, what if if the market crashes and is as bad as it was March 2020, what was accomplished with all of this policymaking if people are now, you know, really, really concerned with the future?
00:59:45
Speaker
And now we have way more inflation.
00:59:47
Speaker
So we're two years ago, plus extra inflation.
00:59:50
Speaker
And we haven't even dealt with the student loan stuff yet.
00:59:53
Speaker
It's been on deferment for the last two years.
00:59:55
Speaker
And people are going to have to start paying those again.
00:59:57
Speaker
And like the eviction stuff has just started happening, right?
00:59:59
Speaker
It's all like, and it's such a no brainer to be like, let's get the wealth, wealth tax.
01:00:05
Speaker
Let's have a child tax credit.
01:00:06
Speaker
Like it literally lifted millions of kids out of poverty.
01:00:09
Speaker
Like why wouldn't you just be like, let's just do that.
01:00:12
Speaker
And the student loan thing also a no brainer.
01:00:14
Speaker
Right.
01:00:14
Speaker
Why not free, free up 50,000, you know, this population from this burden.
01:00:21
Speaker
And so then they can actually participate in the local economy more.
01:00:26
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:26
Speaker
It's a no brainer.
01:00:27
Speaker
Anyway, I think we all agree there.
01:00:29
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:29
Speaker
Perfect.
01:00:30
Speaker
Well, thanks again, Mr. Sloat.
01:00:32
Speaker
All right.
01:00:33
Speaker
Thanks for having me.
01:00:34
Speaker
We'll see you in part two.
01:00:45
Speaker
Arranging Tangerines is recorded, edited, and produced by Lydian Stater, an evolving curatorial platform based in New York City with a focus on the intersection of contemporary and crypto art.
01:00:55
Speaker
You can learn more at lydianstater.co, find images at lydianstaternyc on Instagram, and follow us at lydianstater on Twitter.
01:01:02
Speaker
Thanks to Ben Sloat for taking the time to speak to us this week.
01:01:05
Speaker
If you'd like to learn more about his work, check out his website at bensloat.com.
01:01:08
Speaker
And if you'd like to learn more about the low residency MFA program he directs, you can check out Leslie University's MFA and visual arts program.
01:01:15
Speaker
Big thanks to Tal Juan, who graciously provides our intro music.
01:01:19
Speaker
His albums are available at talwan.bandcamp.com.
01:01:23
Speaker
And thank you to you, listener, for spending your valuable time with us.
01:01:29
Speaker
I just know I don't want to be like you.
01:01:31
Speaker
I know what to do.
01:01:32
Speaker
I don't know what to say.
01:01:33
Speaker
I just know I don't want to be like you.