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Arranging Tangerines Episode 42 - A Conversation with Matthew Porter and Carlo Van de Roer
7 Plays1 year ago
In this episode, we talk with artists Matthew Porter and Carlo Van de Roer about how they first met, the acquisition of NFT works by institutions and museums, the ever-changing attitudes of art collectors, the challenges and strengths of working with traditional artists in the NFT space, the idea of hybridity, and what Matthew and Carlo have queued up for the future.
Episode recorded on February 21, 2023.
Mathew Porter and Carlo Van de Roer have formed a dynamic partnership known as Zome, an artist-run collective focused on collaborating with artists in the NFT space. Within this innovative venture, they have successfully launched two captivating projects: "22 Pigeons" in collaboration with renowned photographer Roe Ethridge and "154Ever" alongside the talented visual artist Mariah Robertson.
Matthew Porter has had solo and group shows in a number of international galleries and institutions, including M+B, Los Angeles, Invisible Exports, New York, Anonymous Gallery, Mexico City, Koenig & Clinton, New York, and the Foam Museum in Amsterdam. Porter's curatorial projects include "Seven Summits" at Mount Tremper Arts, "The Crystal Chain" at INVISIBLE-EXPORTS, and "Bedtime for Bonzo" at M+B. He is the co-editor of Blind Spot magazine Issue 45, and his writings and interviews have been featured in a number of publications including ARTFORUM. In 2012 Porter was included in the "After Photoshop" exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum Art, New York.
Carlo Van de Roer (b. 1975) received his BFA from Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand. His work has been exhibited at venues such as M+B Gallery, Los Angeles; Suite Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand; the MUSAC Museum of Contemporary Art, Léon, Spain; Transformer Station Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH; the Haggerty Museum of Art, Marquette University, Milwaukee; the New Museum, NY; Hyères Photography Festival and the Paris Photo Prize — a number of these institutions hold the artists work in their permanent collections. Damiani published Van de Roer’s first monograph The Portrait Machine with text by Val Williams. Notable press includes The New York Times, The New Yorker and Wired magazine. As an inaugural participant in the New Museum’s New Inc program, Van de Roer founded a research and development lab in New York called Satellite Lab, with a focus on new technology for photography and film-making — this has led to the invention and patenting of several new camera and lighting technologies which the artist employs in his work.
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Transcript
Introduction to Arranging Tangerines Podcast
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to Arranging Tangerines, presented by Lydian 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.
00:00:19
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 Guests: Matthew Porter and Carlo Vandero
00:00:34
Speaker
This week's guests are photographers Matthew Porter and Carlo Vandero.
00:00:38
Speaker
They have formed a dynamic partnership known as ZONE, an artist-run collective focused on collaborating with artists in the NFT space.
00:00:44
Speaker
Within this innovative venture, they've successfully launched two captivating projects, 22 Pigeons, in collaboration with renowned photographer Roe Etheridge and One Five Forever, alongside the talented visual artist Mariah Robertson.
Traditional Art Meets NFTs
00:00:55
Speaker
Welcome, Matthew and Carlo.
00:00:57
Speaker
Well, thank you gentlemen for agreeing on such short notice to be on our podcast.
00:01:03
Speaker
It's been, it's great.
00:01:05
Speaker
I listened to you guys.
00:01:07
Speaker
I think that that last drop you had with the, um,
00:01:11
Speaker
was it the Mariah Robertson?
00:01:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:14
Speaker
Mariah Robertson.
00:01:15
Speaker
Who's an amazing artist.
00:01:17
Speaker
Um, I, I heard you guys on, on Twitter, on Twitter.
00:01:21
Speaker
Um, I was like, I was like, yeah, these guys are doing similar stuff than we're trying to do.
00:01:25
Speaker
Um, with traditional artists and utilizing the NFT, um, not in a speculative way, but as a way to kind of like, uh, bring really good art to inform audiences.
00:01:38
Speaker
How'd you find that Twitter spaces?
00:01:41
Speaker
We're friends with Danielle Ezzo.
00:01:44
Speaker
Oh, okay.
00:01:46
Speaker
She went to the same school that Joe and I met at.
00:01:49
Speaker
I was just thinking about how we met her and it was because she went to Leslie also.
00:01:53
Speaker
I see.
00:01:53
Speaker
So she posted it and you saw it.
00:01:56
Speaker
Exactly.
00:01:56
Speaker
That's how things work, right?
00:01:59
Speaker
Yeah, well, we don't have a... Yeah, right, exactly.
00:02:04
Speaker
We don't have the biggest reach at the moment, so I just was curious, but that's great.
00:02:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:08
Speaker
I think Matt's question was pretty telling.
00:02:10
Speaker
How did you find it?
00:02:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:13
Speaker
No one was supposed to know.
00:02:15
Speaker
I mean, you sat in there in the dark for hours.
00:02:18
Speaker
That was recorded?
00:02:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:20
Speaker
I just had a really similar real life experience when I went to a fairly new gallery in Chinatown and it's gorgeous and the show's great.
00:02:30
Speaker
But same thing, like, you know, they don't have a ton of followers on their Instagram.
00:02:34
Speaker
And I was looking at the show and I like went back and I was like, hey, thanks for, you know, the show looks awesome or whatever.
00:02:39
Speaker
And he's like, oh, yeah, thanks for stopping by.
00:02:40
Speaker
And he's like, hey, hold on.
00:02:41
Speaker
He's like, how'd you find us?
00:02:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:46
Speaker
Which is, you know, which is always a good question if you're trying to figure out how to get people to find you.
00:02:51
Speaker
But yeah, that was actually one of my questions for you both was just and I think that it's a common kind of understanding now, but that like Instagram and Twitter don't operate in the same spheres when it comes to the traditional art world and the NFT art world.
00:03:11
Speaker
And what your experience has been like trying to bridge that.
00:03:15
Speaker
I've found that I just, I have a hard time maintaining a presence on Twitter because I don't use it personally.
00:03:21
Speaker
And so I was curious about how that, you know, how you approach that with zone.art or is it zomi?
00:03:31
Speaker
It's zone and the URL is zone.art.
00:03:34
Speaker
So we accept both.
00:03:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:03:36
Speaker
Okay.
00:03:37
Speaker
Okay, cool.
00:03:37
Speaker
I was just trying to make sure.
00:03:38
Speaker
Yeah, zone.art.
00:03:39
Speaker
But yeah, I was just curious about that.
00:03:42
Speaker
Before you answer that, could we just back up a little bit and just say how you guys kind of met?
00:03:46
Speaker
Good question.
00:03:48
Speaker
And how you kind of came into the space and a little bit of background?
Formation of ZONE: A Journey
00:03:52
Speaker
Sure.
00:03:53
Speaker
That is a good question.
00:03:56
Speaker
I know exactly when we met.
00:03:58
Speaker
Do you?
00:03:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:03:59
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:03:59
Speaker
I remember.
00:04:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:01
Speaker
Crystal clear.
00:04:03
Speaker
I would have said it was out of a mutual love for falling off skateboards.
00:04:08
Speaker
No, it was at the Pulse Art Fair.
00:04:11
Speaker
in I don't know the year but this was a long time ago but we were both showing at the same gallery at the time it was the Pulse Art Fair and um it which was out on a pier at that point um and and I was there I don't I'm not even sure I had work in the booth but I just was sort of trying to keep up appearances and just sort of show my face with the gallery as they were setting up and I
00:04:38
Speaker
I knew there were new people coming into the roster, so I knew who Carlo was, and he showed up, and the gallery was excited to see him, and he put this portfolio on a table and started going through the portfolio, talking to them about the additions, picking spots on the wall for the pictures, and I just was waiting for my moment to just say hi to the gallery or be introduced, and so I was sort of trying to maintain a kind of
00:05:01
Speaker
sort of to be cool and aloof at a distance but also I was watching this intensely thinking this fucking guy but yeah can we swear on this podcast?
00:05:12
Speaker
Of course please do but yeah that was the moment I mean you Carlo was very nice to me
00:05:22
Speaker
But I just remember you being very together and me at a moment where I really did not feel very together.
00:05:30
Speaker
I was probably thinking, wow, who's this cool aloof guy just hanging in the corner?
00:05:36
Speaker
Was this at an M&B booth, was it?
00:05:38
Speaker
Yeah, it was.
00:05:39
Speaker
And I think it was maybe the Pulse Art Fair.
00:05:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:43
Speaker
You know, they were sort of trying that for a year or something.
00:05:46
Speaker
This was a very long time ago.
00:05:47
Speaker
Is Pulse in Miami?
00:05:49
Speaker
Or is that LA?
00:05:50
Speaker
They...
00:05:52
Speaker
Mostly, if I'm right, they were experimenting with opening a location during, I don't know, the spring.
00:06:00
Speaker
I don't remember what, yeah, whatever happened to that.
00:06:02
Speaker
But there were a lot of things back then that kind of, I don't know what happened to them.
00:06:06
Speaker
I can't, Pulse and, yeah, I don't know.
00:06:12
Speaker
I'm not going to think of them, but there were sort of a few others that maybe came and went along the same lines.
00:06:15
Speaker
Scope.
00:06:18
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:06:19
Speaker
Scope tried out New York, maybe.
00:06:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:22
Speaker
And we remained friends.
00:06:26
Speaker
Yeah, we would have drinks.
00:06:28
Speaker
The long pause.
00:06:29
Speaker
And I was like, is that true?
00:06:29
Speaker
You could tell that was a question, right?
00:06:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:31
Speaker
How long ago was that, though?
00:06:44
Speaker
I mean, that could have been 2012, something like that, 11 or 12.
00:06:48
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:06:49
Speaker
And I feel like we had a very nice kind of sort of mutual sort of colleague's respect.
00:06:58
Speaker
We would get together for drinks every couple of months or something.
00:07:00
Speaker
And you were always very good about, you introduced me to your agent at one point, a commercial photography agent.
00:07:08
Speaker
And so...
00:07:11
Speaker
You just were always generous about sharing resources and we would kind of get together and share horror stories and just talk shop a little bit.
00:07:18
Speaker
But you came to my 40th birthday.
00:07:21
Speaker
Oh, I remember that.
00:07:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:25
Speaker
Stuff like that.
00:07:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:28
Speaker
The singing chicken.
00:07:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:35
Speaker
Should we ask about this?
00:07:36
Speaker
No, no.
00:07:36
Speaker
Probably not, actually.
00:07:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:39
Speaker
That's kind of the end of the story, actually.
00:07:41
Speaker
I left New York and we stayed friends and then reconnected.
00:07:48
Speaker
When I would come back to New York, you were actually one of the people I would always try to look up.
00:07:53
Speaker
I feel like the longer I was away from New York, the more
00:07:57
Speaker
some of those friendships kind of dwindled.
00:07:59
Speaker
It's interesting to see who you strive to stay in contact with.
00:08:05
Speaker
And at some point, I guess a couple of years ago, we sat down and had a beer and we were talking about, yeah, just like that.
00:08:15
Speaker
We were talking about the NFT space.
00:08:18
Speaker
It's probably- Is that where the overlap with that started happening?
00:08:24
Speaker
Was it 21?
00:08:26
Speaker
I would back up a little bit further and I would say this about you.
00:08:28
Speaker
Part of the reason I like to stay in touch, even though I think we didn't have much other overlap.
00:08:34
Speaker
So it wasn't like we were socializing in the same circles, but we would just sort of make a point to kind of get together every now and then.
00:08:39
Speaker
And I always appreciated that you would make an effort to do that.
00:08:43
Speaker
And I liked knowing what you were up to because you were on a very unique path.
00:08:51
Speaker
And I'll let you decide how much of that story you want to tell, but it involved,
00:08:57
Speaker
a pursuit of art and technology in a way that I always thought was interesting.
00:09:00
Speaker
And you always had this shockingly impressive entrepreneurial spirit because I brought a friend of mine once to the satellite lab and it just blew my mind what you were up to.
00:09:14
Speaker
I mean, most of my friends at that point, you know, we were cutting up paper in the dark room and thinking about photography and materiality.
00:09:20
Speaker
And here was, um,
00:09:23
Speaker
not just art and commerce, but technology being applied in a way that I don't even think I could participate in a conversation about what you were doing.
00:09:33
Speaker
It involved strobe lights on a technical level that I just had to sort of stand by and listen.
00:09:39
Speaker
And I remember, I think I was with more than one person and we sort of left like, what did we just see?
00:09:45
Speaker
And so in the back of my mind, there's always like a short list of people and this conversation
00:09:50
Speaker
this I think will sort of lead into how Zone got started, where I just thought, I don't want to, and I thought this way about galleries that I've worked with too, it's like, you want to be close to the flame, you want to be where there's some excitement and some energy, and I don't always have that myself, you know, I'm not the person to lead the parade, but I definitely want to play an instrument sometimes and get involved, and so you have this short list of people in your head, like, God, if, and I don't think I, you know, that this wasn't something that I had realized at the time, but
00:10:21
Speaker
you know, the shortlist where you're thinking like, if there's ever an opportunity to do something with that person, I'm going to take it.
00:10:25
Speaker
And I think, Carla, you are sort of one
Empowerment Through NFTs
00:10:27
Speaker
of those people.
00:10:27
Speaker
And so you were the person who formally introduced me to NFTs because I had been kind of paying attention to it, not because of photography, but I just thought the story of CryptoPunks was kind of interesting.
00:10:40
Speaker
And some of my thinking about the art world and what was happening with the art world and my general feelings about technology,
00:10:49
Speaker
It was one of those things where like, this is a cocktail conversation.
00:10:53
Speaker
I don't want to be left out of it.
00:10:54
Speaker
I feel like everybody's sort of responding to this as if they've only read a New York Times opinion piece headline.
00:11:01
Speaker
And I actually think if you are interested in collectibles and you read about what Larva Labs was doing with CryptoPunks, this seems appealing to some of us who are coming from the art world.
00:11:15
Speaker
We can get it.
00:11:16
Speaker
It's a short step to get from
00:11:18
Speaker
what we're doing in the art world to what's happening with NFTs.
00:11:20
Speaker
And then Carlo, I think just pinged me or something, because I had put, I had just made a kind of eight bit self portrait and put it on Instagram in this, the same resolution as a crypto punk.
00:11:33
Speaker
Nobody, it's like you said before, NFTs are on Twitter and the art world's on Instagram.
00:11:40
Speaker
Nobody responded to this at all.
00:11:42
Speaker
But Carlo pinged me and said, Hey, if you're interested in this, um,
00:11:47
Speaker
get in touch with me or we should talk more.
00:11:49
Speaker
Cause I think it's something you'd, I think you'd have fun doing this as a good moment.
00:11:53
Speaker
And yeah, cause you, you already, you knew a lot more than I did at that point and had already kind of like dipped your toes into the NF, well, more than that, you had released a project, I think.
00:12:06
Speaker
I think so, yeah.
00:12:07
Speaker
Which is part of, I think what got me excited enough to want to go a little deeper.
00:12:15
Speaker
So the backstory of what Matt was talking about
00:12:19
Speaker
with my introduction into working with coders and working in the art and technology space is that I was in a program at the New Museum back in 2014 that was very much about incubating art and technology-based people.
00:12:38
Speaker
And part of what they were interested in doing was establishing sustainable practices for artists where
00:12:47
Speaker
rather than create a piece of technology that may be used for a single art project, what if that could become, what if the research and development behind that could become something larger?
00:13:00
Speaker
What if you could build a space that could extend that research and development into other projects and so on?
00:13:05
Speaker
And so I learned a lot in that about working and collaborating with technologists, with coders, and about the business side of things like patents and intellectual property.
00:13:16
Speaker
and so on.
00:13:17
Speaker
And part of the outcome of that was that I was making work that was hard to sell, I guess.
00:13:28
Speaker
I'd sort of gone from creating prints and being able to sell editions of prints or books into creating interactive digital work that was sort of experiential within a space, but really had no way to, there wasn't really a vehicle to take that to a collector.
00:13:47
Speaker
And ironically, at that time that I was sort of faced with that problem, I was sitting at a desk with this guy called Kevin McCoy.
00:13:55
Speaker
And he was there and knew and creating what was the first NFT in 2014.
00:14:01
Speaker
And in an organization called, I think, Monograph, in which he was really trying to take the idea of the NFT to the art world.
00:14:12
Speaker
And I remember him saying, well, there is a solution for this.
00:14:16
Speaker
There's this thing called the blockchain.
00:14:18
Speaker
And I thought, no way that that's going to catch on.
00:14:22
Speaker
And, you know, many years later, when I was being encouraged by some photographers that were in the space in 2021 to launch projects in the NFT space,
00:14:34
Speaker
I sort of remembered that and started to think of it not just as a sort of a vehicle to collectors, you know, in terms of a market, but also as like a sort of a tool that facilitates a different experience of artwork or could.
00:14:51
Speaker
So yeah, dove in with a project in 2021 and back then, you know, it was a very different
00:14:58
Speaker
landscape and it was a very exciting period of time to be doing that.
00:15:04
Speaker
But instantly found a kind of like maybe a vacuum of conversation
00:15:11
Speaker
and dialogue and not a lot of photographers period in the space at that point.
00:15:16
Speaker
There was a guy called Chris Graves who encouraged me to come in.
00:15:20
Speaker
Shane Leverlet who runs assembly was there.
00:15:22
Speaker
It was like very, very few people.
00:15:26
Speaker
And so as I was thinking of, you know, who might be game to at least have a conversation about what's possible for photography as it meets the blockchain.
00:15:39
Speaker
I had seen what you posted, Matt, but also just sort of, I think, knew that you would be up for the conversation.
00:15:48
Speaker
I'd never heard that about Kevin McCoy before.
00:15:50
Speaker
That's, you know, because I think if you came to NFTs through...
00:15:57
Speaker
NFT Twitter, you think it's CryptoPunks and Larva Labs or something like that where NFT started.
00:16:02
Speaker
If you came in through digital art or Rhizome, it's Kevin McCoy.
00:16:07
Speaker
But rarely at that time did I ever see those two things together.
00:16:10
Speaker
It was you either came in this door or you came in that door.
00:16:14
Speaker
And so that's interesting.
00:16:15
Speaker
Yeah, I guess I never, yeah, I didn't realize that you were sharing a, you were in such close proximity like that.
00:16:21
Speaker
And Rhizome was up in the building at that point too.
00:16:24
Speaker
So there was a lot of, yeah,
00:16:27
Speaker
There was definitely conversation around what it could be, but it was in a very different direction from where it is now.
00:16:32
Speaker
You know, I think that, I shouldn't speak for Kevin, but I think that, you know, Monograph was kind of looking towards what this could do for institutions and some of the spaces that are still yet really to, even now, adopt, you know, tokenized artwork.
00:16:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:52
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:53
Speaker
And actually we just, we just had a conversation with Chris Graves last week that he's, he's going to be on the podcast and he was talking about institutions and that's where he's spending a lot of his energy now is, is trying to convince museums that these things are important to them or they should be.
00:17:10
Speaker
And it's beginning to happen, which is, which is great.
00:17:13
Speaker
But I think in terms of,
00:17:16
Speaker
I think the level that maybe it was envisioned to be in 2014, where you could put a chip on the back of a great master work and retroactively sort of track its history and give it a point of provenance and track it moving forward.
00:17:35
Speaker
I think it's going to be a while before we see that, if we ever do.
00:17:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:44
Speaker
Yeah, I don't think galleries are, I mean, you guys aren't air tagging your artist works.
00:17:50
Speaker
No, no, we're not.
00:17:52
Speaker
No, but it was exciting to see, what was it, the Pompidou that they announced as 30 or so acquisitions recently?
00:17:59
Speaker
Yeah, they did.
00:18:00
Speaker
And, you know, I think the same as there's this conversation about like, where did the NFT start and who,
00:18:10
Speaker
So much is about context.
00:18:12
Speaker
So will the CryptoPunks be seen as an art project or will it be seen more in the realm of collectibles?
00:18:18
Speaker
And so that kind of opens the door for the pathway from Kevin McCoy to what these museums are collecting.
00:18:26
Speaker
And then by the same token, what institutions were collecting art first?
00:18:30
Speaker
And, you know, I've seen some pushback on online saying, why are you celebrating
00:18:35
Speaker
these larger institutions when smaller ones had been buying and supporting digital art and immediately made the shift to the blockchain.
00:18:42
Speaker
But I do think it is different when institutions like MoMA say we are openly collecting works and expanding our digital departments or the Pompidou is saying, you know, publicly announcing these acquisitions.
00:18:56
Speaker
And I just, you know, we still have more than a foot in the,
00:19:01
Speaker
conventional legacy, traditional art world.
00:19:04
Speaker
And those are the things that are going to make a difference.
00:19:08
Speaker
You know, as a smaller European museum, that's always focused on digital art.
00:19:12
Speaker
It doesn't, of course they were interested in NFTs.
00:19:15
Speaker
It's in their mandate.
00:19:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:18
Speaker
Yeah, and I do think there's like kind of an attitude within the kind of like crypto NFT space, which is like we don't need or want institutions because we're already doing our own thing.
00:19:29
Speaker
But also like when it happens, everybody retweets it and points to it and says, look at this thing that's happening, right?
00:19:36
Speaker
So, you know, I don't know what that means, but it's like people want to be able to have both sides of it.
00:19:44
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:19:45
Speaker
I think it means that the landscape just expands.
00:19:48
Speaker
So there's just a lot of real estate in that arena.
00:19:51
Speaker
And initially the fear was, hey, us scrappy upstarts, we built this thing.
00:19:57
Speaker
You can't come in and take all the credit.
00:19:58
Speaker
And I think that's why some people are reluctant to kind of celebrate the larger institutions acquiring NFT works because they don't want them to thereby take the credit for this.
00:20:12
Speaker
And that kind of makes sense.
00:20:14
Speaker
But that always seemed inevitable.
00:20:17
Speaker
anyway.
00:20:19
Speaker
And I think that a lot of these things will exist in parallel.
Future of Digital Art and NFTs
00:20:23
Speaker
So in the same way that you have regional galleries who really don't care about the art fair circuit or something, I think what I'd like to think is that there are artists who just continue to mint their works online and it is just as useful to them 10 years from now as it is now.
00:20:43
Speaker
And there's no expectation that they have to be minted, so to speak,
00:20:48
Speaker
by the traditional art world in order to be releasing their projects or putting them on the blockchain.
00:20:53
Speaker
Yeah, and I think right now in the last year or six months to a year has been an interesting time to see who's sticking around and still making things, even though, you know, drops aren't selling out immediately.
00:21:07
Speaker
And I feel like the people who are still doing it right now are the people who actually
00:21:11
Speaker
like actually care about the tech, right?
00:21:12
Speaker
They're actually in it for the tech and they're in it for what it can mean for artists and galleries.
00:21:16
Speaker
And so, I don't know, that's been kind of fun, I think, to watch.
00:21:23
Speaker
And I think all the OG people are obviously still on board, but there was a lot of people who jumped on it in 2021 who are no longer around, right?
00:21:35
Speaker
Well, we might see some of those people return.
00:21:37
Speaker
And I was actually just talking to a collector about that last night because I think there's somewhat of a bad taste in some collector's mouth for some of these people who did pop up and have disappeared.
00:21:48
Speaker
But we've got to remember also, it takes a lot of bandwidth to sort of stay present in the context of Twitter.
00:21:57
Speaker
I mean, that's like a hyper presence.
00:22:01
Speaker
And, you know, if we think of some of the people that we have worked with or are working with Zome, you know, I think we have to acknowledge that while I think some of these people can bring a really fresh view to what's happening within, you know, as photography meets the blockchain, they don't necessarily have the bandwidth to stay omnipresent.
00:22:25
Speaker
And I think that that should be fine.
00:22:28
Speaker
And I think if people are able to return to a space with new ideas, they should be welcomed.
00:22:35
Speaker
I think there's like a spillover of cultural currency that has kind of permeated the way that we are thinking about people needing to be present.
00:22:48
Speaker
Because we're talking largely about a lot of introverted people that want and need to spend a lot of time in a dark room, you know, in order to be able to fulfill other expectations from collectors.
00:23:02
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:04
Speaker
Sorry.
00:23:04
Speaker
No, go ahead.
00:23:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:06
Speaker
And so, you know, to tell artists who are over 40 who are really used to having galleries act in a kind of agent capacity and sort of part of their
00:23:17
Speaker
mandate or part of their job basically is to create a cushion between the collectors and the artists.
00:23:22
Speaker
And so suddenly tell these artists, you need to do the work.
00:23:25
Speaker
Um, I, I think it, it makes them uncomfortable.
00:23:28
Speaker
It made me uncomfortable for a week, essentially shilling my own project.
00:23:33
Speaker
But I came away from that thinking, I, every artist should experience this.
00:23:38
Speaker
Every artist should have the experience, not only of representing their own work to collectors of just going through this intense week of responding to DMS and
00:23:47
Speaker
getting on Twitter spaces, but also doing it for somebody else.
00:23:51
Speaker
It made curating a group show, little things like that, just really pale in comparison to what I'm sure as a gallery, you know, where you, you were the steward of that work and you're thinking of it as a cultural object and therefore having that kind of importance.
00:24:10
Speaker
And so it, yeah, I just thought that that was,
00:24:15
Speaker
just the first, the first drop was a row after project.
00:24:17
Speaker
And I felt like, I can't believe that this person has entrusted us for this week.
00:24:22
Speaker
And so that more than the financial pressure, it was just don't screw this up.
00:24:28
Speaker
Um, he, he basically had said, you know, it sort of implied, like, I just don't want to, I don't screw the, don't make me look bad here.
00:24:35
Speaker
Not in so many words, but don't screw this up.
00:24:38
Speaker
Um,
00:24:39
Speaker
And especially in like an environment where people are like kind of rooting for people to mess up.
00:24:45
Speaker
Right.
00:24:45
Speaker
That's like, yeah.
00:24:46
Speaker
Everything else that he's hearing.
00:24:48
Speaker
Exactly.
00:24:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:49
Speaker
Everybody else that he's talking to everything else, like we're over here in his, in his ear saying this could be life-changing for you.
00:24:55
Speaker
I think you'll find this a satisfying experience.
00:24:57
Speaker
It will be creatively satisfying to you.
00:25:00
Speaker
We will find a, you know, a project that if not generative, it seems unique to the blockchain, you know, it's going to be great.
00:25:05
Speaker
And then the other year it's like scam, scam, scam, scam.
00:25:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:12
Speaker
I remember I was really excited about the Marina Abramovich drop because it was on Tezos and we do most of our stuff on Tezos and I just...
00:25:21
Speaker
It was exciting to see such a big name use that blockchain.
00:25:25
Speaker
And then the drop was like a total mess.
00:25:28
Speaker
It like didn't work.
00:25:29
Speaker
People couldn't mint.
00:25:30
Speaker
And it was just like, it's like everything you didn't want it to be was what it was.
00:25:37
Speaker
And I don't know how much it affected the overall project in the end in terms of
00:25:41
Speaker
you know, how it was received or anything like that.
00:25:42
Speaker
They sorted it, you know, within probably an hour or something, but an hour on a drop is kind of a long time.
00:25:51
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:25:53
Speaker
Yeah, and those kind of concerns, you know, I don't think that that appeals to a lot of artists of a certain generation, you know, to tell them that we kind of have a month for this to work itself out.
00:26:03
Speaker
And I know that there are people out there that have, that Carla was talking about, people like Shane, who have said,
00:26:08
Speaker
Shane Lovelette who said this isn't sustainable you have to create a platform where like a gallery people can just come go to the website and they look at work they see exhibitions things are curated around these artworks and we prolong the time frame for these drops so maybe we don't even call them drops anymore but yeah the work is sort of released or exhibited and we remove the
00:26:37
Speaker
the time frame.
00:26:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:39
Speaker
We've been, we've been real careful to never use, I think never use the word drop when any of our shows open or anything like that.
00:26:47
Speaker
Just cause we, we know, we know what expectations come with that specific word.
00:26:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:52
Speaker
Interesting.
00:26:52
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:54
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:54
Speaker
I, you know, I wonder if people are going to continue to use if the, if the portal will just be,
00:27:02
Speaker
continue to be Ethereum, you know, or some currency or if it isn't just digital art that is on the blockchain and you're paying through the gallery's website in dollars.
00:27:17
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know.
00:27:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:19
Speaker
But I do think... There's a lot of strange... Sorry, Joseph.
00:27:23
Speaker
No, it's fine.
00:27:24
Speaker
There's a lot of strange mechanisms that we sort of adopted, I think, like the idea of the drop when we came in sort of on the heels of maybe generative art.
00:27:35
Speaker
The one thing that struck me when I was first figuring out how to sell work was
00:27:41
Speaker
this way was the idea of like a collection or a series of work being kind of akin to a edition and that the larger the size of that collection uh the it affected the price of the individual work in a way that
00:27:57
Speaker
what was considered a one-of-one work doesn't.
00:28:00
Speaker
And there were these sort of unspoken rules about not expanding that collection after you've released the drop and so on.
00:28:09
Speaker
That's very different from what we were used to in the traditional photo world anyway.
00:28:18
Speaker
And now I think which is already kind of being replaced by ideas around open editions
00:28:25
Speaker
um, in additions in general.
00:28:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:30
Speaker
We, we were talking about Uber earlier and it kind of reminds me of those early Uber days where, yeah, you could get across LA for $5, but, um, that is not the case anymore.
Navigating Challenges in the NFT Space
00:28:40
Speaker
It's not the reality for the passenger or the user or the driver.
00:28:44
Speaker
And, um,
00:28:47
Speaker
Like a lot of these technological innovations, they're kind of thrust on everybody.
00:28:50
Speaker
Everyone is told you have to accept AI, you have to accept Uber, you have to accept self-driving, you have to accept Web3.
00:28:56
Speaker
And I think that's where some of the resistance comes from.
00:29:00
Speaker
But the analogy that I like to think about is just digital photography.
00:29:05
Speaker
In the beginning, we were told as photographers, film photography is dead.
00:29:09
Speaker
You have to accept digital photography.
00:29:11
Speaker
It's better than film.
00:29:12
Speaker
But it wasn't actually better than film.
00:29:15
Speaker
It was better than film for somebody who say was on a budget and taking pictures in a regional theater or something and able to upload those pictures to their website and do it in darkness at a low resolution.
00:29:28
Speaker
And that was great.
00:29:30
Speaker
And now I mostly use digital photography.
00:29:33
Speaker
It's changed the way I think about making pictures.
00:29:35
Speaker
It's made me a better photographer.
00:29:36
Speaker
And so that acceptance
00:29:40
Speaker
To me, it seems like that was a positive pathway.
00:29:44
Speaker
And we're able to sort of assimilate it, I think, in a more positive way.
00:29:48
Speaker
But it was painful in the beginning.
00:29:50
Speaker
And so, you know, will this be sort of like that technology where once it gets good enough, well, everyone basically universally will accept it?
00:29:59
Speaker
Or will it be like Uber where it just, God, it was great.
00:30:03
Speaker
seemed like for both user and driver in the beginning.
00:30:08
Speaker
And now what a nightmare.
00:30:09
Speaker
The fees are really high.
00:30:11
Speaker
They're not making any money.
00:30:12
Speaker
Their cars are a wreck and they're underpaid.
00:30:14
Speaker
And yeah, I don't know.
00:30:18
Speaker
And what effect institutions coming into the space will have, I don't know.
00:30:21
Speaker
But yeah, I'm sort of curious, hoping for the best.
00:30:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:26
Speaker
Yeah, I think with at least with NFT technology in the Uber analogy, there was, you know, in that startup culture, they're like, they're losing money on purpose to kind of like get people in.
00:30:39
Speaker
And I don't think that was the case or is the case for artists who are working, making digital art on the blockchain, right?
00:30:47
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:30:48
Speaker
I mean, there are obviously like people who I'm sure employ those strategies in actual startup companies that work with
00:30:55
Speaker
blockchain but but it doesn't um it doesn't seem like that is the like general case because it's mostly artist driven right right right yeah no that's true and hopefully platforms like open sea you know i i there was they i think they did they change their royalty policy in the last week in the last couple of days yeah um right so yeah so you know that that could
00:31:21
Speaker
we'll see what happens if the other platforms take note or, or if they choose a different path.
00:31:26
Speaker
Um, or if other platforms emerge, you know, like a vertical that's specific to certain art forms that.
00:31:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:33
Speaker
I mean, square, Squarespace just have its, you know, the NFT tab or, or, or Adobe straight from Photoshop.
00:31:41
Speaker
Um, you know, Instagram's adopting, um, you know, they have tokenized little tokenized, um,
00:31:47
Speaker
icons now so you can you can link to your your stuff on chain through Instagram and they're they're going to extend that to be able to you know mint you know upload to Instagram and then and then there actually might already be a facility that's there so upload to a social platform and then mint from there yeah yeah I kind of imagine being adopted by
00:32:13
Speaker
by artists, but it's interesting to see it sort of spreading.
00:32:22
Speaker
Yeah, I thought I didn't care about the immutability part.
00:32:28
Speaker
I thought I didn't care about tracking provenance because for me, it really was about the money and empowering artists.
00:32:35
Speaker
It really seemed to me like, to go back to what I was saying about artists having an entrepreneurial spirit, it seemed like this is a way for artists
00:32:43
Speaker
to have more agency and take control of their careers.
00:32:45
Speaker
And that really appealed to me.
00:32:46
Speaker
And I thought, you know, the work can still be stolen.
00:32:51
Speaker
Your stuff still can be stolen from your wallet.
00:32:54
Speaker
Just because it's immutable doesn't mean you can get it back or you necessarily know where it is in any way that's useful.
00:33:03
Speaker
But I have since then, there have been some works that, and I'll get an email from a gallery that says, this thing looks like it was damaged
00:33:12
Speaker
And we should fix it.
00:33:14
Speaker
And we're looking at this thinking, how did it get to this?
00:33:17
Speaker
I think I know what this is and where it came from.
00:33:19
Speaker
What's it doing in this place?
00:33:22
Speaker
And so I've been rethinking that a little bit and thinking, it would be nice to know what hands that older work has passed through.
00:33:32
Speaker
It would be nice to have a way to keep track of that.
00:33:35
Speaker
We've sort of had these discussions in the past about the idea of like a one of one piece almost acting like a digital negative piece.
00:33:49
Speaker
both for like rarity reasons and for provenance.
00:33:52
Speaker
And I still really like that idea.
00:33:54
Speaker
I know it doesn't really work for us as photographers because you're putting something, you know, high res up on online into permanent storage, which is the thing we've been deliberately avoiding for decades.
00:34:08
Speaker
But in a way, I wonder if that's just
00:34:10
Speaker
If we just have a little bit of a hangover from those last couple of decades with that, it kind of echoes to me like 2003 when we all put watermarks on our images.
00:34:22
Speaker
Like, oh, someone's going to take this, but I'll never be able to use it because it has this watermark on it.
00:34:26
Speaker
I wonder if we should just... No, yeah, and you put your images on a CD and mail it to the National Archives so that they can copyright it.
00:34:35
Speaker
But maybe it's time to let go.
00:34:38
Speaker
of that and embrace, if you did put something up there,
00:34:43
Speaker
your 8K file that is the source of your editions and that the print editions retain their value out of the fact that, you know, the craftsmanship that you put into creating the prints and the rarity of that edition in itself.
00:34:57
Speaker
But the file, the one of one does act as a negative with provenance and maybe trackers can be attached to that, you know, so you know,
00:35:10
Speaker
a great deal about where it has been used and all that tracking information is pulled back to that point of provenance.
00:35:15
Speaker
Someone's gonna take that and put it on a t-shirt, but,
00:35:21
Speaker
I think that doesn't matter is the real question.
00:35:23
Speaker
And like, imagine people downloading your 8K file and making a print and putting it in their house, right?
00:35:30
Speaker
I mean, that's kind of, I feel like that's kind of amazing if that can happen without reducing the value of the works that are sold to collectors, right?
00:35:38
Speaker
As long as everybody kind of accepts that this is the new way.
00:35:41
Speaker
It has no value.
00:35:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:42
Speaker
Right.
00:35:42
Speaker
It has no value except that somebody gets to, you know, adorn their house with it who wouldn't be able to because they can't afford it.
00:35:49
Speaker
It might have a little value, but I think whether or not that value has any kind of pejorative implications or, you know, is it really going to cause problems with you?
00:35:59
Speaker
I mean, I used to think I'm just before I had any kind of representation, I would just.
00:36:05
Speaker
This is in the blog days.
00:36:07
Speaker
So one thing that preceded photo NFTs were like photo blogs.
00:36:10
Speaker
You get emails from somebody and say, I saw your picture on this blog and I'd love to buy one.
00:36:14
Speaker
And I just, I desperately needed the money back then.
00:36:16
Speaker
So I would sell prints in places like union square to somebody that I met online.
00:36:20
Speaker
It was like a drug deal.
00:36:21
Speaker
They'd give me a couple hundred dollars in cash and I just give them a print in a tube.
00:36:25
Speaker
You know, sometimes it was signed.
00:36:27
Speaker
Sometimes it was not whatever we worked out.
00:36:28
Speaker
And I thought there's this weird stuff out there.
00:36:30
Speaker
If this is ever a problem, it's a,
00:36:32
Speaker
I'll be in a, if I'm in a place where this is a problem, I'll be in a better place.
00:36:36
Speaker
And so I'll have the mechanism to deal with it.
00:36:40
Speaker
But yeah, I forgot where I was going this, but, but you know, if I want to, at this point, if I want a Carlo print, I don't really have room in my house to exhibit that.
00:36:54
Speaker
And I don't, you know, I could put it in a drawer somewhere with all my other friends, prints and things, but there is something nice about,
00:37:02
Speaker
now starting a new kind of collecting, a digital collecting.
00:37:05
Speaker
I can show people that collection on my phone.
00:37:08
Speaker
I can look at it on my phone.
00:37:10
Speaker
I had sort of thought within a few years, people will be at lunch together and they'll be showing their collections on their phone.
00:37:16
Speaker
I think that happens a lot.
00:37:17
Speaker
It doesn't happen among the artists that I know, but that seems like a natural next step.
00:37:21
Speaker
You're looking at each other's work.
00:37:23
Speaker
People are always showing me stuff that they've posted on their Instagram if they want to show me what they've been working on in the studio.
00:37:29
Speaker
So now your collection is there too.
00:37:31
Speaker
And it just, it means, oh, I can have more work from friends also this way because I'm kind of reluctant to keep collecting their work.
00:37:40
Speaker
I don't have any place to put it and it's expensive to buy.
00:37:44
Speaker
And so there are all those possibilities on top of that.
00:37:48
Speaker
Do you think there are many collectors spending time in the metaverse looking at their work and other collectors' works curated into these metaverse spaces?
00:38:02
Speaker
I see it on Twitter, but I don't think that that's, that's not where the people I know are going to want to look at it.
00:38:08
Speaker
I think that that's people who are kind of coming in.
00:38:10
Speaker
Is that because we're over 40?
00:38:12
Speaker
No, but I don't, I, you know, some of these collectors that we know they have posted there.
00:38:16
Speaker
I don't know.
00:38:16
Speaker
I mean, you, maybe you've met some of these people, but so you might know, but to me, they seem, they could be around our age.
00:38:22
Speaker
They just, they haven't come into the traditional art world and they've really enjoyed building these virtual gallery spaces.
00:38:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:38:28
Speaker
Um,
00:38:29
Speaker
And so you can do that, but I don't see the people that, that I know from my world, I don't see them doing that.
00:38:36
Speaker
I see them showing pictures on, on their phone, you know, maybe on a, you know, if they could email them, they put them into a PDF or something, but like, they just want to see if you, if the wallet just looks like a nice way to present a graphic image or a set of graphic images, a set of images, then that's, that's the way they're going to share them.
00:38:58
Speaker
I think also for work that I'm starting to become more interested in that's generative or dynamic or interactive in some way where it's on a screen, but it also requires the sort of processing capacity of whatever is behind it, like a laptop or a phone or the player, that that work sort of needs to sit in front of that kind of processing power.
00:39:20
Speaker
And having it together in one space, you know, is much more enjoyable than sort of
00:39:27
Speaker
scrambling around, you know, on something that's, that's, that's live on a webpage or something, you know?
00:39:33
Speaker
Right.
00:39:34
Speaker
Right.
00:39:35
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:35
Speaker
I think, you know, all of these concerns, there are things that you and I are comfortable talking about, but one, one thing I remember you said to me early on was what, what's fun about being early is that you then go to your, to your friends and say, Hey, I, I, you know, I've warmed the water for you here.
00:39:50
Speaker
You should jump, you know, come on in the water's fine.
Creative Collaborations in NFTs
00:39:54
Speaker
And that was kind of,
00:39:56
Speaker
how zone started as a way to be engaged with artists that we knew and respected.
00:40:01
Speaker
And, and, and, and we, we immediately cared about this space and to sort of help guide people in.
00:40:09
Speaker
So we didn't have any VC money.
00:40:13
Speaker
Nobody had invested in this.
00:40:14
Speaker
We just built a website.
00:40:15
Speaker
And I thought this feels like the old days when you just kind of curate shows and somebody, a friend's garage space.
00:40:22
Speaker
And it would, it would,
00:40:25
Speaker
it would be done kind of in that, in that mode basically.
00:40:28
Speaker
And, and I think, you know, two projects in we're realizing, Oh, we're seeing these other platforms startup that continue to have investment money behind them.
00:40:44
Speaker
They build a board right away.
00:40:46
Speaker
There's just a lot of money for projects.
00:40:48
Speaker
And so I don't know that the space will continue to,
00:40:51
Speaker
how far you can go if you're just kind of working out of your garage the way we are on no budget.
00:40:56
Speaker
But I'd like to think with a little bit of coding and some work on the part of the artists and just a robust collaborative experience that, you know, lasts for more than a couple of months, you can have this really satisfying creative experience.
00:41:11
Speaker
But we're really
00:41:13
Speaker
trying to figure that out.
00:41:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:14
Speaker
I think we've realized also sort of where our interest lies in all of this, right?
00:41:18
Speaker
Like working with artists, you guys run a gallery, so you know this better than we do.
00:41:22
Speaker
That's tough.
00:41:23
Speaker
Getting artists to, you know, meet deadlines, getting them to collaborate with coders.
00:41:32
Speaker
Stuff's not as easy as you might think.
00:41:35
Speaker
And there's a hustle to it too, which I think we were not maybe as ready for, right?
00:41:40
Speaker
You need to sort of go out and,
00:41:45
Speaker
spread word.
00:41:47
Speaker
I think the part of it that we've, I don't mean to speak for you, Matt, but I think the part of it that I found the most enjoyable is kind of working, like we're looking at an artist's practice and
00:41:58
Speaker
and figuring out how it can meet the blockchain and with whom and for what reason.
00:42:02
Speaker
And like that's a really satisfying and engaging experience.
00:42:06
Speaker
And I think I would continue to do that.
00:42:09
Speaker
I mean, hopefully we can do the artists proud in an ongoing way, but I would want to continue to do that.
00:42:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:16
Speaker
Well, you clearly have a talent for that.
00:42:17
Speaker
I mean, I think that's, you know, that's just part of your skillset now is you do have a knack for looking at an artist's practice.
00:42:25
Speaker
and thinking about how it can be folded into this technology or vice versa.
00:42:30
Speaker
And I think that that, you know, I wanna see you engage with artists in that, not just your own work, but provide this for artists in a way that's satisfying for you because it, I don't know, I try to find out what happens on these other platforms and what those artists experiences are like.
00:42:47
Speaker
And I think from, you know, the little bit of research that I've been able to do, it sort of seems like, well, in this case,
00:42:56
Speaker
the artist had an idea and they went off and built it for that artist and then they would show them things.
00:43:04
Speaker
Or in this case, they just
00:43:07
Speaker
they, this artist did have a regular contact with a, with a developer or with a graphic artist, but you know, the whole thing cost a hundred thousand dollars and, and it was bought by the owner of the platform who was also an investor.
00:43:22
Speaker
And, you know, so it's just sort of trying to figure out like how, what, what is a working model for the kind of thing that we want to set up.
00:43:30
Speaker
And I would like to think that, you know, like, like, you know, I, I don't know that much about your gallery, but I, I,
00:43:38
Speaker
I would be surprised if you had major VC backing or some huge investor or something.
00:43:44
Speaker
And I think the blockchain needs, NFTs need spaces like yours, needs people like you guys.
00:43:52
Speaker
So you have Pace Verso up here, but you also have good projects, critical artworks that are happening for not a lot of money.
00:44:04
Speaker
That just seems important to me that there are opportunities where you
00:44:08
Speaker
not just the prices down, but the cost of making work should be down too.
00:44:14
Speaker
And just as a photographer, that's become a problem.
00:44:17
Speaker
This has become a problem for galleries is if you're trying to produce a show that has 10 works in it and they're of a certain size and they're mounted and framed, they can only sell for a certain price point and it costs a lot of money to make.
00:44:30
Speaker
And I think that explains why they are, part of why they are so laser focused.
00:44:35
Speaker
on representational painting right now.
00:44:37
Speaker
It just doesn't cost as much money to make.
Sustainability and Artistic Integrity in NFTs
00:44:40
Speaker
And I don't wanna be an artist who requires massive amounts of money in production to make work all the time.
00:44:48
Speaker
And I'd like to hang something wet on the wall
00:44:51
Speaker
the night of the opening.
00:44:52
Speaker
And I'd like to see that happen in the NFT space too.
00:44:56
Speaker
This is a little bit weird.
00:44:58
Speaker
Photography does have a similar problem in the NFT space though, if you compare it to generative art, if you compare it to where generative art came from, which is largely creative coders who were creating their own work, you know, on a laptop,
00:45:16
Speaker
you couldn't really have smaller overheads for a project, you know, but as different people, you mentioned Pace, right?
00:45:26
Speaker
Like as Pace enters the space, they have to do a similar thing to us where you're kind of pairing an artist with a creative coder and looking for where they can collaborate.
00:45:38
Speaker
And so there's automatically costs.
00:45:40
Speaker
It's like in the early days of Pace,
00:45:43
Speaker
designers using Macs, like you had to have a Mac operator and a designer sitting there and say a red line, green line, and, you know, it costs twice as much to design whatever it was you're doing.
00:45:52
Speaker
We're still in a way there, right?
00:45:55
Speaker
Like it's not, it doesn't cost what it costs, you know, mountain frame work, but it also doesn't cost what generative art costs to create.
00:46:05
Speaker
Right.
00:46:06
Speaker
I mean, I have said to ex-students of mine who I know have no money,
00:46:09
Speaker
you should look into this.
00:46:10
Speaker
And I've seen some of them do it.
00:46:12
Speaker
And even on a very small budget, they've been able to put a project on there, maybe make a little bit of that money back.
00:46:19
Speaker
You can't think of it as time put in because as an artist, you just can't think of the work that you're putting in as having an hourly corollary or something.
00:46:32
Speaker
You can't index that hourly corollary.
00:46:34
Speaker
that time cost.
00:46:35
Speaker
But, um, I do think that they, um, will spend some money minting work and get a little bit more than that back.
00:46:44
Speaker
Um, and, and not essentially not, not losing money.
00:46:48
Speaker
Um, which, you know, that, that's, that's kind of, that's kind of amazing to me.
00:46:53
Speaker
I mean, it just seems like there's a lot of potential there.
00:46:55
Speaker
Yeah.
00:46:55
Speaker
There's a way of putting work out into the world and to not the expectation that artists have to keep spending money.
00:47:02
Speaker
And, um,
00:47:04
Speaker
in order to put their work out there.
00:47:05
Speaker
Yeah, have your first show and don't lose money.
00:47:07
Speaker
Yeah, that sounds incredible.
00:47:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:09
Speaker
Time.
00:47:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:11
Speaker
Sweat equity.
00:47:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:13
Speaker
So I'm usually not this silent.
00:47:16
Speaker
I mean, this is just a testament, as Joe would probably say, that my instinct was correct.
00:47:21
Speaker
You guys are kind of like, I think you are exactly who I thought you guys were.
00:47:26
Speaker
This like slow, artisanal, like...
00:47:34
Speaker
It's very nice to hear the way you go about your projects.
00:47:38
Speaker
And I think for Joe and I, we do see these projects that come, like you were saying, Matt, where they get VC money and they have a board and
00:47:48
Speaker
Or even Joe is always pointing out Pace's Discord channel.
00:47:53
Speaker
And it's like, it's one of the funniest things I've seen.
00:47:55
Speaker
It's like you have these people coming in there trying to lead and trying to like ruffle up people and like asking questions.
00:48:02
Speaker
So synthetic and so not like how the world or the art world operates.
00:48:08
Speaker
But yeah, we like to think that we're going about it in a slow methodical way.
00:48:14
Speaker
And part of the reason is we love these artists.
00:48:17
Speaker
We love talking to them.
00:48:18
Speaker
We love sitting down with them.
00:48:19
Speaker
We love coming together and coming up with these ideas that bring technology and their artwork into it.
00:48:26
Speaker
focus.
00:48:27
Speaker
But that takes time.
00:48:28
Speaker
It takes a tremendous amount of time.
00:48:30
Speaker
I don't think it's replicable.
00:48:32
Speaker
I don't think it's something you could do.
00:48:33
Speaker
I don't know.
00:48:35
Speaker
Maybe it is in the future you can do it in a massive way, but it's just like this slow methodical... I think in the future society is going to think differently about artists, for better or for worse.
00:48:46
Speaker
Because I think of my interactions with family, my partner's family who are largely lawyers, and
00:48:54
Speaker
you know, some of the work that they're doing is legitimately important.
00:48:57
Speaker
I mean, it has impact on, on our lives, depending on what state you live in.
00:49:01
Speaker
And, but they will always defer to me because I'm doing this mystical thing and, and, and it, they can't quite put a value on it.
00:49:10
Speaker
And I always want to say, you know, you're, you're looking at art in this way that like you can't decode it.
00:49:15
Speaker
Um, you're the one who's speaking in a language that I don't understand.
00:49:19
Speaker
It's not that hard to figure out.
00:49:21
Speaker
It really isn't.
00:49:22
Speaker
And, um,
00:49:23
Speaker
And I think a lot of, you know, some of the people you're talking about, I think these platforms hire these people to kind of gin up excitement.
00:49:32
Speaker
But I think if you're running your own small platform, you have to do that yourself too.
00:49:37
Speaker
You're the owner operator, you're the PR person, but you're talking to an audience that I'm not sure feels that way about artists.
00:49:45
Speaker
You know, they're expecting something back.
00:49:47
Speaker
They're expecting that artist, pay attention to them, to be present.
00:49:51
Speaker
to answer their questions.
00:49:53
Speaker
And I wonder what effect that will have on this kind of, the way I think society thinks about artists is sort of occupying this kind of mythical space and demythologizing it.
00:50:06
Speaker
Maybe that's a good thing.
00:50:12
Speaker
I don't know.
00:50:12
Speaker
I think that...
00:50:14
Speaker
Yeah, it might be good to sort of take some of the mystery out of it and for on the collector side to have certain expectations.
00:50:22
Speaker
It might be healthy.
00:50:25
Speaker
I think recently our track has been more towards hybridity and giving a foothold to those people that might unnecessarily completely be all in on the digital realm by giving them something that can actually physically hold on to.
00:50:40
Speaker
And I know photography has been that way since inception.
00:50:43
Speaker
It's, it's, it's been on both sides, right?
00:50:46
Speaker
Cause it's like, it's, it's ephemeral and it's a print and it's,
00:50:51
Speaker
It's neither here nor there.
00:50:53
Speaker
But with our ethos in our gallery, having this opportunity to have these real objects contextualize the digital objects and vice versa, it's been very satisfying to kind of like... I think we have collectors from the crypto side too who are like, oh, it comes with a real artwork?
00:51:13
Speaker
But that's a bonus, right?
00:51:15
Speaker
It's not even like why they're interested, but they're like, yeah, sure, I'll take a print.
00:51:18
Speaker
That sounds good.
00:51:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:51:20
Speaker
Well, you know, photography followed painting and printmaking for most of its life.
00:51:25
Speaker
And, you know, in terms of pricing, formatting, the language to describe it, you know, going back to the last century, all the photo sessionists and what people like Alfred Stieglitz were doing, you know, it's just trying to adapt the language of painting in order to be accepted as an art form.
00:51:41
Speaker
Well, this is a case where photography is suddenly veered off, merging with generative artists,
00:51:48
Speaker
Carlo was saying, some of them coming from the art world, some of them coming from the tech world, some of them coming from a hybrid of both.
00:51:55
Speaker
And there are some painters coming into the space, but it just, it seems like they need a lot of, they need a lot of support to do so.
00:52:05
Speaker
And like the Lowy Hollowell Pace Verso project, it's kind of like,
00:52:09
Speaker
will distill your aesthetic down to something that can be turned into like trading cards.
00:52:15
Speaker
And not to speak ill of that perfectly legitimate project, but I do think that it seems like there's a suddenly photography is maybe doing its own thing, making its own new friends and building its own new lexicon in this new space.
00:52:32
Speaker
And it doesn't have to follow painting and printmaking to determine how many editions
00:52:39
Speaker
sizing, the language around it and all of that.
00:52:41
Speaker
And that could be really interesting.
00:52:44
Speaker
That's what was so interesting about seeing the additions not validated when photography first hit the NFT space, that that was a sort of artificial rarity that had happened in the art world because of photography following painting.
00:52:58
Speaker
And it just didn't correlate to the people that were used to buying art.
00:53:03
Speaker
tokenized art.
00:53:04
Speaker
And so that's why it's taken so long for it to catch up, I think, in a way.
00:53:08
Speaker
Right.
00:53:11
Speaker
Right.
00:53:12
Speaker
Yeah, I think some of those people, when you first got into the space, Carlo, I think a lot of what was happening was just, as somebody said, it's another column in your editions.
00:53:25
Speaker
So you have your short edition of five to ten or something, and then you have your digital edition or your NFT edition.
00:53:30
Speaker
So
00:53:32
Speaker
you run out of additions where photography supposedly can be endlessly copied.
00:53:36
Speaker
And so you make one digital copy and then that could be for sale.
00:53:39
Speaker
And those sort of seemed like the options at the times like onboarding of legacy collection.
00:53:46
Speaker
And I still think that that's a legitimate use of the, of the space.
00:53:51
Speaker
But one of the first thing Carlos said to me was, I think we could do more than that.
00:53:54
Speaker
I think we could, I think we could do more.
00:53:56
Speaker
I think we could try to connect artists with,
00:53:59
Speaker
coders.
00:53:59
Speaker
And of course, this is what everyone is doing now.
00:54:01
Speaker
But that that was just obvious to hand to you, I think, Carlos, just this is the next the next step in the space, which, in my mind, legitimized it, I realized, Oh, okay, well, that, that's, that was the last thing I needed to hear to believe in its legitimacy.
00:54:17
Speaker
Because if if it could only be something to just make a one more column in your in your editions for sale, then
00:54:28
Speaker
That seems pretty limited and much more of a gamble on its validity and its future.
00:54:35
Speaker
I think we were lucky too that, for example, we got to work with Roe, who actually kind of deals directly with the idea of a marketplace as a vehicle and was willing to address the screen as a subject.
00:54:51
Speaker
And I think it helped us do something more than just bring a legacy project
00:54:58
Speaker
Because I think when we were in Rose's project, we were thinking initially about that as being algorithmically created.
00:55:09
Speaker
But there was sort of enough, I think, just in the intent of the project for it to be satisfying.
00:55:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:55:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:55:19
Speaker
It just seems like there's a lot to address there besides using it as a marketplace.
00:55:23
Speaker
Like we were talking before about just the idea of putting something into...
00:55:28
Speaker
Permanent storage, right?
00:55:29
Speaker
You're talking about the immutability and just the implications of putting a photograph that is by its nature, you know, photography kind of always is danced between like veracity and mutability.
00:55:40
Speaker
And so to take something that belongs to that medium and put it into permanent storage in itself is...
00:55:48
Speaker
an interesting subject.
00:55:50
Speaker
I think there's just a lot to deal with at this moment.
00:55:56
Speaker
But something I noticed in the early days also was that there was a very different sort of appreciation of work.
00:56:06
Speaker
Like it wasn't, you know, collectors were not being guided
00:56:11
Speaker
by any of the traditional pillars of, you know, taste making, gatekeeping and so on.
00:56:16
Speaker
And so they were off on their own, um, developing
00:56:23
Speaker
developing appreciation and different work from different work appreciated than we would have found appreciate in the space that we were used to.
00:56:33
Speaker
And that part of it has been fascinating to me, you know, like the idea of, you know, still, I think the majority of the collectors that we're probably talking about are very different from the collectors that were, or maybe not for you guys, because you're probably bringing in your collectors from your roster, perhaps.
00:56:51
Speaker
But certainly in terms of the people that we've been talking to about projects, they have been collecting quite different work from what we or Shane or, you know, Fellowship or sort of bring into the space.
00:57:06
Speaker
Could you elaborate a little bit more on that?
00:57:08
Speaker
Yeah, I'm trying to think of how to say it.
00:57:10
Speaker
I think you're saying it in a really nice way is what you're saying.
00:57:13
Speaker
Yeah, I don't want to be too derogatory, but my first introduction is... Like just the color pink is the thing that drives a particular collector.
00:57:20
Speaker
Well, you find that, I mean, I found that in the traditional art world too.
00:57:24
Speaker
I mean, I've been lectured to by collectors and been just astounded at the hubris or the arrogance
00:57:33
Speaker
It collectors who wield a lot of money who can change the course of a gallery's exhibition schedule and focus in the way that they, you realize, oh, there's a handful of people.
00:57:48
Speaker
You get into the topic, and I don't really participate.
00:57:51
Speaker
I don't participate in this level of the art world.
00:57:54
Speaker
But when I bump up against it or talk to people who do or I meet some of these collectors, it's you realize, wow, there's a handful of people that are driving the direction of this.
00:58:02
Speaker
And they don't want to listen anymore.
00:58:06
Speaker
Any listening that's done is done by people that they hire to do the listening for them.
00:58:11
Speaker
And kind of watching the sort of organic way collectors are sort of coming up in the NFT space, they really want to listen, a lot of them.
00:58:20
Speaker
They talk in a kind of unfiltered way.
00:58:24
Speaker
They miss cues and things like that.
00:58:26
Speaker
They don't represent themselves in a way that people from the traditional art world are used to.
00:58:31
Speaker
And it makes it
00:58:32
Speaker
very easy to speak of them pejoratively.
00:58:37
Speaker
And I think that that's, it's really too bad.
00:58:41
Speaker
We've been sort of trained to think of galleries and collectors in this adversarial way.
00:58:48
Speaker
But the quiet unspoken part is like,
00:58:51
Speaker
also honor them, make sure you honor them.
00:58:54
Speaker
You know, this is how you do a studio visit and welcome these people into the space.
00:58:58
Speaker
You know, this is, this is the way you should speak to them at openings and things.
00:59:01
Speaker
And so I, I think it's sort of a cliche to say this about the NFT space at this point, but the rawness of it, um, I, you know, to me, that seemed really encouraging.
00:59:11
Speaker
Like, all right, this guy, you know,
00:59:15
Speaker
jerk trader 69 is like up in my DMS right now, but I looked in his wallet and, and, you know, he's got all kinds of stuff in there.
00:59:22
Speaker
And, you know, some of it is work that I like.
00:59:26
Speaker
Most of it is not, but this person is very dedicated to this.
00:59:31
Speaker
And, you know, I want to see, I want to see where this goes and to go back to, you know, something that Carlos was saying earlier, like we, we got lucky with Roe, I think an artist like that who didn't want to be left out.
00:59:44
Speaker
And I think you have to have a carry that a little bit with you.
00:59:46
Speaker
Like I'm a little bored with what's happening in the art world and I don't want to be left out.
00:59:51
Speaker
And if you have that approach to technology in general, like, you know, a healthy skepticism, which I, you know, probably was very good with technology, but always seems to have a, you know, a healthy skepticism when it comes to its influence and all the contemporary aspects of our life.
01:00:08
Speaker
But, you know, also just,
01:00:12
Speaker
open to those possibilities.
01:00:13
Speaker
And for an artist, you need an artist like that too, who's sort of like, yeah, I'm hearing scam shouted in my ear, but I'm also kind of interested.
01:00:24
Speaker
artists are curious by nature right which i think is why we've managed to find with most of are they i mean but are they really maybe we've just been lucky the best the best i think the best of them are the best of them are i know plenty of who are just old cranks sure i think i think after a while you know after a while it's it's tough to remain uh curious but
01:00:46
Speaker
I was going to say, I really liked that Rose project wasn't algorithmic just for the sake of being algorithmic, right?
01:00:55
Speaker
And it offered this other version.
01:00:58
Speaker
And that's what the digital space offers is a different kind of addition or a different kind of work that can speak to the original work in a different way.
01:01:06
Speaker
And so I thought that was a very nice kind of poetic work.
01:01:12
Speaker
And it's not it's not twenty thousand dollars.
01:01:14
Speaker
You know, it's it's it's priced at a point for what it is.
01:01:18
Speaker
And so we had a discussion about that.
01:01:20
Speaker
It's like, all right, you produce this work, you make it for the space.
01:01:24
Speaker
We're very excited about that.
01:01:25
Speaker
And it should have a corresponding price point.
01:01:28
Speaker
So don't think this is not a cash grab.
01:01:31
Speaker
You are making your work accessible to a new group of people.
01:01:35
Speaker
Let's be clear, you're making your work accessible to this group of people that you have not had exposure to before.
01:01:41
Speaker
And, you know, that journey, like we said, can be creatively satisfying.
01:01:45
Speaker
And at one point in this manic week, he said, I got to take a break and go snowboarding upstate.
01:01:50
Speaker
And and I had this flashback because I had the same conversation with Carlo in the week that I had my own drop.
01:01:57
Speaker
I was like, I don't know if I can do this.
01:02:01
Speaker
for all the reasons that we were talking about before, just being the storefront essentially for your own work and being the steward, the curator.
01:02:09
Speaker
And he said, well, yeah, you can just fuck off and leave it.
01:02:14
Speaker
You can walk away from this thing or you can put the time into it.
NFTs: A New Frontier for Artistic Exploration
01:02:18
Speaker
And yeah, hopefully you make some money, but you will have built something, a foundation in this space that I think will be valuable to you going forward.
01:02:28
Speaker
It's up to you.
01:02:32
Speaker
I had dinner last night with a couple of the collectors that bought some of the first pieces from that project.
01:02:40
Speaker
And they were so proud to have seen it travel, you know, a project that was sort of, you call it NFT native, make its way back through, you know, to Gagosian and to be shown as print work.
01:02:57
Speaker
Yeah.
01:02:58
Speaker
Which I, you know, I was sort of always curious to know whether, how interested collectors would be in that crossover.
01:03:06
Speaker
Because they're arguably not that interested in it crossing this way.
01:03:09
Speaker
But crossing back with, you know, they were very proud to have been the early collectors of their work.
01:03:18
Speaker
Yeah, well, that's something we talk a lot about, right?
01:03:22
Speaker
Does the real world value or the legacy value of the work matter to these collectors?
01:03:26
Speaker
And in our conversation, some of the platforms that we talk about seem very focused on that and others don't.
01:03:33
Speaker
And in the space, a lot of the value is with people who are native to the NFT space.
01:03:39
Speaker
And whether that will continue, if their value kind of plateaus, whether the resale value declines and people who have
01:03:48
Speaker
legacy artists who are already millionaires as they move into the space, you know, what, what will that, how will that ratio change?
01:03:58
Speaker
Yeah.
01:03:59
Speaker
Cause and, and in promoting the work, we had had those conversations too, sort of like, what, what are we talking to people about?
01:04:05
Speaker
Are we talking about process or are we talking about the collections that these artists where their work is, is, is already maintained the collections that it's already in?
01:04:13
Speaker
What are we trying to convince people of here?
01:04:15
Speaker
That it's interesting work and it's valuable towards the future?
01:04:18
Speaker
Or are we looking back towards its value, the value that the art world has already given it?
01:04:24
Speaker
Maybe we could go back to Joe's initial question about how you guys promote on Twitter.
01:04:32
Speaker
Yeah.
01:04:33
Speaker
What has worked, what hasn't worked, and what do you wish could be better, I guess?
01:04:37
Speaker
When we launched Rose Project, I sort of feel like the space was still very small.
01:04:41
Speaker
I think that what's happened in the last few months even has sort of probably made a big change to who's collecting work like that.
01:04:49
Speaker
At that time, there was like literally, you could count the collectors that I mean, what was the addition on that?
01:04:56
Speaker
22 pigeons was it?
01:04:56
Speaker
22.
01:04:57
Speaker
Yeah.
01:04:58
Speaker
So I think they were around roughly 22 collectors.
01:05:01
Speaker
Yeah.
01:05:04
Speaker
That would be interested in the work.
01:05:07
Speaker
And it's changed.
01:05:09
Speaker
It's changed.
01:05:10
Speaker
Now, I think.
01:05:14
Speaker
It's
01:05:15
Speaker
Yeah, because certainly economic circumstances change when you have a gallery.
01:05:21
Speaker
They change on a season and they change depending on what's happening in the economy.
01:05:26
Speaker
And so I'm sure you have all of those concerns.
01:05:29
Speaker
But man, we would have to... I think we delayed that ROE project at one point because we just didn't know what was going to happen to the price of Ethereum.
01:05:37
Speaker
And so it wasn't worth doing it that week.
01:05:39
Speaker
So you have to be... It felt like you had to be pretty nimble if you're just relying on...
01:05:44
Speaker
the reach of your Twitter.
01:05:46
Speaker
And I don't really like being reliant on Twitter for obvious reasons.
01:05:53
Speaker
Yeah, I think the short answer to your question is that we reached out to collectors privately.
01:05:57
Speaker
Gotcha.
01:05:58
Speaker
Yeah, for that work.
01:05:59
Speaker
Yeah.
01:06:00
Speaker
And that tends to be something that we've been more proactive about than
01:06:06
Speaker
than using social media.
01:06:10
Speaker
So, you know, we didn't have a Twitter account until we started this.
01:06:13
Speaker
And so we probably have 40 something followers.
01:06:16
Speaker
So what's the point?
01:06:19
Speaker
I think we're, this is one of the things that I actually enjoyed when I first started in the space was sort of the immediate dynamic with collectors.
01:06:31
Speaker
And it's nice to go back to them and sort of talk to them about
01:06:35
Speaker
work that you've been entrusted with and work that you've been collaborating on with somebody?
01:06:41
Speaker
My guess is that the website will be valuable over time.
01:06:44
Speaker
And that's something that I'd really like to build out and so that it has more content on it.
01:06:49
Speaker
So if Twitter implodes or people lose interest in that, you kind of have the internet staple.
01:06:56
Speaker
You have this site.
01:06:57
Speaker
And that would be the... So even though these works are on OpenSea,
01:07:03
Speaker
it was you can always get there by going through the website that was something that i felt like was really important early on especially if you're trying to onboard legacy collectors which we really haven't been able to do um but i i i did really try you know i would look at collections that were out works that were out there and because of the blockchain i could kind of see you know the thing is you can see some collectors and if they're open they will post their
01:07:29
Speaker
Twitter address in their OpenSea page.
01:07:31
Speaker
There are ways of locating these people.
01:07:33
Speaker
Sometimes it's just an anonymous wallet.
01:07:35
Speaker
If it wasn't an anonymous wallet, I would kind of look at that person's forward-facing social media and decide if it was a person that was worth approaching.
01:07:44
Speaker
And if they seemed like a decent person, then I would often send them a DM.
01:07:50
Speaker
And I can't say that that yielded many sales, but it certainly sparked conversations.
01:07:57
Speaker
And some of those people started to follow Zoom and will kind of, you know, maybe ask a question every now and then and seem involved.
01:08:03
Speaker
So, you know, that's part of building the community, you know, and the same thing that you would do in a brick and mortar gallery is you're just you just got to make a connection with somebody and you try to hang on to that person.
01:08:15
Speaker
And maybe they tell somebody and a couple of years down the road, something happens.
01:08:19
Speaker
And so that's that's kind of the way I thought about that.
01:08:21
Speaker
Yeah.
01:08:22
Speaker
Yeah, right before this recording, I was doing research for this conversation and I went and followed about five or six collectors of Rose Project because if they're interested in that, they might be interested in the stuff that we're putting out there because there's definitely overlap there.
01:08:40
Speaker
I think they...
01:08:42
Speaker
I was just gonna say, I think we've had success in a similar way with with reaching out to people and, and starting those conversations without without the intent of necessarily trying to make a sale, right?
01:08:53
Speaker
You're trying to have a conversation about the work.
01:08:57
Speaker
And then who knows what happens a year down the road or whatever.
01:09:00
Speaker
Some of these people have become friends and are generally, you know, a lot of them are very approachable.
01:09:04
Speaker
I mean, this is something I think we would never have done if we hadn't had, if I hadn't had that experience, right?
01:09:12
Speaker
The idea of tracking somebody down who's collected somebody else's work.
01:09:16
Speaker
barely sounds legal.
01:09:18
Speaker
Right, right.
01:09:19
Speaker
No, but that's like, that's one of the nice things about the public facing aspects of, you know, these people put their ETH address in their OpenSea profile that's connected to their Twitter because they want to be out there in the digital space.
01:09:31
Speaker
And I think that it's like a much more open forum in that way than it is in the brick and mortar galleries.
01:09:38
Speaker
Yeah, nobody, sometimes people don't respond, but often they do respond.
01:09:42
Speaker
And, you know, I start with an apology and they say, no, thanks for reaching out.
01:09:45
Speaker
And I'm always interested in hearing about projects.
01:09:47
Speaker
No one has said, don't bother me, you know, fuck off or something.
01:09:51
Speaker
Yeah.
01:09:51
Speaker
Yeah.
01:09:52
Speaker
Yeah.
Looking Ahead: Projects and Community Building
01:09:55
Speaker
Alex, I think at some point we're going to have to have both Carlo and Matthew on for their own segments because I had so many questions about your individual practices that I just couldn't find the space, nor should we have because it would have been a three-hour podcast.
01:10:13
Speaker
How about we promise a part two or something, especially for your next project?
01:10:18
Speaker
Yeah.
01:10:19
Speaker
That would be great.
01:10:20
Speaker
Yeah, I would love that.
01:10:21
Speaker
I think we would love that.
01:10:22
Speaker
I'm speaking for Carlo.
01:10:23
Speaker
He would love that.
01:10:24
Speaker
I'd be happy to come back.
01:10:28
Speaker
I guess given time, maybe what does the future hold?
01:10:36
Speaker
We're working on a couple of projects with artists, currently one which has been ongoing and one which is sort of new and exciting.
01:10:48
Speaker
And a third.
01:10:50
Speaker
So we're just navigating how to get artists to do things.
01:10:56
Speaker
Yeah.
01:10:58
Speaker
But I mean, I'm equally excited about all of these projects for different reasons.
01:11:03
Speaker
I don't know how much we can really say about any of them.
01:11:07
Speaker
Sure.
01:11:09
Speaker
Yeah, it's not that they're a secret.
01:11:11
Speaker
It's more just like, God, some of these things could just fall apart.
01:11:13
Speaker
And it just seems maybe we just don't want to put it on the record and
01:11:19
Speaker
yeah i kind of love that it's just like this is the antithesis of those bigger platforms that they have to put something out yeah like the schedule and it's like this machine and it's like this thing that you're what you're describing is something that has organically happened and just has to has to morph into this is the question i mean i don't know how much i don't know because things are happening that we're missing out on and i don't know what the importance of momentum is in this space it hasn't been made clear yet so um
01:11:47
Speaker
You know, the market was very different when the rope project dropped as opposed to when the Mariah project dropped.
01:11:53
Speaker
So, you know, momentum didn't play much of a role there.
01:11:56
Speaker
So a lot of these things remain to be seen, but yeah, I think we are learning.
01:12:00
Speaker
It's just really hard to get, we have a range of people who contacted us who are excited and people that we reached out to and you kind of end up in the same place.
01:12:12
Speaker
You realize, oh, we should have just started with a deadline.
01:12:15
Speaker
We should have just opened.
01:12:16
Speaker
You almost should have just opened with that.
01:12:18
Speaker
And I think that's something that a lot of people who run spaces, galleries, you know, either they know it already or they learn it very quickly.
01:12:24
Speaker
And, you know, I had always admired the 70s downtown artists run spaces.
01:12:30
Speaker
And you talk to people who run these spaces and they'd say, you know, up into the 80s.
01:12:35
Speaker
What happened to that?
01:12:35
Speaker
And say, ah, God, it was just such a pain in the ass to run this thing with so much work.
01:12:39
Speaker
You think, come on, that's not an excuse.
01:12:41
Speaker
But what happened that you couldn't maintain this thing?
01:12:43
Speaker
Well, now I really get it.
01:12:46
Speaker
Like, oh, it's a huge pain in the ass.
01:12:48
Speaker
Yeah.
01:12:48
Speaker
And I mean, and then, you know, you didn't have email.
01:12:50
Speaker
You didn't have cell phones.
01:12:51
Speaker
And it doesn't help that I think we're sympathetic to it too, right?
01:12:54
Speaker
Because we're not bringing in legacy projects where these artists are creating new work with us.
01:13:02
Speaker
And so I think we're sympathetic to the fact that it's not nice to have a deadline put on that always, right?
01:13:09
Speaker
That sometimes that project needs to become what it needs to become in order to be fulfilling for everybody.
01:13:15
Speaker
And so I think we're inclined to give people a degree of space, which is hard.
01:13:20
Speaker
Yeah.
01:13:22
Speaker
You don't want to bother people.
01:13:25
Speaker
Yeah.
01:13:25
Speaker
I was just going to say, I think it's also really, you know, you were talking about these projects being creatively satisfying for the artists who are making them.
01:13:35
Speaker
And so because the market is what the market is, sure, of course, you want to put them out there and have them sell out.
01:13:41
Speaker
But if they don't, you know, at least the project was creatively satisfying.
01:13:45
Speaker
Right.
01:13:45
Speaker
And you got something out of it in terms of in terms of their practice and your experience working with them.
01:13:50
Speaker
And and then who knows what that turns into later, you know?
01:13:54
Speaker
Yeah.
01:13:55
Speaker
And there's a learning curve for anybody, too.
01:14:00
Speaker
Yeah, I think that we're in a special place.
01:14:01
Speaker
This is what's kind of unique because we don't have really much of an overhead right now, like a gallery.
01:14:07
Speaker
And we, you know, there are a couple of collectors that we, that are pretty reliable.
01:14:11
Speaker
So if we could, if we keep the production costs down, you know, we, we're still at a point where we can say to an artist, you're, you're not going to forget about your time, but you're not going to lose money.
01:14:22
Speaker
So you do need a wallet.
01:14:23
Speaker
You know, you do need some ETH.
01:14:25
Speaker
You are going to have to pay this developer, but you don't, you don't have to pay us right now.
01:14:31
Speaker
And so to be able to say to somebody participate in this project,
01:14:35
Speaker
hopefully feel fulfilled creatively and you're not going to lose money.
01:14:39
Speaker
Like we can't guarantee that you're going to make real money, but just don't think you're going to lose money.
01:14:46
Speaker
And I really like being able to say that.
01:14:48
Speaker
And that goes, that goes a long way.
01:14:50
Speaker
There aren't that many artists.
01:14:52
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
01:14:53
Speaker
I think also, you know, we're in this so far for the love of it.
01:14:58
Speaker
Everything we've done has just been sort of a labor of love from our side.
01:15:02
Speaker
And so I think that also means we're entering it with a different, you know, like I think if we were
01:15:10
Speaker
in this to make some money, we probably would have put a deadline on it.
01:15:13
Speaker
There was definitely, there were definitely deadlines.
01:15:15
Speaker
We had investors.
01:15:16
Speaker
You know?
01:15:16
Speaker
Yeah, if we had investors who were breathing down our necks.
01:15:18
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:15:19
Speaker
And then outside of Zome.
01:15:21
Speaker
But that's not to say that.
01:15:25
Speaker
Yes, sir.
01:15:26
Speaker
Go ahead.
01:15:27
Speaker
Outside of Zome, I think we also both have projects that we're bringing out in the near future.
01:15:34
Speaker
Do either of you want to shill those projects here to give people a sense of the drop?
01:15:40
Speaker
The final five minutes.
01:15:43
Speaker
In less than five minutes.
01:15:44
Speaker
Show away, man.
01:15:47
Speaker
I mean, I had a show running up to the new year outside of Brussels in Belgium with a gallery that I worked there.
01:15:55
Speaker
But I do, you know, I feel comfortable saying that I think the photo world that I'm used to is just in a very difficult place right now.
01:16:05
Speaker
And so I'm really trying to hustle
01:16:08
Speaker
on some book projects with publishers that I've been talking to and trying to finish those projects and, and trying to talk to galleries about shows that they're comfortable putting on right now with work that, you know, for them is, is not in a financially unstable times and they have a backlog of painters.
01:16:28
Speaker
I think it's, it's really hard.
01:16:29
Speaker
This is part of what sparked my interest in this is I don't feel like I have a, I'm in a, uh,
01:16:36
Speaker
I mean, I'm in a place in my career where it feels stable.
01:16:43
Speaker
So, so yeah, you know, there, there, yeah, there are things coming that I'm working on, but I think that the sort of period when I met Carlo to through 2014, like that was really a recent, those were sort of the salad days for, for photography.
01:16:58
Speaker
People were really interested in process.
01:17:00
Speaker
They were really interested in how it was going to,
01:17:04
Speaker
manage this sort of digital era that we were coming into, how social media was going to affect it, what it meant that more digital photographs were being produced in a year than the whole history of photography up until that point, meaning more photographs were made in that year than an entire history combined.
01:17:19
Speaker
And I just don't think people were like, it just sort of happened.
01:17:21
Speaker
And so people aren't, they're not concerned with photography's
01:17:25
Speaker
role in society and all of that now.
01:17:28
Speaker
It's so much more complex and the technology is moving so much faster.
01:17:33
Speaker
I think, you know, people want to see handmade things.
01:17:38
Speaker
I don't know, I'm going to start going off on a tangent, but anyway, all this is to say that, yeah, it is an unsettling time to be an artist, particularly a photographer.
01:17:51
Speaker
And so I think, you know,
01:17:55
Speaker
being comfortable managing other people's works and being comfortable doing other things, not just on the side, but making those things priorities and and making them feel satisfying.
01:18:06
Speaker
It just seems really, really important for a lot of the artists that I know.
01:18:10
Speaker
And I see them, whether it's making T-shirts or starting their own spaces.
01:18:18
Speaker
A lot of artists I know who are sort of around the same age, the same point in their careers, like they're sort of looking around trying to take stock.
01:18:23
Speaker
And I think this for me is really a part of that is feeling like, oh, the art world isn't really necessarily going to love you back.
01:18:35
Speaker
And it just provides an opportunity to move into other spaces and to still be creatively fulfilled and still be making your own work and maintaining that career, but being involved in other things as well.
01:18:46
Speaker
I think even both Ro and Mariah have kind of entrepreneurial side things going on.
01:18:54
Speaker
Yeah.
01:18:55
Speaker
Yeah.
01:18:55
Speaker
Absolutely.
01:18:56
Speaker
Yep.
01:18:57
Speaker
Yeah.
01:18:57
Speaker
That's awesome.
01:18:59
Speaker
Yeah.
01:19:02
Speaker
Well said.
01:19:04
Speaker
Thank you, gentlemen.
01:19:09
Speaker
This was the least effort podcast we had to do.
01:19:12
Speaker
We kind of just let you guys... We just talked to you.
01:19:15
Speaker
That was great.
01:19:15
Speaker
I think we'll hang up.
01:19:18
Speaker
It's like you leave a dinner party and you're like, holy shit, I never asked that person a question.
01:19:23
Speaker
No, it felt like a therapy session.
01:19:24
Speaker
I felt like a...
01:19:28
Speaker
cathartic it felt uh we felt seen i think joe and i felt seen right i i do i do think that that there's an ethos overlap that is is probably the the closest aligned than any people we've talked to so far in in the in the space and in terms of experience and what you're doing and all that kind of stuff so i'm i'm excited to see what y'all do for zone next and also just i'm excited to follow your your own next we're gonna have a zone twitter space and we're gonna host you guys
01:19:58
Speaker
Oh, great.
01:20:01
Speaker
We'll just let you talk.
01:20:02
Speaker
Yeah, really.
01:20:02
Speaker
Thank you.
01:20:03
Speaker
Thank you.
01:20:04
Speaker
Yeah.
01:20:04
Speaker
For reaching out to us.
01:20:05
Speaker
Really.
01:20:06
Speaker
I mean, it's, you know, generous of you to give us a slot.
01:20:09
Speaker
I'm sure you have a lot of people lined up.
01:20:11
Speaker
So to give us a slot on your podcast.
01:20:13
Speaker
Yeah, really.
01:20:14
Speaker
Thanks.
01:20:14
Speaker
It's been great.
01:20:15
Speaker
No, we're happy to.
01:20:16
Speaker
I think we enjoy these.
01:20:17
Speaker
We'd love to hang out in IRL as well if you guys...
01:20:20
Speaker
Yeah, I need to come by the gallery.
01:20:22
Speaker
I will do that.
01:20:23
Speaker
Awesome.
01:20:24
Speaker
Fantastic.
01:20:25
Speaker
Cool.
01:20:26
Speaker
Joe and I decided to show ourselves next, which is great.
01:20:31
Speaker
Oh, wow.
01:20:32
Speaker
Yeah.
01:20:33
Speaker
For the next exhibition.
01:20:34
Speaker
It wasn't March 10th.
01:20:37
Speaker
March 10th it opens.
01:20:39
Speaker
I mean, this is what I'm talking about, right?
01:20:41
Speaker
It's like
01:20:43
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know.
01:20:44
Speaker
I feel like 15 years ago, you couldn't curate a show and put yourself in it.
01:20:48
Speaker
I still think you're not supposed to, but we're just doing it anyway.
01:20:50
Speaker
You're not supposed to, but I think at this point, I would be like, you know what?
01:20:53
Speaker
Go for it.
01:20:53
Speaker
Do you know who told us to do it?
01:20:55
Speaker
Do you know who told us to do it?
01:20:57
Speaker
Who?
01:20:58
Speaker
The artists that we represent.
01:21:02
Speaker
One of them.
01:21:03
Speaker
Yeah.
01:21:04
Speaker
Yeah.
01:21:04
Speaker
Many of them.
01:21:04
Speaker
Well, then everybody else was like, yeah, of course.
01:21:07
Speaker
Yeah.
01:21:07
Speaker
Yeah.
01:21:07
Speaker
Yeah.
01:21:08
Speaker
So it wasn't like, uh, we're pushing to do it, but it was just like, yeah.
01:21:12
Speaker
Is this the first time you've done it in our space?
01:21:15
Speaker
Yes.
01:21:15
Speaker
Yeah.
01:21:16
Speaker
Yeah.
01:21:16
Speaker
Yeah.
01:21:18
Speaker
Yeah, it was never, that was never, we've had conversations about it.
01:21:22
Speaker
It was never the plan, but because we have the sanctioning of all the artists that we're working with, then it seems like a no brainer.
01:21:31
Speaker
And we think of ourselves as an artist run space.
01:21:34
Speaker
So it's like, put it out there.
01:21:35
Speaker
Right.
01:21:35
Speaker
If it was a collective,
01:21:40
Speaker
If you are a collective, then you're all allowed to show each other and also run the space and share those responsibilities.
01:21:45
Speaker
But if you're, you know, a gallery in the conventional space and you guys are the owner operators, then yeah, then it's like for a while that was sort of frowned upon.
01:21:53
Speaker
But that was the conversation.
01:21:54
Speaker
I was like, it's going to get I was like, as long as everybody's OK with it being a little muddy and we're a collective ish, then let's go for it.
01:22:00
Speaker
And yeah, nobody cares about this stuff anymore.
01:22:02
Speaker
Nobody cares.
01:22:03
Speaker
Yeah.
01:22:04
Speaker
Yeah.
01:22:05
Speaker
I feel like conventions have gone out the window and rules are being rewritten.
01:22:08
Speaker
Yeah.
01:22:09
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, even the way that, yeah.
01:22:12
Speaker
I mean, this particular year that we actually decided to go and we did a subscription model for the actual gallery.
01:22:18
Speaker
So we had, we're working with seven artists that we've already worked with previous that we know have already been introduced to the NFT space, make work that translates.
01:22:30
Speaker
So we already knew who was going to be showing when.
Managing Art and Life
01:22:34
Speaker
And we kind of like, they asked if we were going to do or participate.
01:22:38
Speaker
And we're like, sure.
01:22:39
Speaker
And we are.
01:22:44
Speaker
Yeah, when you guys mentioned having deadlines, it took us a year to realize that we needed to have a calendar for 2023.
01:22:49
Speaker
So now we do.
01:22:50
Speaker
And it's nice.
01:22:51
Speaker
It's nice to know what's coming up for sure.
01:22:55
Speaker
Not that it's perfect.
01:22:55
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
01:22:56
Speaker
Things come up.
01:22:59
Speaker
So between your art practices and running the space and everything you're now doing in the NFT space, do you guys have other day jobs or is this, this is, are you teaching as well?
01:23:12
Speaker
I teach, yeah.
01:23:14
Speaker
And I've taught ever since I graduated from grad school as a day job, yeah.
01:23:20
Speaker
And I manage the audio visual at the Fotografiska Museum in New York.
01:23:26
Speaker
Oh, okay, yeah.
01:23:28
Speaker
busy guys huh yeah yeah you need you need at least a calendar yeah yeah we need a calendar and we need to go we need to go we need to go snowboarding upstate we need somebody to run our discord channel well yeah it's good to talk to you because you're a good model for us then um i feel like it's good it's good to see people who are making a go of it i i
01:23:53
Speaker
inspiring for us so hopefully we'll get there yeah yeah good luck for march march the 10th it's my mother's birthday good luck oh i won't be in new york but uh if if i am i'm gonna look you guys up and if you ever come out here um come by the studio
01:24:06
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
01:24:07
Speaker
Oh, wait, wait, since we're talking about birthdays, your son's birthday is September 20th.
01:24:11
Speaker
Is that right?
01:24:12
Speaker
It is.
01:24:13
Speaker
That's my birthday.
01:24:13
Speaker
So I was looking at your site.
01:24:14
Speaker
I was excited that I had a fellow Virgo.
01:24:17
Speaker
Oh, that's funny.
01:24:18
Speaker
That's funny.
01:24:19
Speaker
That project has connected me with a lot of people who were born on September 20th.
01:24:23
Speaker
Okay.
01:24:23
Speaker
Yeah, I'm sure they're all assholes, except for your son, who's probably very nice, but everybody else, all the Virgos.
01:24:32
Speaker
Matt, please tell me you're a tourist.
01:24:35
Speaker
My birthday is tomorrow.
01:24:36
Speaker
Oh, wow.
01:24:38
Speaker
Fantastic.
01:24:39
Speaker
Happy birthday.
01:24:43
Speaker
Glad I was here for that.
01:24:45
Speaker
All right.
01:24:47
Speaker
We got to end this thing.
01:24:50
Speaker
Okay.
01:24:50
Speaker
Thanks.
01:24:51
Speaker
Thank you guys.
01:24:51
Speaker
Thank you so much.
01:24:52
Speaker
Let's definitely stay in touch.
01:24:54
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
01:24:56
Speaker
I'll see you in New York.
01:24:57
Speaker
I'll see you in Queens.
01:24:58
Speaker
Sounds good.
01:24:59
Speaker
All right.
01:25:00
Speaker
Okay.
01:25:00
Speaker
All right.
01:25:01
Speaker
Bye.
01:25:02
Speaker
Night.
Conclusion and Acknowledgements
01:25:07
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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.
01:25:17
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You can learn more at lydianstater.co, find images at Lydian Stater NYC on Instagram, and follow us at Lydian Stater on Twitter.
01:25:24
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Thanks to Matthew and Carlo for taking the time to speak to us this week.
01:25:28
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If you'd like to learn more about their work, check out our show notes for their website and social media accounts.
01:25:32
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Big thanks to Tall Juan, who graciously provides our intro music.
01:25:36
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His albums are available at tallwan.bandcamp.com.
01:25:39
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And thank you to you, listener, for spending your valuable time with us.
01:25:44
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I don't know what to say.
01:25:47
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I just know I don't want to be like you.
01:25:50
Speaker
I don't know what to say.
01:25:52
Speaker
I just know I don't want to be like you.
01:26:18
Speaker
I know what to do.
01:26:19
Speaker
I know what to say.
01:26:20
Speaker
I just know I know.