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The Polymath Experience #21 - Arthemort
96 Plays2 years ago
Arthemort is at the cross roads between traditional art and digital art. He was born in a family passionate about art and got to experience it from an early age and he's also a child of the internet, so it only makes sense that, when he discovered the blockchain, crypto and NFTs in 2018, he would feel a calling to pursue it.
He since then has cofounded Art Crush that has broadcast NFT art to hundreds of thousands of people in Europe, he's helped curate many personal collections and exhibitions and was head of NFTs at Sotheby's for a while.
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Transcript
Introduction to Arthamur Mouwisleva and His Role in Web3 Art
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning GM everyone.
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome back to the Polymath Experience.
00:00:04
Speaker
I'm your host Polymath.
00:00:05
Speaker
Today we have someone who was destined for this life.
00:00:09
Speaker
He's a child of the internet as well as a child of the art world which is a match made in heaven for our market.
00:00:17
Speaker
A lot of people I think, me included, heard about him for the first time when Sotheby's announced that they were
00:00:23
Speaker
that they were hiring him.
00:00:25
Speaker
And I'm looking forward to hearing about that.
00:00:28
Speaker
And for me, you are one of the most recognizable art curator, like traditional art type people that are in Web3 and that are connecting these two spaces.
00:00:40
Speaker
Arthamur, welcome to the show.
00:00:41
Speaker
Arthamur Mouwisleva- Thank you, Poti.
00:00:42
Speaker
Thank you for having me.
00:00:44
Speaker
And yeah, I guess there's a few of us that has those two hats from the art market in the NFT world, but not many of us for sure.
00:00:54
Speaker
People are usually very lucky about their involvement in the art market and stuff like that.
00:01:10
Speaker
And yeah, it's a little story when Sotheby's announced that they hired me, they also by the same occasion doxxed me to everyone, which wasn't the plan.
00:01:21
Speaker
It wasn't the plan.
00:01:23
Speaker
I didn't know that.
00:01:24
Speaker
That was a good way to start out.
00:01:26
Speaker
It wasn't the plan at all.
00:01:31
Speaker
I was at least expecting to dox myself, not being doxed by my employers, but that's how it is.
00:01:39
Speaker
Yeah, once it's done, it's done.
00:01:41
Speaker
But it is tricky.
00:01:43
Speaker
Like even I was not doxed for the longest time and I was struggling with people's identity.
00:01:50
Speaker
We don't really have a clear path for that yet.
00:01:55
Speaker
How is that?
00:01:56
Speaker
How is this time that you did it, Sotheby's and like being at the edge of both of those two worlds?
Arthamur's Journey with Sotheby's and NFT Market Impact
00:02:05
Speaker
Well, it was a bit like I expected, honestly.
00:02:08
Speaker
I mean, I had much more liberty than I did expect, though, but I had plenty of time to prepare myself because I think I applied in February and had like a dozen interviews over the span of like over four months.
00:02:21
Speaker
That was really long.
00:02:23
Speaker
And yeah, I think I ended up having a formal offer in like July.
00:02:28
Speaker
So yeah, it was like our four months of roperting process.
00:02:32
Speaker
So they had a bit enough time to actually think about it.
00:02:36
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, overall, it was cool.
00:02:38
Speaker
Cool experience and the idea was that I wanted to have an impact in the NFT market and I was getting priced out as a car collector from the market and so I was thinking what could I do to have still some impact.
00:02:54
Speaker
And I guess working for a quite established art company that has this sort of institutional reputation in the webview world was a good way to go about it.
00:03:04
Speaker
And especially just for me to have an impact, which was my end.
00:03:08
Speaker
I did it successfully at some scale.
00:03:13
Speaker
So yeah, that was the idea.
00:03:15
Speaker
I joined there because I know this will provide me with further opportunity to support artists and support things I like.
00:03:23
Speaker
That's really cool.
00:03:24
Speaker
And so how, what was it like exactly?
00:03:26
Speaker
What did you do when you were there?
00:03:30
Speaker
What were your days, your weeks like?
00:03:33
Speaker
It depends.
00:03:33
Speaker
I mean, at first I was in charge of setting up the department in Paris.
00:03:38
Speaker
So there was a lot of back and forth about just fiscality and just how to set up the teams and
00:03:44
Speaker
and just system for us to handle sales from Paris, but that took at least six months.
00:03:50
Speaker
So for the first six months, I was mostly working with Hong Kong and with New York.
00:03:54
Speaker
The first thing I did with New York was to manage their Salgado projects.
00:03:59
Speaker
They had in the pipeline for a few years and they were launching, I think, just a month after I joined.
00:04:04
Speaker
It was a lot of time on Discord, a lot of time on strategizing for that means.
00:04:09
Speaker
and dealing with a few technical problems, stuff like that.
00:04:11
Speaker
That was a bit different from what they usually do at Sotheby's because they rarely do drops with mints, etc.
00:04:17
Speaker
They do at times with Sotheby's Metaverse, but that's not a big part of their activities.
00:04:22
Speaker
And from then, it was to work with Hong Kong for a few, what we call consitements.
00:04:28
Speaker
So what they have in auction houses is they have dates for sales, usually three to four months.
00:04:33
Speaker
from the moment they ask it.
00:04:35
Speaker
And you have to consign a few works to match a sort of a targeted price aim, which is usually half a million dollars at the very least, to just have the minimum to make a sales.
00:04:47
Speaker
And so first thing I did, I think, was to ask me if I knew about any Asian NFT artists that could be nice to include in Sotheby's.
00:04:57
Speaker
And I was like, well, of course I know some, but I think there is some people that in the space that specifically work on those topics that might be good to partner with.
00:05:05
Speaker
And so I put them in touch with NFT Asia, which is a sort of artist collective.
00:05:12
Speaker
And for the first time, so they consigned to them a few artworks from Grant Hu and then Ruben Wu and a few artists that they never had at Sotheby's.
00:05:21
Speaker
That's awesome.
00:05:22
Speaker
And it was pretty successful.
00:05:24
Speaker
I mean, the sales went really well and the Grand Tune and Rubenwood fetched pretty interesting amounts.
00:05:31
Speaker
So yeah, and since then, I always try to sort of have a collaborative approach to things, especially with sort of business, because I think even if they do have some sort of reputation,
00:05:41
Speaker
they were still looking and needing some sort of legitimization tools for them.
00:05:46
Speaker
And I think the collaboration with already established initiative in Web3 is a good way to legitimize yourself as an actor within that space.
00:05:55
Speaker
So that was, yeah, for the first, let's say, two months, that was that.
00:06:00
Speaker
I was actually about to organize auction of myself.
00:06:04
Speaker
The first one I did was in, in New York.
00:06:07
Speaker
It was the, in January, 2023 was the Delucris solo auction.
00:06:12
Speaker
And whenever you do that, you do pretty much, yeah, Delucris is an artist I've been working for a
00:06:17
Speaker
few years now.
00:06:17
Speaker
I didn't know that.
00:06:18
Speaker
I saw him in your wallet and I was in a group that pushed him heavily and I was actually considering buying some pieces for a while.
00:06:28
Speaker
Yeah, he's a... First, I'm working on a solo show for him to be held in Paris sometime.
Tezos and Accessibility in the NFT Space
00:06:35
Speaker
Oh!
00:06:35
Speaker
Okay.
00:06:35
Speaker
What would you... What would be your...
00:06:44
Speaker
like your go-to buy from Delucrisse right now?
00:06:48
Speaker
Like if you didn't have like that big of a budget, so where would you start?
00:06:54
Speaker
Well, that's what I did recently.
00:06:55
Speaker
A few weeks ago, I spent 11,000 Tezos on a work from Delucrisse.
00:07:02
Speaker
But it's actually something you buy in Tezos, but you actually get it if.
00:07:06
Speaker
And I thought Tezos were way much down than ETH was.
00:07:10
Speaker
So it was a bit of an arbitrage situation between ETH and Tezos.
00:07:14
Speaker
There is a specific edition called the Corruption Serum.
00:07:18
Speaker
And if you buy it, you can corrupt one Tezos edition and make it a one-on-one on ETH.
00:07:26
Speaker
Can you show us the pieces?
00:07:29
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:07:30
Speaker
I've been in this space for a while too, so I've known about Tezos for a long time and especially because they're French, right?
00:07:38
Speaker
Swiss.
00:07:40
Speaker
Wow, close enough.
00:07:42
Speaker
Yeah, I remember seeing them at a conference in Paris where Xavier Niel and the whole shebang was there and I never... I just never got it.
00:07:56
Speaker
Even to this day, now that I have a little bit more... I took a little bit more of a step back, I don't understand what they're doing.
00:08:04
Speaker
I don't see the appeal per se.
00:08:06
Speaker
So...
00:08:07
Speaker
That's an entire debate of its own, I'd say.
00:08:11
Speaker
I mean, Tezos has had trouble literally since it started.
00:08:15
Speaker
It was one of the largest ICO ever.
00:08:18
Speaker
And it was one of the very much critical ICO because it did not give out any token from ICO investors.
00:08:25
Speaker
And so there was a drama and it's difficult to mint and to literally write codes on Tezos as well.
00:08:34
Speaker
And Tezos is not that supportive of its artistic environment, but the reason why Tezos has become such an important place for NFT is because of Ikenuk and Rafael Lima being a Brazilian artist and the idea that because Minkas were so inexpensive,
00:08:51
Speaker
it opened up the gate to a lot of artists from developing countries that wouldn't be able to mint NFT on ETH because back then, you know, it would cost you 30 or 40 bucks to mint NFT on ETH.
00:09:03
Speaker
If you're a guy that is from, you know, Indonesia, I think the average monthly salary in Indonesia is something like 200 bucks.
00:09:11
Speaker
So spending, you know, a quarter, 20% of your monthly salary and just minting on NFT,
00:09:18
Speaker
is a decrease.
00:09:20
Speaker
So most of those artists went to Tezos because it would cost them just a fraction of a cent to do so.
00:09:26
Speaker
And that's how this sort of artistical ecosystem on Tezos actually happened.
00:09:31
Speaker
It's mostly artists from Brazil, from South America, from Africa, from Southeast Asia and Middle East and some places where they don't really have much income.
00:09:41
Speaker
That's good.
00:09:41
Speaker
I'll ask for a few names.
00:09:43
Speaker
You know what?
00:09:44
Speaker
I'm going to take this as a sign.
00:09:45
Speaker
I'm going to figure out how to bridge some Tezos and I'll ask you for names and I'll go collect some something.
00:09:55
Speaker
Sure thing.
00:09:55
Speaker
You can check out my, if you do type artemore.tez, you will see all my connections on Tezos as well.
00:10:01
Speaker
So yeah, the Serum of Delucris works like that.
00:10:04
Speaker
You got a correction.
00:10:05
Speaker
You have an addition on Tezos.
00:10:08
Speaker
You
00:10:09
Speaker
By the serum, it creates a custom 101 on Eve.
00:10:14
Speaker
And from there, you so there's all the eligible monster you can you can have and can use.
00:10:20
Speaker
I've corrupted this one, which is an addition of five.
00:10:24
Speaker
And the green one, the loudspeaker.
00:10:26
Speaker
Yeah, the loudspeakers to produce what we call the mega speakers that I will show you on the crease.
00:10:34
Speaker
And his style is just
00:10:37
Speaker
Yeah, it's very special.
00:10:39
Speaker
It does manage really well all this sort of mechanic and fusion and evolution and just the sort of utility aspect that arts often is lacking.
00:10:49
Speaker
It does manage that quite well.
00:10:52
Speaker
So you'll see right there how that works.
00:10:56
Speaker
So you have this original one, then it makes a custom one.
00:10:59
Speaker
It's usually double or just some sort of extension of it.
00:11:04
Speaker
And yeah, so that's a way to buy literally if artwork from the Lucreese for
00:11:13
Speaker
for Tezos and I spent so Elevent Tezos was something around six seven thousand euros and you know his floor on E4 101 is you know monster is but is at least eight nine ETH and then his additional usually roughly one to two ETH
00:11:33
Speaker
So you have to effectively getting a one on one that is custom, that is one of his most sought after series.
00:11:40
Speaker
Anything with the red is usually some sort of considered premium in a way.
00:11:44
Speaker
And you're getting it for just, I guess, discount, but just you're getting it for, I think, pretty affordable prices when you consider everything.
00:11:54
Speaker
But otherwise, this Mon series is already nice, a pretty nice edition.
00:11:58
Speaker
And the best of the best is, of course, the Monster series, but those are usually retailing between $30,000 to $35,000.
00:12:05
Speaker
So it's not for everyone.
00:12:07
Speaker
At least people listening are already getting value because they know of at least the first few ones will get an interesting arbitrage opportunity.
00:12:16
Speaker
And so you do keep the edition on Tezos as well.
00:12:20
Speaker
You just get the syrup sending back.
00:12:22
Speaker
So that's the only thing you lose within the collection.
00:12:25
Speaker
But you actually don't burn the Tezos edition, which can be expensive at times.
00:12:30
Speaker
Well, that's really cool to know.
00:12:32
Speaker
Let's go back a little bit.
00:12:34
Speaker
Because when we were talking, the two things that obviously pop out is your background in the art world, the fact that you've been raised around this, that you've probably
00:12:48
Speaker
like seen things, heard things, learned things that most people who don't, don't.
00:12:52
Speaker
Like you're an internet child.
00:12:55
Speaker
You were born with it and you saw it evolve.
00:12:58
Speaker
And so both of these things, I'd bet heavily impacted who you are today as a person and like primed you.
00:13:08
Speaker
prepared you for the Web3 world.
00:13:12
Speaker
Can you like recollect in either of those specific moments, specific things that you learned, specific things that you went through that really prepared you for that?
00:13:23
Speaker
some
Arthamur's Art and Blockchain Background
00:13:24
Speaker
of the key dates were uh so i'm from like a very privileged background and my parents do have like two passion work that way that was traveling and collecting contemporary art pretty much but it was those are really two exclusive passions so they didn't necessarily sort of did any
00:13:42
Speaker
sort of education about it or, you know, pedagogy or whatever.
00:13:45
Speaker
So it was really up to us to get interested into it.
00:13:47
Speaker
The first sort of... Sorry, I keep getting notifications.
00:13:53
Speaker
So yeah, one of the first things that was most important to me was when I was a child, my parents got me to, brought me to the Tate Museum when there was the weather project from artist Olaf Orelia-Sohn.
00:14:06
Speaker
And since then, this artist has been one of my favorite artists ever.
00:14:09
Speaker
And this project is well known with the art history and just is considered as a major exhibition that happened in the 21st century.
00:14:19
Speaker
It was all immaterial in a way.
00:14:21
Speaker
So it's an installation that just played with lights.
00:14:24
Speaker
It's a huge...
00:14:26
Speaker
orange sun that this specific light spectrum has the specificity to take away all color all other colors from the visible spectrum so when you got there everything is black your skins your your clothes your it's really odd it's really hard experiences um so that was the first sort of approach to me of like a sort of a Erika light bulb moments um
00:14:47
Speaker
that I was getting into art.
00:14:51
Speaker
And after that, the other sort of key date was the Bill Viola exhibition in the Grand Palais in 2014.
00:14:59
Speaker
That was the first time I saw video art, digital art presented in a museum-grade exhibition with a monumental display and just something you could say, oh, that's video, but that's actually, you know,
00:15:12
Speaker
art that deserves to be in a museum.
00:15:14
Speaker
So that was something rare as well.
00:15:16
Speaker
And that isn't, you know, you don't see many common stories.
00:15:22
Speaker
And after that, I guess the other big moment was just crypto kitties and just, you know,
00:15:28
Speaker
getting, you know, turning 18, sort of thinking about what I was going to be working in, what was going to be my vocation, things like that.
00:15:37
Speaker
This came from mostly a passion and sort of a fascination for counterfeitures, the people that make fake artwork.
00:15:46
Speaker
And there was this other guy that was really fascinated by this national authenticity counterfeitures that was talking about blockchain back then.
00:15:56
Speaker
as early as in 2016.
00:15:58
Speaker
His name was Jason Bailey, also known as ArtNome.
00:16:01
Speaker
He's one of the first person I followed online talking about just blockchain and art and provenance tracking and the possibilities and all those different notions.
00:16:10
Speaker
And so that's sort of how I started to get interested in the application of blockchain to the art market.
00:16:16
Speaker
And just, you know, I was back then, I was just entering a sort of bachelor in business.
00:16:22
Speaker
I was really bored there and I didn't really got really interested by anything there, but I took that opportunity that I had many internships too.
00:16:29
Speaker
intern and galleries, auction houses, and also blockchain related art company.
00:16:35
Speaker
There was a few out there in 2017, 2018 that launched with several ICO and stuff like that.
00:16:41
Speaker
So like Codex Protocol, Myasenas, you add additional, you add Ascribe, even SuperRar were just launching back then and things like that.
00:16:51
Speaker
They did the presentation at the Arcan Tech Summit by Christie's in 2018, I believe.
00:16:57
Speaker
that I sadly missed because I was working as an intern back then.
00:17:01
Speaker
It's too bad because I missed out on the Lost Rubbies giveaway.
00:17:05
Speaker
Those are worth like, I don't know, half a million now.
00:17:09
Speaker
Wow.
00:17:09
Speaker
An internship there.
00:17:11
Speaker
Yeah, if you don't know the story of the Lost Rubbies, it's quite fascinating.
00:17:13
Speaker
So there was...
00:17:15
Speaker
The launch of SuperRAR presented with Jason Bailey, George Vag, I think a few others, people like that, Bernardine Borcher that had Vastery.
00:17:23
Speaker
And it's the first mint on SuperRAR.
00:17:25
Speaker
And so they distributed 300 cards with a sort of QR code back to it.
00:17:29
Speaker
You can claim an NFT.
00:17:31
Speaker
Most people don't understand what it was.
00:17:32
Speaker
Most people, I guess, threw away the card or discard it.
00:17:36
Speaker
And so out of the 300 that was ever distributed, only 20, 23 were 20 or 23, something like that, were minted.
00:17:44
Speaker
So it's now has some sort of historical value to show how the art market back then didn't understand anything about Web3, NFT and things like that.
00:17:53
Speaker
So it has become sort of historical.
00:17:55
Speaker
Oh, that's insane.
00:17:57
Speaker
And I have a friend that actually did an internship on the event, kept the card and only claimed it before.
00:18:03
Speaker
I think a few years ago when I asked her about it, when she told me she internet on the events and she literally is on one NFT and that's a lost Robbie.
00:18:11
Speaker
So it's literally worth half a million dollars and things like that.
00:18:17
Speaker
So yeah, it was literally the treasure in an attic sort of story because it was left in a bag in an attic.
00:18:24
Speaker
So, yeah, it was sort of treasure found, wasn't expected.
00:18:29
Speaker
But yeah, so let's get all things out like key dates of my involvements.
00:18:34
Speaker
And yeah, the last one, I guess, was when people did his first mint on NFT Gateway, where he technically has another mint.
00:18:42
Speaker
that was an auction on ETHTC sometime.
00:18:45
Speaker
That's just anecdotic.
00:18:46
Speaker
But this first Consider Genesis Mint is edition of Project is Bullshit on FT Gateway.
00:18:52
Speaker
And I just, you know, because I knew about blockchain and art and stuff, whenever he saw it, he told me that it
00:18:58
Speaker
He sort of shared on Instagram that he was doing NFT and that he didn't really understand or know what he was about, but he was just pretty much digital art on the blockchain.
00:19:07
Speaker
So things sort of clicked and so I sort of started collecting NFT gateway pretty much in mid 2020.
00:19:14
Speaker
And before that, I just collected a few crypto art projects that were not NFT.
00:19:20
Speaker
But yeah, that's the gist of it.
00:19:22
Speaker
And I've seen, I remember the first exhibition of CryptoPunk at the Kate Vaas Gallery, but there's dates like that and things that, yeah, important dates in both the history of crypto art and just of my involvement in art, digital art, blockchain arts, and then NFTs.
00:19:37
Speaker
Hey there, it's me again.
00:19:39
Speaker
If you're enjoying the content, you're going to enjoy this because you're going to have the ability to support us.
00:19:44
Speaker
I want to tell you about our partner Wasabi Protocol.
00:19:48
Speaker
It's an option based protocol that allows people to make bets on certain NFT collections.
00:19:56
Speaker
But that's not all.
00:19:57
Speaker
Because what is right now NFTs could be anything in the future that is tokenized.
00:20:02
Speaker
They are on the brink of powering one of the most important layers of the future financial markets.
00:20:09
Speaker
I'll give you a couple examples of how you can use it right now.
00:20:12
Speaker
Imagine you have an NFT that's gained a lot of value because there's been a speculative
00:20:17
Speaker
hike and you want to keep that NFT because it's dear to you but you also want to capture some of its value after it's increased a lot you could bet that the price will decrease by staking a little bit of capital and capture some of that value on the way down which means that you get both
00:20:40
Speaker
of those aspects that are important to you.
00:20:44
Speaker
You get money, but you also get to participate.
00:20:48
Speaker
the second one is if you're convinced that a collection is going to go up you can bet on that by risking some capital and not the price of the whole asset if you don't have it go check it out the links are in the description wasabi.xyz r slash the polymath experience thank you so much for checking them out and thank you so much for using that referral link if you do
00:21:13
Speaker
Always do your research.
Art and NFTs: Perspectives and Paradoxes
00:21:15
Speaker
Only use tools and amounts that you're comfortable with.
00:21:18
Speaker
Remember that all financial investments carry risk.
00:21:22
Speaker
And back to the episode now.
00:21:23
Speaker
It's awesome because it really, yeah, you were there at key dates and key times and not in the... It's kind of cool to see stories that are outside of the holy shit, let's get a lot of money narrative.
00:21:41
Speaker
And really, like, you know, you went through the deep end and, yeah, I got a really cool story to tell.
00:21:49
Speaker
And by being around art all the time, you must have learned things, even if there was not, like...
00:21:59
Speaker
you know, an actual, hey, kids, sit down and let us tell you about art and art collecting by your parents.
00:22:07
Speaker
You have like you had to pick up a few things.
00:22:09
Speaker
And so there has to be things that come more naturally to you than it does other people.
00:22:15
Speaker
Because this wave has brought in a lot of people who want to trade, but also want to collect.
00:22:23
Speaker
And what did you learn from
00:22:27
Speaker
that you think would help them?
00:22:30
Speaker
Me too.
00:22:31
Speaker
I'm in that wave.
00:22:33
Speaker
I guess I've didn't learn detective things, but I've learned it quite realistically in a way.
00:22:38
Speaker
So you make connections you don't even realize you do.
00:22:41
Speaker
There's a notion of just, you know, training your eyes for the art as well.
00:22:45
Speaker
So I guess that, you know, if you're surrounded by great art, you by definition train your eye.
00:22:51
Speaker
good things and so you tend to be more capable of recognizing interesting stuff and yeah just this notion of flair and eyes that you know are inherent to the art world those are things that might have benefit through years of exposure to those notions to those artists to exhibition to things like that and just I guess you know just basic knowledge on some practice in the art market that some people that start out are still a bit naive about but
00:23:17
Speaker
about sort of what's going on behind the curtains.
00:23:21
Speaker
And he also, I guess, helped me not being too intimidated by the art world because I think that's something most people are really intimidated by art and intimidated by the art world.
00:23:31
Speaker
They don't, you know, they wouldn't imagine themselves pushing the door of a gallery or going to an auction houses.
00:23:36
Speaker
even though it's free and anyone can join and if I can attend any auction offices and you open any sales.
00:23:43
Speaker
There's even some people that are known to be just going from exhibition to exhibition just to eat at the buffet, for example.
00:23:52
Speaker
That's a good call.
00:23:53
Speaker
Yeah, there's some people like my mom used to do that when she went to, she had a scholarship to attend a Waltron business school.
00:24:00
Speaker
And she went there and at the time, I think, you know, she was 65.
00:24:04
Speaker
At the time, the dollars were really strong.
00:24:07
Speaker
And so she didn't have much buying powers in euros than she expected.
00:24:11
Speaker
And so she used to go from gallery opening to gallery opening just to eat because she could barely afford food.
00:24:20
Speaker
So there's a bunch of people that do that.
00:24:22
Speaker
That's cool.
00:24:24
Speaker
Grasshopping, literally just hopping from exhibition to exhibition just to eat.
00:24:29
Speaker
So it just shows that anyone can join an exhibition at any age you can be dressed.
00:24:34
Speaker
You can be dressed up as a bump.
00:24:36
Speaker
That doesn't impact anything.
00:24:38
Speaker
Nobody will ever...
00:24:41
Speaker
prevent you to enter a gallery on the opening date or something like that.
00:24:45
Speaker
It's just no private invitation.
00:24:47
Speaker
It's always free and in public.
00:24:49
Speaker
Oh, that's cool.
00:24:50
Speaker
That's I'll keep that in mind.
00:24:52
Speaker
What, what do you, why do you think you, you talked about some people maybe being naive about certain things?
00:24:58
Speaker
What did you have in mind?
00:24:59
Speaker
Well, you know, some people think that you just need to be great art to be, to be a great artist to be successful, but you know, there's sometimes there's a lot of mechanism system that you, we don't really realize exist.
00:25:11
Speaker
For example, some galleries, they have one best selling artist that sort of enable them to present other artists.
00:25:19
Speaker
And sometimes you have a waiting list.
00:25:22
Speaker
You can be a billionaire.
00:25:24
Speaker
It doesn't mean you can buy whatever you want on the art world.
00:25:29
Speaker
You need to be on the list, you need to be in the small paper of the galleries to do so.
00:25:34
Speaker
It's a bit like, you know, when you want to buy a really luxury handbag or watches, there's a list of waiting and sometimes you have to buy something else in order to buy these things you wanted to have.
00:25:46
Speaker
So there's all those systems that are a bit odd, that are a bit peculiar to the art world that we just don't realize did exist.
00:25:55
Speaker
But yeah, it's typical, for example, that let's say you want to buy a termineers piece from whichever gallery, they will tell you, well, if you want that piece, you must buy this other piece from that small artist we have in the gallery.
00:26:07
Speaker
Otherwise, I won't sell it to you.
00:26:09
Speaker
So there's all the system like that, that brurs and makes this world really obscure.
00:26:16
Speaker
And we just think that people have the money, they buy what they want.
00:26:21
Speaker
That's not necessarily true in the primary market base.
00:26:25
Speaker
Yeah, that's some of the things that are really peculiar against the art world.
00:26:29
Speaker
That's so interesting.
00:26:30
Speaker
Yeah, there's really... I completely understand the naivete thing because it's like when you're an entrepreneur and you think you only need to create a great product in order to succeed, and it's not the case.
00:26:46
Speaker
There's always a human component.
00:26:48
Speaker
There's always a connection network component.
00:26:50
Speaker
Do you see these types of...
00:26:53
Speaker
like dynamics happen in the now with this like burgeoning web free art space.
00:27:01
Speaker
Yeah, most most certainly so.
00:27:03
Speaker
I mean, it's
00:27:05
Speaker
The NFC space is paradoxical in many aspects.
00:27:08
Speaker
One, especially in the narrative of adoption and mass adoption, it's all about embodying people, but in the same time, it's all about exclusivity.
00:27:17
Speaker
And so those things are a bit paradoxical.
00:27:19
Speaker
You either be, you know, you are either very open or very exclusive and the NFC space pretend to do both.
00:27:26
Speaker
So, and the same thing with art, you know, this notion of art should be democratized, but in the same times, only really wealthy people are actually in
00:27:35
Speaker
interacting with it or being involved with it.
00:27:39
Speaker
So yeah, there's this notion, for example, but I'm sure there's plenty of other parallels we can do.
00:27:43
Speaker
But yeah, the NFT market, even though it's quite a parallel market, actually have a lot of the same actors involved within it, actually have a lot of the same mechanism, practice, and are closer from each other than both might think, actually.
00:28:00
Speaker
So yeah, that certainly is, I think, something that
00:28:03
Speaker
we're also being reinforced moving on as the market sort of concentrate on specific collection and sort of, yeah, reinforce itself.
00:28:14
Speaker
So yeah, there's a lot of parallels to be made on this.
00:28:16
Speaker
It's quite just same thing, but different in a way.
00:28:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:22
Speaker
If you were, uh, if you were president of the Web3 art space, what would you do?
00:28:27
Speaker
What would you do different?
00:28:28
Speaker
Like what would be your laws so that we have like, I don't know, better experience for collectors, better experience for artists?
Future Visions for NFTs in Web3 Art Space
00:28:36
Speaker
Um, I guess in force enforcing royalties actually on chain would be nice because so far it's just on platform and you know, it's been quite a,
00:28:46
Speaker
a roller coaster on that topic about what should be done and what's, how should it be done, et cetera.
00:28:54
Speaker
That would be against the first thing.
00:28:56
Speaker
And then also sort of stop having censorship on NFC because there's plenty, there is no open C whenever they receive a DMCA, even if it's an artwork that Fall Interfair used to just delist it right on and suppress it.
00:29:14
Speaker
without getting the artist any notice or any chances to
00:29:19
Speaker
contest that TMCA request, which is to do have that opportunity in the trade art world.
00:29:24
Speaker
So I don't see why they don't say in what you eat.
00:29:26
Speaker
It seems ridiculous.
00:29:28
Speaker
You know, OpenSea also prevents Iranian artists to means prevent bunch of nationalities to participate in it to it.
00:29:36
Speaker
And it's most of the time the nationalities that most need it.
00:29:39
Speaker
I did a few exhibition about Middle East and North Africa about how NFT was a tool of emancipation, was a tool of, you know,
00:29:47
Speaker
to counteract censorship and state control to fiat currency.
00:29:53
Speaker
So they are sort of the country that most need it and they don't get the chance to participate in it.
00:29:59
Speaker
And I guess the last sort of measure I would have is try to sort of make it, make the space more polyglots.
00:30:07
Speaker
It's really anglophone.
00:30:09
Speaker
And if you're someone that's from a country where, you know, the level of English is not that, that,
00:30:15
Speaker
that important.
00:30:15
Speaker
How do you expect a bonding?
00:30:18
Speaker
Those people will never be able to do so.
00:30:20
Speaker
I'm not even sure the Bitcoin white paper is translated in Arabic and in that many languages itself.
00:30:27
Speaker
Might be, I might say something wrong, but if you're an Arabic speaking person and you're trying to find documentation on NFT, good luck.
00:30:35
Speaker
You'll not find any.
00:30:36
Speaker
What was that experience like working on those exhibits, working with these artists from countries that are not in the mainstream current of English speaking?
00:30:49
Speaker
Because you've worked in traditional art, you work in hyped web3 arts, and you've worked in now more humanitarian.
00:30:59
Speaker
How was the perception of that art?
00:31:03
Speaker
How did it do?
00:31:04
Speaker
So I did that exhibition quite early on.
00:31:06
Speaker
It was at the Menard Art Fair.
00:31:09
Speaker
So it's an art fair that focuses on Middle East and North Africa.
00:31:13
Speaker
It was early 2021, I believe.
00:31:16
Speaker
So February or March 2021.
00:31:17
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:31:18
Speaker
So it was quite early on, but even back then, those artists felt like a bit on the sideline of this entire movement because they didn't really speak good English.
00:31:27
Speaker
They were in a very different situation.
00:31:30
Speaker
But the thing that came clear to me that there was an opportunity for them that was just not a financial tool for them, but it was pretty good.
00:31:37
Speaker
something else one of the example that was the most striking was when i was working with kurdish artists uh you know in kurdistan when you're you're born into an actual turkey they strip you out of your kurdish name they give you a turkish name so most of the artists the first time they were about to sign artwork with their real kurdish name was in nft because they wouldn't be able to do it
00:32:02
Speaker
in the national in Turkey because they were an ostracized and, you know, I mean, we know the Kurdish situation with Turkey, it's quite difficult.
00:32:12
Speaker
And so for them, it was really something else than just financial tool.
00:32:16
Speaker
It was a way for them to actually exist with their complexity as individual
00:32:21
Speaker
and to live free.
00:32:23
Speaker
And one of the examples was one artist that flee Syria during the war against ISIS, rather than, you know, traversing Middle East and the Mediterranean Sea with cash and jewelry in his pocket.
00:32:35
Speaker
He actually bought EVE, and so, because he bought it at early 2020, and it was a really good situation when it pumped during the bull run.
00:32:43
Speaker
So, you know, that's one of the few stories I know of a refugee that
00:32:48
Speaker
go away from his home because it's a war zone and end up in Europe being a millionaire.
00:32:56
Speaker
Can you give me I want to have him on the podcast.
00:32:59
Speaker
That would be insane.
00:33:01
Speaker
That would be really cool story asking, you know, people that are in artists in the Xenium, they sometimes don't really want to be recognized.
00:33:09
Speaker
I can ask him, but it's a peculiar situation.
00:33:13
Speaker
They're really touchy about sometimes.
00:33:15
Speaker
So
00:33:16
Speaker
Got to be mindful of that, but I can show.
00:33:18
Speaker
Yeah, of course.
00:33:19
Speaker
Ask him to participate if he's up to it, for sure.
00:33:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:23
Speaker
And AI is going to do a lot of good, I think, because it's going to break down that barrier of language.
00:33:30
Speaker
It's going to allow... We're not completely there yet because the costs of...
00:33:35
Speaker
I was talking to a company called Wondercraft who they can very seamlessly take my voice in English and transcribe it into Spanish or French.
00:33:46
Speaker
But it's like for a podcast episode, it would cost them like $300.
00:33:50
Speaker
So it's not really doable.
00:33:54
Speaker
But in the coming years, the cost is going to go way down.
00:33:57
Speaker
And so you're going to have people from Africa who don't speak a word of English who are seamlessly participating in that market.
00:34:04
Speaker
And so when you have an open financial system and you have an open technological system that breaks down the language barrier, then we could see some real magic happen, I think.
00:34:16
Speaker
Hopefully so, but it's crazy.
00:34:18
Speaker
We have to wait on AI to do so.
00:34:20
Speaker
I feel this is part of the idea.
00:34:23
Speaker
I know.
00:34:23
Speaker
Don't start me on that.
00:34:24
Speaker
I'm really surprised that it hasn't been done already, to be honest.
00:34:28
Speaker
But yeah, surely it will help.
00:34:30
Speaker
And that's most of the time how I was interacting with those artists because we were writing to each other in English.
00:34:35
Speaker
They were mostly using Google Cloud to...
00:34:38
Speaker
sort of exchange with me uh so yeah it facilitated the exchange but you know even though with google trad and some tools there's still some miscommunication happening a few mishaps so that's part of it but that will surely helps hopefully so i didn't really thought about it this way but now that you mention it makes sense yeah
00:35:00
Speaker
And now that you say what you said, it's nuts that I'm now counting on machines to do that because it is part of the ethos, but I guess it's still like...
00:35:13
Speaker
We're greedy little humans and we care about the next big thing, the next big shiny thing.
00:35:20
Speaker
And so if it's too much hassle to understand what's happening or to make ourselves understood, then yeah, we don't do it and we focus on something that we do understand.
00:35:31
Speaker
What is art?
00:35:33
Speaker
What for you is art and why do people buy it?
00:35:37
Speaker
Because I know that psychology is one of those things that you also like to fuck around with.
00:35:42
Speaker
So what is it and why?
00:35:44
Speaker
So the question, what is art?
00:35:45
Speaker
I'm sort of trying to disregard
Motivations Behind Art Collection
00:35:47
Speaker
it a bit.
00:35:47
Speaker
I mean, it's been a question of art history for as long, you know, sort of, you know, a bite from the Dushantien
00:35:55
Speaker
definition of art being whatever an artist decided is, as long as you signed it and as an artist's equivalent to it.
00:36:03
Speaker
It can be a urinoir, it can be a toilet, it can be whatever you want as long as you decide it is.
00:36:09
Speaker
And then on why people do
00:36:11
Speaker
I often refer to the theory of the sociologue Bourdieu, which is a French sociologue, and the notion of cultural, social, and financial capital, being which that every individual with a high financial capital tend to use that financial capital to acquire and gain social and cultural capital.
00:36:31
Speaker
And that's especially to anyone.
00:36:32
Speaker
France, I believe, where, you know, if you look at the billionaires in France, they all are involved in the cultural world.
00:36:39
Speaker
Patrick Drahi owns Sotheby's, Francois Pinault owns Christie's, and then you have, you know, the guy from LVMH, Bernard Arnault, that has the LVMH Foundation in Paris.
00:36:52
Speaker
Pino also has the Bourse of Commerce, so they all have their own little private museum.
00:36:56
Speaker
And I think that's because in France, being rich as fuck is not enough to be respected.
00:37:01
Speaker
In the US, if you have a ton of money, people respect you, think you are successful, think that you must be really smart, etc.
00:37:08
Speaker
In France, we do value still a lot the fact that you can be accepted within intellectual circles.
00:37:14
Speaker
And I think that's the objective of many billionaires in France and many people that have wealth.
00:37:19
Speaker
is to also be able to be part of a higher cultural social life.
00:37:25
Speaker
And yeah, it's like all people make fun of like the traders in, you know, in La Défense that makes a ton of money, but go back to the house alone with the little pasta box and stuff.
00:37:36
Speaker
And this life seems absurd to us because to us, it's something like they don't actually believe.
00:37:42
Speaker
In the US, they will be regarded as, you know, very respected individual and they might be inviting stuff, etc.
00:37:48
Speaker
So,
00:37:49
Speaker
I guess, yeah, in France, depending on the country and culture, we do value differently social, cultural, and financial capital.
00:37:56
Speaker
But the one thing that is for sure is that anyone with high financial capital at some point need to use that capital to acquire other things to have either an impact on the world.
00:38:06
Speaker
But, you know, if you're donating to save the baby seals, that might acquire you a lot of social capital and compassion and, you know, sort of...
00:38:15
Speaker
something that people actually like you.
00:38:17
Speaker
And if you're someone that has a bit more involved in art, if you finance whatever art project and stuff like that, that can get you a bit of social point as well.
00:38:27
Speaker
So I think there's a lot to it, but then there's the specific case of true art collectors that are
00:38:33
Speaker
Inamely, people with a mental problem, which is, you know, an obsessive, compulsive disorder of buying out work and accumulating stuff.
00:38:43
Speaker
So there are specific species.
00:38:45
Speaker
And honestly, it's, yeah, it's at some point a psychological problem that are socially accepted.
00:38:53
Speaker
But it's, yeah.
00:38:54
Speaker
Yeah.
00:38:55
Speaker
It's almost like a Diogen syndrome.
00:38:57
Speaker
It's an accumulative, compulsive disorder that makes it so that you cannot refrain yourself from buying artwork and acquiring a lot of art and stuff like that.
00:39:06
Speaker
Most of the art collectors, they have more artwork than they can hang on their wall.
00:39:09
Speaker
And at this point, I think truly are art collectors.
00:39:12
Speaker
And there's also the notion of building a narrative around your collection.
00:39:15
Speaker
I mean, all those different aspects you need to take into account.
00:39:20
Speaker
But I think that's...
00:39:22
Speaker
In the gist of it, the reason people do buy hearts, depending on the person.
00:39:26
Speaker
That's crazy.
00:39:27
Speaker
It's funny because if I had to answer in just a few words, it would be to make more money.
00:39:33
Speaker
And you can get tax rebates, right?
00:39:36
Speaker
Or there are tax implications sometimes.
00:39:40
Speaker
Depends on the country, but there are less advantages that you might think.
00:39:46
Speaker
The most interesting thing about that is that art is not taxed from patrimonial.
00:39:51
Speaker
So if you actually buy a yacht or a car, you pay taxes on it every year because that's part of the capitals.
00:39:57
Speaker
But effectively, fiscally at least, artwork is considered just as cash on the wall.
00:40:04
Speaker
Pretty much that's what it is.
00:40:05
Speaker
It's just cash on the wall.
00:40:07
Speaker
And so you only pay tax.
00:40:09
Speaker
You can get a tax rebate on it under a very specific condition that I don't have really in mind right now.
00:40:16
Speaker
And they're usually on the resale part of it, on your pre-value that you get tax rebate, but you actually do pay taxes when you buy it.
00:40:23
Speaker
So it's not like a tax or anything like money.
00:40:25
Speaker
as people think.
00:40:27
Speaker
You can do donation to a museum, but out of 200 possible donations that were done to a museum, only 20 were accepted last year at least.
00:40:35
Speaker
So it's not something that is super common either.
00:40:39
Speaker
So it's case-by-case basis, but no.
00:40:41
Speaker
Usually,
00:40:42
Speaker
There is very few people that buy artwork to make money.
00:40:44
Speaker
They usually buy artworks to, yeah, sort of reduce the patrimonial and so therefore reduce their tax imposition at some point.
00:40:52
Speaker
But it's not, no, I'm sure there's others better way to do it.
00:40:57
Speaker
And I did my thesis on art as an investment, and I compared the performance of art investment funds in comparison to the stock market on the same period.
00:41:07
Speaker
And the conclusion was the stock market always outperform art investment funds on the same period.
00:41:13
Speaker
So if you actually want to make money, art is not the best investment at all, honestly.
00:41:17
Speaker
you do have this one out of 100 chance of finding an artist that really pop off.
00:41:22
Speaker
And then, yes, this will cover most of the losses you make on the other purchase.
00:41:27
Speaker
But it's a bit of a casino game here.
00:41:29
Speaker
It's a lottery game, which, you know, there's nobody that really can assure you that this artist will be worth 10 times more in 2, 5, 10 years.
00:41:37
Speaker
Anyone that tells you that is lying to you.
00:41:40
Speaker
But, yeah, it's mostly, it's rather to acquire the social and cultural capital rather than
00:41:46
Speaker
we acquire more financial capital might not be super right.
00:41:50
Speaker
And so what do you make of what's happening here?
00:41:53
Speaker
Cause I'm like, I'm going to throw in an outrageous number, but I, I, I'd bet that 70 or 80% of the people buying art, at least on Ethan in our space are in it because they're expecting it to gain value and to resell it later.
00:42:11
Speaker
Yeah, but that's the case for collectibles.
00:42:13
Speaker
I mean, just like collectibles market is not the same thing as the NFT art market.
00:42:19
Speaker
And collectibles like, you know, Artifact and CryptoPunks and Bordape, they have a very different approach to it.
00:42:26
Speaker
It's not artwork.
00:42:28
Speaker
And just like if you're buying collection cards or Pokemon cards or handbags or watches,
00:42:36
Speaker
People that do buy watches this day, they buy it for the potential resale value, they do fine with it.
00:42:43
Speaker
There's a bit of a flex aspect to it as well.
00:42:45
Speaker
So there's this notion of social capital too.
00:42:47
Speaker
But this approach of financial gain is more specific to collectibles market than the NFT art one.
00:42:54
Speaker
And even long-form generative art and collection like the Fidenza and Ringer, because of their large supply,
00:43:01
Speaker
is a bit different from one-on-one art and, you know, small series and small edition.
00:43:06
Speaker
So they have market elasticity in Ocean that are closer to the collectibles market than the actual art market.
00:43:12
Speaker
So there is that, but I mean, the reason for it is also there was the bull one,
00:43:16
Speaker
speculative bubble can make it makes sense for them i guess uh to leverage those different systems and you know flip is existing as well but you often have contract that prevents you to sell stuff right on or right after you bought it so just because it was the far west and it was starting out it was a free fall and you know
00:43:36
Speaker
People that want money came in and make money, whichever way they could, but their intention always was financial gain for sure.
00:43:46
Speaker
So then it's a game of hot potatoes, you know, it's whichever is the last one to all the potatoes that get browns.
00:43:53
Speaker
There's not much to it that is art related, to be honest.
Roles of Curators vs. Advisors in the Art World
00:43:57
Speaker
It's just speculative market.
00:43:59
Speaker
And so what does that make you?
00:44:03
Speaker
as a as a curator what's your role if it's not to because i i sort of pictured it as a like art advisor and and in that sense was here's art that's going to gain value in the future but you're saying that that's not the case so what's the role of art curators
00:44:21
Speaker
Well, first, I'm starting to say less and less than I'm an art curator because just to give you an example for the exhibition I did at Paris Photo two weeks ago, the curation took me three hours.
00:44:33
Speaker
The exhibition to organize took me three weeks.
00:44:36
Speaker
So curation is a small part of the job I do.
00:44:40
Speaker
But the difference is it's a need.
00:44:42
Speaker
So as an art advisor, who hires you?
00:44:47
Speaker
people that want to invest in art.
00:44:48
Speaker
So then you're making a collection plan with a notion, with a team, with an objective.
00:44:53
Speaker
It can be ROI, but it can be different things.
00:44:55
Speaker
And then, yes, you're making projection.
00:44:58
Speaker
You cannot make promises as any investment fund.
00:45:01
Speaker
There's no promises of
00:45:02
Speaker
specific criteria.
00:45:04
Speaker
There's an idea of how much, but there's always a notion of risk and you can lose it all.
00:45:08
Speaker
And that's part of the game.
00:45:09
Speaker
But you can think about the collection plan with in mind the ROI aspect of it.
00:45:14
Speaker
That's for sure.
00:45:15
Speaker
As a curator, the people that hire you are most of the time venues.
00:45:20
Speaker
So your Web2 events, you have a gallery, you have a museum.
00:45:23
Speaker
Those are the people that hire curators.
00:45:26
Speaker
And it hires you to suggest a list of artists on a specific team.
00:45:31
Speaker
As I did, for example, this exhibition on Middle East and North Africa at the fair early 2021, I then got a job as a curator for an event in Riyadh in Saudi Arabia that I think was a three-day long exhibition.
00:45:45
Speaker
And they hired me to do a proposition of several artists to be included because there's not been people like me that had a listing with artists that were specifically from this country and working in NFTs.
00:45:57
Speaker
And so for them to save the time of looking all around to find that's really, you know, they were actually asking me because I already have catalog everything, I have my listing, so they save time.
00:46:09
Speaker
So most of the time you buy, you hire a curator to save time on the curational process or to come up with non-commercial thematical exhibition, can be writing text, can be a look,
00:46:19
Speaker
huge part of the curatorial job.
00:46:21
Speaker
So yeah, it's different, different job dealers, art advisor, curator, galerists.
00:46:27
Speaker
It's mixed and it's like an umbrella term in the, in the NFT world.
00:46:31
Speaker
We use curators number of them for all those different jobs, but there are actually different jobs.
00:46:36
Speaker
So yeah, it depends on who you address, who are your client, how do you work with them on which basis?
00:46:41
Speaker
So yeah, that's, that's where the difference lies.
00:46:44
Speaker
If that's clearer, I mean, yeah,
00:46:47
Speaker
Yeah, a little bit, a little bit.
00:46:49
Speaker
I mean, it's not clearer.
00:46:51
Speaker
It raises more questions, but it shows me a little bit more about basically what is it that you do.
00:46:57
Speaker
I actually just thought of something that could be really cool if you're up for it.
00:47:01
Speaker
Like if I said right now, I'd like to build a portfolio only in crypto art, in Web3 art for like 25 ETH.
00:47:12
Speaker
Could you like help me like and maybe share your screen as well of
00:47:17
Speaker
picking out, you know, a few of the artists that you, you personally recommend, or maybe ask me the questions that you would ask me if we were in that process.
00:47:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:27
Speaker
There's no way I'm going to show my screen and show my listing.
00:47:30
Speaker
I'll tell you right now.
00:47:31
Speaker
It's something.
00:47:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:34
Speaker
If you've seen the 10% of the series, 10% on Netflix.
00:47:38
Speaker
I haven't, no.
00:47:40
Speaker
Yeah, but they always are really protective of their fichier, as they call it, or their files.
00:47:44
Speaker
And the same thing for curator, you know, it's like a... No, that's not what it made.
00:47:47
Speaker
Yeah, no, no, no.
00:47:50
Speaker
Of course not.
00:47:51
Speaker
I meant more like on the public front, like things that are out there in the public, artists that you know that you care for and that you would recommend.
00:47:59
Speaker
Yeah, but I would need to be paid for that.
00:48:02
Speaker
But anyway, what I just...
00:48:04
Speaker
Okay, fair enough.
00:48:07
Speaker
That's what it is.
00:48:07
Speaker
Honestly, it's like the only thing I provide the fact that I know those lists.
00:48:10
Speaker
So every time people do like tweets, it's like, oh, any artist recommend.
00:48:15
Speaker
I'm like, I can recommend you, but how much do you pay me to do so?
00:48:18
Speaker
It's a bit the same.
00:48:19
Speaker
No, that's fair.
00:48:20
Speaker
It's a bit like, you know, the analogy I often took is a bit like you hire an architect to build your house.
00:48:26
Speaker
He makes a plan.
00:48:27
Speaker
Finally, you don't hire him, but you keep the plan.
00:48:30
Speaker
That's not possible.
00:48:31
Speaker
It would never happen.
00:48:32
Speaker
It's almost like asking the source code of an artist's work.
00:48:35
Speaker
Whenever I do that, you know, it doesn't have any security anymore that you're actually going to pay him.
00:48:40
Speaker
For example, there I've made a collection plan for a specific... I can, I guess... No, I cannot share this one because I have it for a client that wanted to do a
00:48:50
Speaker
collection on your band team and so I found 20 artists on the team of your band art and etc etc but I'm not sending them the document as long as they haven't paid me for it so I've just presented it in a way but never will I send that document as long as I'm not paid because as the moment I send it they don't need me anymore so that's the problem but usually the question I ask is the same question as any financial advisor is
00:49:16
Speaker
What's your horizon?
00:49:17
Speaker
What's your risk you're willing to take?
00:49:20
Speaker
And do you want something very diverse or something that focuses on specific collection?
00:49:26
Speaker
And which market segment are you focusing on?
00:49:29
Speaker
0.1 to 1 ETH, 1 to 10 ETH, or 10 ETH plus?
00:49:34
Speaker
So that's the sort of, yeah, things just like the horizon, risk, typology of things you're looking for, objective behind the collection, and the diversification level you want to have in it.
00:49:46
Speaker
Are you doing this work for people who are like very wealthy and, and, and, or is, cause you can, you can name your price if you're, if you're comfortable with it, but just to, just to try to understand if like any person who has even like a, what's, what's the minimum budget someone would need?
00:50:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:04
Speaker
That's a better way of doing it.
00:50:05
Speaker
What's the minimum budget someone would need in order for it to make sense, to get your help in order to build their portfolio?
00:50:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:12
Speaker
Yeah, well, usually I take contract that starts around at the very least 10K for sure.
00:50:18
Speaker
Usually depends on which and what, but usually it was 50 to 100K.
00:50:24
Speaker
project projection because that's where you have a budget you can do stuff with.
00:50:28
Speaker
For example, there is this project that they were, it's actually a project they want to raffle out artworks to their members and token holders.
00:50:37
Speaker
So the objective for them was to have a lot of different artwork they can raffle to people.
00:50:42
Speaker
They had a 15 if budgets for it and for to make that document with just the works links
00:50:49
Speaker
suggested price you should buy it to, I was taking something like $200,000 for it, just for the documents.
00:50:56
Speaker
And then if you want to have additional service like Artist Liaison and work with artists specifically that I have contact with, that's about twice as expensive.
00:51:05
Speaker
But it depends.
00:51:05
Speaker
I can work on a share revenue basis as well.
00:51:09
Speaker
I had early bull run, I had people that sort of wanted to send me, I think, $100,000 to do a correction plan for them.
00:51:17
Speaker
And I would have kept...
00:51:18
Speaker
I think half of any benefit the fund would have made.
00:51:24
Speaker
So it was a 50-50 based on commission rate.
00:51:27
Speaker
I didn't take up from payments, but it's really case by case on who I'm working with, what's the objective, etc.
00:51:36
Speaker
What amount of work is going to require it for me.
00:51:39
Speaker
But usually, yeah, people that say, oh, if I send you $2,000 and you manage something for me, I'm like, no, you know, if I do it for 10 people at $2,000, it doesn't really make sense, except if you get together.
00:51:50
Speaker
But otherwise, no, I usually have carte blanche or whatever I buy, and you can actually make interesting moves starting from $50K to $100K.
00:51:58
Speaker
Usually, that's where I'm the most interested in working with.
00:52:01
Speaker
What's the max you've done?
00:52:03
Speaker
Depends.
00:52:04
Speaker
For Sotheby's, it was a different kind of budget, I guess.
00:52:08
Speaker
It was more of a trying to sell things for them.
00:52:11
Speaker
But I think 100k was perhaps the max.
00:52:13
Speaker
It's not something I've done much, honestly.
00:52:15
Speaker
I've done it times to times, but...
00:52:18
Speaker
At some point, I just was working at Sotheby's at different time of job.
00:52:22
Speaker
But yeah, 100K, 200K, something like that was the max absolute manage within the portfolio.
00:52:27
Speaker
And then without the valorization of it, honestly, but yeah, it was about that, something like that.
00:52:35
Speaker
I think with 100K, the most that we've increased was half a million, something like that at some point, with just the different price changes.
00:52:45
Speaker
But yeah, something in half a million.
00:52:47
Speaker
Nice.
00:52:50
Speaker
I had as a question of like, who are you?
00:52:52
Speaker
What type of artists are you eyeing right now?
00:52:56
Speaker
But I'm not sure you want to share that now.
00:52:59
Speaker
I wouldn't say no.
00:53:01
Speaker
That's the same thing.
00:53:05
Speaker
Follow him on Twitter and maybe you'll get clues.
00:53:07
Speaker
Yeah, you can stalk me on my wallet, but usually it's the thing.
00:53:11
Speaker
It's like, oh, I'm looking to buy this.
00:53:13
Speaker
And if I tell the world, then I'm going to get cut off from it.
00:53:17
Speaker
So that's not... Yeah, for sure.
00:53:19
Speaker
For sure.
00:53:20
Speaker
There's this notion of trying to be rare.
00:53:22
Speaker
It's a bit of this mix between content creation and also retaining information I can actually get paid to share.
00:53:29
Speaker
So it's a different, difficult mix.
00:53:31
Speaker
It's a fine line to walk.
00:53:34
Speaker
Yeah, for sure.
00:53:35
Speaker
I get it.
00:53:36
Speaker
I won't be the one to blame you for it.
Art Crush World Tour and Global Art Exposure
00:53:39
Speaker
At this point of the conversation, I have rapid fire questions.
00:53:42
Speaker
And so I'm just going to shoot the question and you can probably answer in just a word or a few.
00:53:47
Speaker
If you could only buy one NFT to hold for the rest of your life, what would it be?
00:53:52
Speaker
Well, it's terrible.
00:53:53
Speaker
I do accumulate a lot, but I guess the Depot artwork is might be the one I'll be the most interested by.
00:54:00
Speaker
one of his edition that I have already, the, the, for example, 100 edition.
00:54:07
Speaker
He has, that was the first sort of everyday,
00:54:11
Speaker
cut up the head that might be the thing or Alota Money artwork or Xcopy specifically, something like that.
00:54:20
Speaker
If you could only buy one digital artist, who would it be?
00:54:23
Speaker
But in your case, I guess you just answered the question.
00:54:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:26
Speaker
Beeperl, I guess, or Bill Viola or non NFT digital artists, Namjoon Park, perhaps things like that.
00:54:35
Speaker
Okay.
00:54:35
Speaker
Dona Four Eliasson would be great, but that is.
00:54:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:41
Speaker
If you could only hold one crypto for the rest of your life.
00:54:44
Speaker
If.
00:54:45
Speaker
Who are your top three people that you vibe with the most in this space at the moment?
00:54:50
Speaker
Well, there is my fiance, Art Girl, that I've worked with for doing this last exhibition I mentioned at the Paris Photo.
00:54:58
Speaker
She's also... I didn't know she was your fiance.
00:55:01
Speaker
Yeah, well, fiance, she don't like when I say that because she has no rings yet.
00:55:06
Speaker
So...
00:55:10
Speaker
Is she there in the background?
00:55:11
Speaker
Yeah, she's right there.
00:55:13
Speaker
Well, it's the English.
00:55:16
Speaker
I have to say that because... It's on the blockchain.
00:55:20
Speaker
Yeah, because partners always look a bit professional and I didn't find the right word for it.
00:55:25
Speaker
It's a bit too quirky.
00:55:27
Speaker
But yes, I've been with her for over a year and a half now and she's also working in Web3, among other things.
00:55:34
Speaker
She's also a gallerist.
00:55:35
Speaker
And I guess I vibe a lot with her because we do discuss all the time.
00:55:39
Speaker
I hope you do.
00:55:40
Speaker
A lot.
00:55:41
Speaker
So there's that.
00:55:43
Speaker
And then I guess Art Gnome is someone I always refer to.
00:55:48
Speaker
I don't connect to him a lot because I'm a bit sort of still in the relationship of I refer to him as a mentor more than anything else, but I'm sure he's not even aware of it, to be honest.
00:56:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:56:01
Speaker
But it's someone I look up to all the time and hopefully will get to work with at some point in the future.
00:56:07
Speaker
And I guess some other people are like,
00:56:11
Speaker
artists in particular.
00:56:13
Speaker
I mean, I do vibe a lot with Delucris as an artist that, I guess, trusts me a lot and allows me to do a bunch of things.
00:56:20
Speaker
And also, I guess, my team at Art Crush as well is something we haven't discussed it here, but I also co-founded a company that exhibits artists across the world on billboards.
00:56:31
Speaker
And that has involved me to exhibit more than
00:56:34
Speaker
I don't know, half a thousand artists on over 25 different countries in just a year.
00:56:39
Speaker
So that's pretty cool.
00:56:42
Speaker
And I get a lot of curatorial opportunity like that.
00:56:45
Speaker
So that's a nice thing.
00:56:46
Speaker
It's something that I do enjoy doing.
00:56:48
Speaker
That's why I keep getting involved.
00:56:50
Speaker
For example, at the moment we have a deal with Kierchanel, which is the leading billboard company in Belgium, but also across Europe.
00:56:58
Speaker
And at the moment, every billboard screen you see in Belgium will show artwork accruated every minute.
00:57:05
Speaker
So every minute there is about six to 12 seconds of art accruated show on
00:57:11
Speaker
over i think a thousand billboard screens all across belgium uh 24 7 for the next six months and that's wow that's amazing yeah so if you ever go in belgium you will most likely see artwork i've created on those uh billboard screens and that's something that is quite fantastic to be able to do that i realize i don't talk enough about because uh most people are not aware you should
00:57:35
Speaker
So I should definitely do because you really should.
00:57:37
Speaker
And we document every initiative.
00:57:39
Speaker
So there's videos of it all the time.
00:57:40
Speaker
There is example of what we've done.
00:57:42
Speaker
If I can grab Shama screen or one last thing.
00:57:44
Speaker
Yeah, please.
00:57:46
Speaker
We did something pretty cool during NFT Paris.
00:57:49
Speaker
We rented an actual sort of pickup truck.
00:57:54
Speaker
At the back of it, we put a fuel generator on it, and we scrapped on a huge projector on it.
00:58:04
Speaker
And so we managed to do a sort of, yeah,
00:58:08
Speaker
Sauvage exhibition on Nero Le Trocadero.
00:58:11
Speaker
And so we would get on one place.
00:58:12
Speaker
This is sick.
00:58:14
Speaker
Demits, the police would arrive, try to arrest us, but then they wouldn't arrest us because there is, you know, we don't bring the law here, but they will usually tell, oh, you're parking in a parking place.
00:58:27
Speaker
So we would move from places to places.
00:58:30
Speaker
We had sort of scooted for different walls beforehand.
00:58:33
Speaker
And so we had this little sort of
00:58:36
Speaker
we had and things people would find us if they were looking for us.
00:58:41
Speaker
So we did that as fun, but most of it is initiative like that, you know, small, large queens also, but also on Times Square, as you see here, and in every continent in the world.
00:58:53
Speaker
We did Africa, we did, yeah, LA, Milan, Amsterdam, Paris, Arbazel, Ghosn, and we have a bunch of like
00:59:02
Speaker
permanent screen as well.
00:59:04
Speaker
We have this permanent wall.
00:59:06
Speaker
And yeah, you have all the artists we exhibited before.
00:59:09
Speaker
And if you look at just the list of artists, I mean, one, two, three, four by row, eight, and we have 57 pages that are not updated.
00:59:19
Speaker
So yeah, eight times.
00:59:20
Speaker
Wow.
00:59:22
Speaker
That's yeah, it's quite cool.
00:59:26
Speaker
And that's not up to date with that's all version of our website, but it should exist right on.
00:59:32
Speaker
And we have so the business models that we have a membership that gives you Yeah, what does the membership get you because I was looking at your wallet and I saw them and I thought like this, I don't know what this is about, but it sounds cool.
00:59:44
Speaker
So every membership was done by a different artist as well, but pretty much what it gives you is that all the artists we exhibited during the World Tour, so there's a better artist, they all give us an addition.
00:59:59
Speaker
And that was what I was trying to solve before we got in our call is that so we receive addition from artists, they give us for free because we don't make them pay for the World Tour, we don't take commission of the work.
01:00:10
Speaker
They give us commission for free.
01:00:12
Speaker
They give us edition for free.
01:00:13
Speaker
And every week we raffle and we raffle those edition to the orders.
01:00:17
Speaker
So when you have the membership, you pretty much get your lottery tickets for getting artworks every week.
01:00:22
Speaker
That's in a sense what it is.
01:00:24
Speaker
And that still happens and it will continue to happen.
01:00:27
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:28
Speaker
And so we are aimed to, I think, raffle away.
01:00:32
Speaker
over 300 EF of value of artwork.
01:00:35
Speaker
For example, the first one we did with Jack Fried and there were addition that retails at one EF each.
01:00:41
Speaker
We had 10 of them.
01:00:42
Speaker
So just that first raffle was a 10 EF value raffle.
01:00:46
Speaker
Wow.
01:00:46
Speaker
And we keep on doing that.
01:00:48
Speaker
We took a bit of, we were a bit late with artists not meeting it yet, not saying it to us yet.
01:00:53
Speaker
You know, managing 30 artists is sometimes pretty difficult to work coordinates, but it's still happening to this day and gives you those benefits.
01:01:02
Speaker
And there's,
01:01:04
Speaker
Other few benefits as well as we build up more daily screens, we will have access to screen all the time.
01:01:09
Speaker
And at some point, we expect that any members will be able to decide what art will be shown on the spillboard and have sort of a permissionless, more decentralized curation approach.
01:01:22
Speaker
So there's a few ideas in there, but at the moment... Maybe I'll pick one up.
01:01:26
Speaker
I like this.
01:01:27
Speaker
And you get ruffled all the time and you'll get an entry ticket.
01:01:34
Speaker
It's passive.
01:01:35
Speaker
You don't have to engage with Discord or engage with the community if you don't want to.
01:01:39
Speaker
There's a few things we do for the community member that want to engage with it with specific spots on OpenCourse, for example.
01:01:46
Speaker
So you have much more chance to be selected as there's
01:01:49
Speaker
not that many members in comparison to the numbers of artists that participate in our open calls.
01:01:54
Speaker
But the gist of it is, yeah, you get free art every week if you're lucky.
01:01:58
Speaker
I like it.
01:02:00
Speaker
And people like gambling.
01:02:01
Speaker
So maybe you have something, maybe you have something there.
01:02:05
Speaker
Let's move out of, uh,
01:02:08
Speaker
Well, let's not completely move out of Web3 just yet, because one of the subjects that I like that we're talking about, because you're from the art world, I come from the intellectual properly law world.
01:02:21
Speaker
And so one of the concepts that we both know about is droit de suite, which is...
01:02:27
Speaker
You create a piece of art and when that art gets sold in the future, you're supposed to be getting a cut, which doesn't really happen in the real world.
01:02:38
Speaker
What I'd written down was how could that actually work in practice beyond buying NFTs?
01:02:44
Speaker
How can we preserve ownership of digital assets happening on the Internet?
01:02:50
Speaker
Phew, that's a challenging question.
01:02:53
Speaker
Yeah, it is.
01:02:56
Speaker
I guess the blockchain solved that for sure, but still there's no images on the blockchain yet.
01:03:02
Speaker
So it's a convention, you know, just like anyone.
01:03:05
Speaker
If anyone agrees on something being the way, then it would be the way.
01:03:10
Speaker
You know, it's like the certificate of authenticity in artwork.
01:03:14
Speaker
It doesn't have any legal value.
01:03:17
Speaker
It's just a paper with, I say that this thing is authentic and that's all there is to it.
01:03:22
Speaker
It's a reputation-based paper that has a conventional value, but has no legal value whatsoever.
01:03:29
Speaker
So that exists and that has been a peer angulaire of what we've been doing in the art world.
01:03:34
Speaker
And even if that's no legal value, so...
01:03:37
Speaker
I guess NFT not being recognized as legally as artwork or anything is not an obstacle for it to grow as a market and grow as a artistic ecosystem of its own, I suppose.
01:03:50
Speaker
As long as people agree to it to be- So let's all agree.
01:03:54
Speaker
It would be the way.
01:03:56
Speaker
Let's all agree to that right now.
01:03:58
Speaker
You're the president of Web3R after all, so you can make that decision and we'll have to abide by it.
01:04:05
Speaker
One last thing, because you told me about the pixel war.
01:04:10
Speaker
And funny enough, I was in the car with my brother a few weeks ago and he told me about it as well.
01:04:15
Speaker
And I like you're the only two people in the world.
01:04:17
Speaker
What was that about?
01:04:18
Speaker
What was it?
01:04:19
Speaker
How how did it happen?
01:04:21
Speaker
Why was it so significant?
01:04:22
Speaker
And if you can show a suit, that would be awesome.
01:04:26
Speaker
It's not related to NFT at all.
01:04:29
Speaker
It's a Reddit event that was really sort of impacted by YouTube's communities in France, especially Kameto.
01:04:38
Speaker
And just an example of collaborative art stuff we can do on the internet, pretty much.
01:04:47
Speaker
This was the last fresco they did for the last one.
01:04:52
Speaker
And it was sort of...
01:04:56
Speaker
thing of thing of the French are so important in the internet community because you see out of all those initiatives, the French flag is huge.
01:05:05
Speaker
It's right there.
01:05:07
Speaker
It takes like a huge part of it.
01:05:09
Speaker
You even have this event there.
01:05:11
Speaker
I mean, you have a bunch of French initiatives.
01:05:14
Speaker
And yeah, we've like, you know, you have the face of Zidane, you have a bunch of stuff there.
01:05:19
Speaker
Even Emmanuel Macron, I think, tweeted it on it, something like that.
01:05:23
Speaker
I mean, it was a huge internet phenomenon.
01:05:25
Speaker
And just to say that, you know, internet has been a way for co-creation with for decades.
01:05:32
Speaker
And NFT just sort of a consequence of that.
01:05:35
Speaker
Then we didn't wait to...
01:05:37
Speaker
for NFT to be able to create art collaboratively online.
01:05:40
Speaker
And it was just an example of things that existed with it.
01:05:44
Speaker
And to say that pixel art is not necessarily something that can be created with the crypto banks or something like that is something that has existed for years and years and years before that.
01:05:53
Speaker
And so how did it, what was the mechanics?
01:05:56
Speaker
Because the way my brother described it, it was sort of a competition between people.
01:06:01
Speaker
Like the French rallied and tried to use up the space.
01:06:06
Speaker
And what were the dynamics?
01:06:09
Speaker
I think you could place one pixel at times every 12, 15 seconds or something like that.
01:06:17
Speaker
So everyone can just place one pixels.
01:06:20
Speaker
So you have to coordinate people to make it so that they actually produce something that looks like something.
01:06:26
Speaker
And so you have plenty of system for that.
01:06:29
Speaker
We have Excel sheet that say place disc colors on this specific X and Y coordinate.
01:06:36
Speaker
Wow.
01:06:37
Speaker
That's crazy.
01:06:37
Speaker
So just an example of huge cooperation of bunch of people on Discord that actually managed to do something
01:06:44
Speaker
cohesive and that's no especially it's listed that over 24 hours I believe so you have to manage time differences there were alliances between people from different zone of the map so they sort of agree not to attack each other and so yeah there's plenty of stuff like that and you can surely find a lot of YouTube references on it that just explain that and just dig much more into details and depth than I'm doing here but it's just yeah just to see that
01:07:14
Speaker
You don't necessarily need to own stuff to be able to enjoy it.
01:07:18
Speaker
It must have been a great experience for anyone that participated.
01:07:22
Speaker
You don't need to earn money out of it.
01:07:23
Speaker
You don't need to pay, oh, that was mine.
01:07:25
Speaker
I have NFT of it to enjoy it.
01:07:27
Speaker
That's what I say most of the time.
01:07:28
Speaker
Even if you're just curious about NFT, you don't need to buy it to be curious about it.
01:07:32
Speaker
You can just check it out.
01:07:33
Speaker
You can just go on SuperR and...
01:07:35
Speaker
see what's up and see who's sitting, see who's getting interest and traction, and just look at the art.
01:07:42
Speaker
It's already plenty enough.
01:07:43
Speaker
And you might see some fascinating, interesting phenomena that are comparable to what happens at the pixel wall of Reddit.
01:07:51
Speaker
just interesting bunch of nails and geeks that get together to create fun stuff online and push the boundaries of what you could collaborate if you do online just to see that.
01:08:02
Speaker
Yeah.
01:08:02
Speaker
Sometimes we always heard about social media in a way that's all, you know, harassment and mass stuff and negative stuff, but there's plenty of.
01:08:11
Speaker
There's also beauty there.
01:08:12
Speaker
Yeah, for sure.
01:08:14
Speaker
There's as much beauty as there is sadness and ugliness.
01:08:17
Speaker
So, you know, we need to look up to that as well.
01:08:21
Speaker
So, yeah, I think it's just important.
01:08:23
Speaker
But just to say that there's plenty of way to express and experience, experiment out online beside NFT.
01:08:29
Speaker
And if the blockchain crypto thing aspect of it is a setback for you.
01:08:35
Speaker
then you have plenty of other alternatives also.
01:08:38
Speaker
There shouldn't be an obstacle to just get interested in digital art and new media creation and new artists and stuff like that.
01:08:44
Speaker
What a beautiful way to close out this conversation.
01:08:47
Speaker
Thank you very much.
01:08:48
Speaker
Thanks to anyone who's listened to this conversation.
01:08:51
Speaker
You should...
01:08:51
Speaker
definitely follow Arthur Mort.
01:08:53
Speaker
Like you'll learn a few, a few things or two.
01:08:56
Speaker
Maybe if you, if you look close enough, if you manage to identify one of his wallets, you'll get that alpha without having to pay.
01:09:05
Speaker
But if you have some budget and if you want to start collecting, if you want to build your portfolio, then I highly recommend you, you reach out to him because he, he didn't talk about it too much.
01:09:17
Speaker
He didn't show it too much, but he is well-connected and he, he,
01:09:21
Speaker
knows his stuff.
01:09:22
Speaker
He knows his art.
01:09:23
Speaker
And I know he'll help you build a very good collection based on your horizon, your budget, your needs, your risk profile, and all of that good stuff.
01:09:35
Speaker
Don't forget to join the Discord.
01:09:36
Speaker
Don't forget to like, follow, comment, all the usual stuff.
01:09:41
Speaker
This is a decentralized podcast.
01:09:42
Speaker
It could belong to you too.
01:09:44
Speaker
So join us.
01:09:45
Speaker
Arthamort, thank you so much for joining.
01:09:47
Speaker
This was nice.
01:09:48
Speaker
Thank you, Polly.
01:09:49
Speaker
And hopefully next time we'll see.
01:09:54
Speaker
Oh yeah.
01:09:55
Speaker
100%.
01:09:55
Speaker
We'll see each other soon.
01:09:56
Speaker
I'm coming to NFT Paris too, so I'm sure we can connect around that.
01:10:01
Speaker
All right.
01:10:02
Speaker
Thank you so much.
01:10:03
Speaker
Bye-bye.