Yeah. Sure. So I, studied art history. I have a PhD in art history, and I would have taught classes, like, undergraduate, graduate level classes on, the history of modern and contemporary art. But my particular area of interest is art and technology, especially since the nineteen sixties, so kinetic sculpture, video art, computer art, net art. And I, basically, first started thinking about blockchain around 2016, which is when I reviewed an exhibition that Simon Denny had at Petzl Gallery in New York City. So at the time, I was just starting out my curatorial career. I was, working at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the modern and contemporary department. Now I'm, up here in Buffalo at the Albright Knox. And, as I was starting on my curatorial career, I was also working as an art critic, and I still sort of actively write for art magazines. So some of your listeners might have read a piece I wrote for Artforum, about NFTs last spring called token gesture. I also wrote a piece for Art Review at the end of last year, that, you know, sort of an attempt to summarize what had happened, in the intervening months. But, yeah, so I was working as an art critic, and I I, saw the show that Simon Denny did at Petzl Gallery, called Blockchain Future States. And it's really about the the sort of subcultures of blockchain and the different, political and economic ideologies that are, that were shaping blockchain, as it emerged. And so and also about the sort of foundation foundational myths around blockchain. So looking at blockchain, not just as a technology, but basically as a culture. And I reviewed that show for Artforum magazine and, you know, didn't think too much more about blockchain after that. I had, you know, some people I knew who were in the space, and had some conversations with them. But obviously, with the activity at the beginning of 2021, I just knew that everything was about to change very, very profoundly. It was actually not with the Beeple auction, but with the auction of Nyan Cat. Like, once I saw a gift go for, you know, 600,000 plus, I just knew that something that there was, like, major money in this space and that the art world was going to, was about to be talking about NFTs. Was that before or after the Beeple sale? That that was before. So the Beeple sale had been announced, but it hadn't been, achieved yet. So so yeah. So I just, you know, I, like, texted my all my coworkers, and I was like, you guys get ready to hear about these things called NFTs for, you know, the next few days slash weeks slash months slash years. And, you know, over the past year, a lot of people have said, like, when is this gonna be over? And, you know, I I honestly just don't know anymore. I'm surprised it lasted this long. Like, even when I wrote the piece for Artforum, like, I pitched it in February or March, but by the time it came out, it was in the May issue. And, I think we were all a little bit concerned that, like, maybe by the time this actually comes out in print, NFTs will be over, and it'll be this, like, fad, and nobody will wanna read about them anymore. And yet here we are more than a year later, and, you know, there were NFTs. I was just in Los Angeles for the art fairs and, you know, there were NFTs on sale at every art fair I went to. So it's it's clearly not not over yet. And, obviously, I've, you know, come out, with, a lot of critiques of NFTs and of cryptocurrencies and of blockchain and have my thoughts about it. But I also wanna continue to be part of this discussion because I I do believe that there is no future for digital art that does not also include NFTs as part of that conversation. And as somebody who has been thinking about and writing about artists using technology and and specifically computers and network technologies for, you know, a long time now,

history and trajectory, I guess. Yeah. I mean, thank you for pointing that out. It's something that those of us who were interested in digital art before NFTs were immediately throwing up our hands over is that, you know, everyone's acting like digital art was just invented, you know, basically in 2021. But in fact, artists have been working with digital technology since the nineteen sixties. Like, the first computer generated works of art date from nineteen sixty five ish. I mean, you could even say '62. So it's been half a century now of artists working with digital technologies and and thinking a lot about the unique affordances of digital tools, like what it allows artists to do that they wouldn't be able to do otherwise. And so, I think those of us who have been in this space or who are historians of this space also were a little skeptical at first because we've seen so many fads come and go. Like, this is not the first time that the contemporary fine art world has gotten excited about digital

Yeah. Sure. So, like, in the nineteen sixties when it first emerged, you had articles in, like, The New York Times and in Playboy and in all of these major publications talking about this idea that the artist, you know, was going to be sort of replaced by the computer, that the computer itself could now be creative. And they were talking about artificial intelligence and, like all of this, you know, it was back in '65. So that, that conversation was happening. And then, it sort of cooled off. And then in the eighties, you have the rise of people using bulletin board systems and, these networks that are precursors to the World Wide Web. So this is before the World Wide Web when you had, other kinds of networks where artists were, finding each other and making work collaboratively through the Internet. So artists like Douglas Davis, for example, you know, artists like Robert Adrian x, who were using these these sort of, like, specialized systems, like one of them called Artex, that, allowed artists to work in this networked way. And then, of course, in the nineties, you had this explosion of net art, which, very quickly was, I don't wanna say fully institutionalized, but it certainly caught the attention of mainstream arts organizations, institutions, curators. So you had, things like the, the zero one zero one zero one show at SFMOMA in 2001, which is sort of a survey of artists working with Internet technologies. You had, the Whitney Museum of American Art launch Art Port, which was a special website special part of its website for, commissioning and presenting, like, born digital, like, web native works of art. You had the Walker Art Center's gallery nine, which also was a sort of platform, an online platform for net based artworks. So you you had all this sort of excitement, even in, like, the most prestigious, museums, for artists working with net technologies. And, you know, in the past, you know, twenty years, these cycles have sort of continued. So, like, after the dot com bubble burst, a lot of that excitement went away, and there was a new skepticism about net art, and it just was sort of, you know, a fad. We also have to understand, like, all all art movements in the art world, right, are they're sort of cyclical. They're fads. Like, it's not unique that, like, people stop being interested in in digital technology. Like, people stop being interested in figurative painting or they stop being interested in craft. Like, these things sort of always, you know, go through boom and bust cycles. But anyway, more recently, you could point to something like VR. Like, I love, pointing out to people that in 2016, the website artsy had an editorial article that was like, VR is the greatest medium of our time. And it's like everybody wanted to do VR. And then, like, the Frieze Art Fair in New York had, like, a whole, special exhibition within the art fair of VR. And, then in 2017, Artsy published another article that was like, move over VR. There's a new medium in town, and that was all about augmented reality and how augmented reality was gonna be, like, the new hot thing. So, like, for those of us who have been around for a minute, it's kind of like, okay. You know? It's like Yeah. We we have seen, you know, people get excited. We have seen people then get sort of exhausted. We have seen the market learn to try to incorporate these new strategies, of of making and distributing art. I mean, there's galleries like, you know, Bitforms Gallery, which is a gallery for digital art was founded in 2001. Or you could look at, you know, the artists like Olio Dielina, who back in the nineties were sort of thinking about selling websites and trying to pioneer that or Rafael Rosendale or, you know, so it's like the even the idea that digital art market is new is actually, not true. Right? That there there always have been people who have been trying to figure out how to, create a market around this stuff. But it's basically been the case that for a long time, artists working with with experimental technologies have had their own art world that's actually distinct from the contemporary fine art world. And so I think one really important thing to understand is that there's multiple art worlds. Right? So there's, like, you know, MoMA and the Whitney and auction houses like Christie's and Sotheby's, but then digital artists have been able to operate within the circuit that's like the Ars Electronica Museum in Linz or, like, the ICA Festival or SIGGRAPH, which is a computer graphics, basically, like, industry trade show. And and then there's, like, you know, just lots of, like, festivals and, like, public art commissions. And there's just been a totally different network for, producing and exhibiting and supporting digital art that had nothing to do necessarily with the traditional fine art market. And then after the rise of post Internet art about, you know, a decade ago, we saw, more of those artists sort of crossing over, like artists who were involved in, like, surf clubs and web two o started getting more gallery representation. Like, Cory Archangel, for example, was the youngest artist to have a solo show at the Whitney, in decades when he had his show, there in, like, 2012, I think it was. So, so it's it's complicated. Right? Is that there was there's sort of, like, these multiple art worlds, and there are these moments of convergence and excitement and then a sort of retrenchment. And so I think a long story short, you know, we're all a little like, what's going on with this NFT thing? Is this gonna be another example of, of excitement and communication and crossing over? And then things will sort of settle back into distinct art worlds. And I think that a lot of us now sort of think that that might be what's happening is that the NFT art world will just develop its own ecosystem. It will have its own artists, its own canon, its own market, its own collectors, its own galleries, its own exhibition spaces. And for me personally, I think that's a bit silly because to me, most tokenized art is just digital art. Like, I don't even call it NFT art. I don't use that term because you're basically talking about art that happens like, born native digital art that happens to have been tokenized. And so to me, it's like that art is completely worthy of being shown and considered in traditional fine art contexts to the same extent that digital art is, which is something that I've, you know, devoted my career to. Right. So

story? I I mean, it's a difficult it's a difficult conversation. Right? And, like, I wanna hold some nuance in this. Because on the one hand, it is absolutely true that there are artists who feel like they haven't been supported by the traditional fine art world or the traditional fine art market. And I agree. Like, it's never been, you know, dominant, let's say, in the way that, like, painting has or, you know, conceptual art or whatever. That said, it's also not true that they've been totally ignored. Right? Like, you have had major exhibitions, especially in the past five years. Like, if you look at I was raised on the Internet at the MCA Chicago or Electronic Superhighway at, Whitechapel in London, or if you look at the ICA Boston show, art in the age of the Internet, like, there have been a number of these big surveys. I mean, the DeYoung Museum in San Francisco just did their show on, beyond the uncanny valley, which is about AI and art. So it's like there's been, exhibitions. There's been support. There's been gallery representation. You know, for the past five years, I would say most major galleries need at least one digital artist in their roster. And I know that that can feel like tokenization, but that's sort of how they work. Like, they have one landscape painter, one abstract, you know, person, like, one figurative. You know? Like, that's just that you know? And so and it's been clear for a while that that, you know, you sort of need somebody working with digital stuff in your roster. So, it's not that there hasn't been any support. But anyway, but I I there's there's two important ideas that I was thinking about when you were talking that I just wanna call out. One is that, you know, it hasn't always been so impossible to imagine selling this stuff in part because the fine art market for decades now has been able to support conceptual art, which is frankly even easier to copy than a JPEG file because it's literally just an idea or a series of instructions. And, and and practices like photography, for example, where, you know, you have a potentially limitless number of additions, but you artificially limit the you create artificial scarcity through the through the contract. So we have had mechanisms for creating artificial scarcity to support a market value, you know, for decades now. So I don't think that that was the only barrier. I don't think that it's like, oh, NFT has solved a problem. I think the problem wasn't just just a technical one. It was a cultural one. It was that this kind of art that's being made didn't necessarily speak to the conversations that we're having in the contemporary art world. I think that was a sort of bigger part of it. Another thing I wanna point out is just I think it's really important to remember that it's not just the digital artists have been sort of ignored. A lot of them wanted nothing to do with the traditional art world and the traditional art market. There was an act of rejection. Like a lot of artists got into making net art precisely because they wanted to make something that wasn't so easily commodified as a as an object that was like a bourgeois luxury product. You know? Like, they're very much in line with this sort of avant garde legacy of artists throughout the twentieth century who are trying to make things that really exist in the world that like overcome that boundary between art and life, where art is like this luxury good that sits on a pedestal, but life is like, we're, you know, you have social relations and politics and history and like things actually happen. And how do we intervene in that? Like, if you look back at like, you know, the constructivists. Right. And, and, and, and sort of onwards, like I sort of see a lot of, let's say, like net art in the nineties as being part of that tradition. Like one of my favorite examples of this very, like, oppositional relationship is Eva and Franco Matas when they showed their work biennale dot p y, which was a virus that they coauthored that's in Python. They showed that as part of the Venice Biennale as part of the Slovenian pavilion. And, it was something that they showed on like, in the space of the Venice Biennale, which is, like, you know, the world's biggest, most important contemporary art sort of survey, on two computers that continually infected and disinfected each other. But at the same, like the opening of the pavilion, like, that night, they also unleashed the virus on the world, and it actually propagated globally as a virus. And so for me, this is a perfect example of how NetArt, like, in some sense, doesn't want to be contained by the white walled space, by the by the gallery, by the institution, by art history. Like, it kind of wants to escape and run wild and, like, wreak havoc and do damage out there in the world, thinking of the Internet as the public space of exhibition. So, yeah, this idea that, like, oh, you know, it was traditional art will always ignore this. It's like, well, first of all, you know, you have, like, net art being shown at the Venice Biennale. I mean, and there's a lot of problems with that history, but anyway, I won't get into it. But second of all, it's like it it kind of was a critique of that whole world. Like, not all of it, but, like, a lot of it was actually critiquing the market and critiquing gatekeeping and critiquing all of these things. So I just think the the story is a little bit more complicated than, like, you know, this like, the way it's sort of being told now, I think, which is just, like, one of, like, oh, rejection, rejection, rejection, and now we're finally getting, you know, our due.

Yeah. No. Totally. And, I think, I mean, what you're talking about is this Kantian idea of, you know, this, like, purposelessness and, you know, thinking of, like, aesthetic theory. And this is something that a lot of, I think a lot of people sort of intuitively agree with. Like, it's very helpful also when you're talking about, well, what is the difference between art and design, or what is the difference between art and architecture, or between art and technology? Right? And it's like, oh, well, this thing isn't trying to solve a particular problem. It's not meant to be useful in a particular way. But, obviously, these questions then become, like, really, thorny because, you know, making somebody reflect on something or feel a certain way or, you know, have a space to sort of have a break from, like, our, you know, contemporary media landscape and and pause and cleanse their palette that there's also a utility for that. So, I don't even yeah. I mean, these these are these are, like, the foundational questions of all of, like, twentieth century avant garde art. Right? It's like, how can something be art and also be useful or try to change things? And so this is very much where my head was at. And maybe it's, like, when I was a student of modern art. And so maybe that's one reason why I'm really drawn to artists who are working with technologies is because as soon as you're working with technology as opposed to, like, oil on canvas, you just because your tools are themselves the same tools that are shaping the world right now, you're already engaging in a very material way with reality in some sense. So not to say that, like, you know, all net artists are like, literalist or figurative artists or something, but like, you know, you kind of can't help but engage these questions, about the social, which, you know, is sort of fascinating again. And that's why also a lot of artists were drawn to working with these technologies is because they were shaping the future. And so I think that for, you know, I hate to speak for like a whole, like, you know, group of curators who all have, you know, and art historians and critics and artists who all have very different backgrounds and different investments. But from the many conversations I've had over the past year, I think some of us are sort of frustrated because one of the things that we loved about digital art is the way that it pushed back on its tools, the way that it offered a kind of commentary or critical interrogation or, perverted technology and and pushed against the way that, you know, websites and databases and algorithms were being adopted and promoted by, like, multinational corporations and by governments. And so it's a little bit of the question of, like, well, what is your relationship here to your tools? Like, what is your relationship to blockchain? What is your relationship to the NFT contract? And there are artists like Ria Myers or, like Mitchell Chan who think very much about the contract and what that means. But I think for a lot of, you know, people who are tokenizing their art, like, their JPEGs with NFTs, it's kind of incidental. Right? Like, it that's not really what the word it's not really pushing back at these structures of power, right, which is what technologies ultimately are.

Yeah. I mean, that's that's, like, a huge question. Right? Like, I wish I know the answer. I think we're all still sort of trying to see how it's gonna play out. I mean, I think that right now, it feels like the, I wanna say, like, the conversation has begun to shift. I mean, obviously, for the past few months, the debate has been very polarized, and you've seen some traditional artists who were very big in the media art space, digital art space, net art space, who really have come out very strongly against NFTs, whether it's for ecological reasons or for political reasons. And then on the other hand, you have the artists who are very much for NFTs like Ria Myers. And then in the middle, you have a whole bunch of artists who, you know, I don't know that they're in love with NFTs, and they openly say, like, if there was a better alternative, I would happily do that instead. But right now, this is where the money is and, like, I have to pay my rent and, like, I'd be a fool not to take advantage of this, who are, you know, experimenting with making NFTs. And some of them are, like, having a really good time, and they've become big collectors. And they, have really enjoyed finding community. You know, obviously, this is much more, I mean, the people I'm talking about are are are more likely to be the artists who were on Hick at Nunc and now are on TAEA and are working in the Tezos ecosystem and not so much the ETH ecosystem, which I think has a very different sort of group of artists and collector base and is sort of overrun by, like, 10 k PFP projects and that kind of thing. So, you know, I judge no artists for making NFTs, but it's been very hard to sort of have these critical conversations and not have it just devolve into this, you know, what I call, like, an interplanetary war. Right? But I think things are changing. I think, you know, we are starting to think more long term about building building structures, building infrastructure that would support these communities and support artists. And, you know, obviously, it's all dependent upon the cryptocurrency markets. Right? It all depends on whether something like Tezos blockchain can remain a long term store of financial value, and that sort of remains to be seen. But I I am excited about, you know, having more opportunities to have conversations around digital art. I'm excited about artists being able to pay their rent.

been able to, you know, buy their first house or, like, pay off their parents' mortgage or, you know, I can think of half a dozen off the top of my head. But, I'm happy for those people. But at the same time, again, like, I I really struggle sometimes in this space because I there's always a but with me. Right? Like, it's always a but. And, I also wanna hold space to have a nuanced conversation where we can also talk about the fact that most people are not making that kind of life changing money and to acknowledge that in a certain sense, the system needs people to believe that in order to sustain itself. Right? And I don't wanna, like, say pyramid scheme or multilevel marketing because I know that those are really fraught terms and they're definitely insults, but, like, I think it's still objectively the case, you know, that in order for the system to continue to work, we need more people to be adopting it. And this is why even within the crypto space, people talk all the time about, like, red pilling people or about onboarding people. There's such a hype to make that happen because if that doesn't happen, then the space is not sustainable, even just on a social level, forget financial. So, you know, I like to cite, the people who have done the work. Right. So Kim Parker, the artist who wrote an article, I think it was back in April where, you know, they did a deep dive on, you know, granted it was only like one week. Right. It was only and so it's a small sample section. But if you look at the sales, and this is one of the beautiful things about blockchain transactions, right, is that, like, they're all public. Half of them might be wash trades and you would never know without doing a lot of forensics, but, you know, at least everything there is public. And and found out that, you know, like, a third of artists were selling NFTs for under a $100 and that the average gas fees basically and transaction fees were a $100.50, which means that for a third of those sales, the artists actually lost money on that transaction. So I just think that we need to look at, you know, these anecdotal stories. And I certainly know not only really famous, you know, NFT people in the space, but personally artists who have been making money. And I'm very happy for them. But we also need to think about, you know, who exactly is really profiting. And, it continues like, all of the market studies continue to report that, it's actually a very narrow bandwidth of people who are benefiting. So for example, Art Tactic did a report that came out at the end of last year that said that women account for only 16% of the NFT art market. And granted, that's more than the, like, traditional blue chip contemporary fine art market. Right? So I don't wanna, you know, be in a glass house and throw rocks. But, but it's also not like 50%. You know? And also and, again, they were only looking at nifty gateways, so this is only like a small subset of the market overall. But they also found that 55% of sales, went to just 5% of the artists, which is only 16 artists. So you have 16 people who are making 55% of the sales. And that overall, the top 25% of the artists accounted for 90% of the sales. And, you know, so you just look at the data and, you know, granted, obviously, you know, one of the advantages also of the, you know, blockchain space supposedly is anonymity. So I have questioned, like, how do they even figure out the gender breakdown, right, when so many wallets are anonymous? But I guess for the people that can be tracked, right, I think anecdotally, we all know it's true. Like, if you just think about who are, like, the top 10. Right? It's gonna be, like, you know, a Beeple, Rafiq Anakdol, you know, like, it's you know, and then you have a few breakthroughs like Paris Hilton and Ferocious or, you know, who are, like, non binary or trans or women, but, like, that's not the that's not the most of them. Right? And same thing for artists of color. So, yeah, it's just I'm not saying that it's hopeless. I'm not saying that the traditional art market is any better. I'm just saying that is this the golden, like, you know, is this, like, the the the silver bullet? Right? Is this the thing that's gonna fix everything? And my answer always with technology is that, you know, I'm not a techno utopianist. I'm I'm somebody who believes that technologies reflect the cultures that make them. And I really wish I could remember who said it, but on the other day, Twitter was like, culture is like l zero. Right? Like, even before you have your chain, you have the culture. And and technologies always will reflect the values and the world views of the people who make them, whether by design or just by accident. So I'm just not fully convinced that this is, you know, it's it's not it doesn't seem like it's currently the, like, magic solution, but I also don't wanna be the person who's like, well, therefore, you, like, should completely stop trying and just give up. And that's not what I'm trying to say. That's not what I'm trying to advocate. I'm just saying that it means we need to build these systems with a lot of intention, which means we need to build them slowly and carefully with critical dialogues from diverse stakeholders to really think about the intended consequences and also the unintended consequences, especially on communities, you know, who historically have not been enfranchised or had a seat at the table. So, like, if we want this space to be better, right, like, we have to think about how we're building it. And so far, what I've been seeing is that it's not necessarily being built in a way that, for example, insulates people from abuse or that, really amplifies the voices of marginalized creators. Right? Like, just creating an anonymous system isn't really the way to equity. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I I find that sometimes

Well, I I mean, I literally just curated an entire show with this along with the artist Paul Venues called difference machines, technology and identity and contemporary art that was precisely about the intersection of technology, identity, and social justice. And, you know, we've been living with this idea since the nineties that, you know, on the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog. Like, you can be anybody you want online. It's like the the rebirth of a old idea, really, that that I saw. When when I when I saw, like, someone say that, I was like, I remember this being said, like, over a decade ago. It's ridiculous. No. I mean, like, three decades ago at this point. Right? Like, there's been this idea that, you know, we can escape into the into the metaverse and, you know, that you can be anything you want and that it's so liberatory, but, you know, there's a lot of limits to that. You know, even just thinking, like, in terms of access, before you even get to the metaverse, who who can go there? You know? Very early on, you know, I I heard someone say that, like, if you think about it, you're building an entire financial system that is based on the idea of having cheap and reliable access to electricity. And so you say that this is about empowering, like, the so called global south or third world, but, like, basically, this is also a system that privileges early adopters, and the richest people will be the ones who get in before everybody else. And so you're actually stacking the deck against people who don't currently have ready access to electricity, for example. Like, if you truly think that, like, blockchain is gonna become global currency and will replace other forms of fiat, like, you know, I so this is what I mean when I say that, like, you know, I'm not really a techno utopianist and that it's it's not impossible, but you have to have these conversations. Like, what are you doing to ensure that you are not disenfranchising, you know, communities that have already been disenfranchised or, you know, creating new new power structures.

I couldn't agree more, which is why I mean, and people can, like, check their receipts on this. Like, look on my Twitter account. And ever since this whole thing started, I've continually said, I blame no artist for doing this. Like, I think that the fact I've also said, you know, recently, and I took some heat for it because people really wanted me to come out and really condemn. And I'm like, I am not in the business of telling artists how to pay their rent. Like, that is a step too far. Right? Like, my job as a critic and a curator and art historian is to talk about the art and to promote and amplify the work of artists who are doing good work. But, like, how they choose and where they choose to sell their art is really literally none of my business. So, and I I wanna be very conscious of the kind of privilege that I have. Like, I have a salaried job with health insurance. Like, who am I to tell somebody who's in a more precarious state that they have to choose to, you know, make an ethical choice? Right? That, like, only I have the luxury of making, frankly. Like, I don't need to make NFTs to pay my mortgage. So I even have a mortgage, which just shows you how privileged I am. So, yeah. So so what I would like to do is to not focus on attacking individual artists or individual operators within the system. I wanna focus on the systemic questions, and you nailed it. Right? Which is like you started that by saying in the absence of a social safety net or public support for the arts. And so for me, the rise of NFTs has more than anything else been an indictment of business as usual. Like, the fact that people are so the fact that they are so compelled to go to NFTs, the fact that they feel like they have no other options means that, you know, the art world was broken. It means that society was broken. And I think that one of the smartest analyses I read actually about this whole NFT thing doesn't even necessarily come from within the art world. I don't know if you caught it, but, a while ago, I wanna say, like, last last spring, March, March 21, this guy, Felix Salmon Salman, wrote this article, GME Doge Supreme, how getting rich went full Internet. And, he he talks about I mean, he has all these, like, funny acronyms, But, YOLO SERP SWAG, which he explains what he means. I mean, we all know what YOLO means, and we know what SWAG means. But, anyway, he explains basically how, you know, we now have a generation of people who, and I'm sort of at the elder generation of the millennials, so I'm kind of included in this, who, like, have lived through a series of supposedly once in a lifetime events. Right? Like, 09/11 was literally my first day of college. And then, you know, the two thousand eight financial crisis, which led to, for example, sort of basically reducing compound interest rates to zero, which meant it was harder and harder to build wealth, throughout a lifetime. You also have, like, the transformation of the workforce to the gig economy where there's no benefits, there's no four zero one k's. Like, it does a really smart analysis, I think, of talking about all of the, like, very specific concrete conditions that have made an entire generation, perhaps two generations of people, feel like, they live in this economy where basically the the only hope you have is to sort of gamble on a get rich quick scheme that there's no other like, nobody believes in the American dream anymore. Right? Like, nobody believes that, it's possible to just, like, work hard and pull yourself up by your bootstraps. I mean, that was always a myth that capital is promoted anyway in order to erode, you know, calls for social safety nets. But, like, we know that's not true anymore. And so, I think that that like, whenever I'm asked to talk about NFTs, I mean, they want me to talk about them in our historical context, but I was like, you have to talk about the crash of two thousand and eight. Like, you have to talk about the sort of economic conditions, right, that have driven people to this. And so what I would like to propose, what I've been proposing is that we try to spend as much energy fighting for NFTs and building NFT communities, that as much energy as we're spending on that, we expend on, like, fighting for UBI and fighting for the public funding of the arts. And, you know, none of these alternatives are without flaws, but I would rather have, like, a rich menu of options, right, where we have UBI, public funding of the arts, and a private art market, and, you know, like, the festival circuit. Like, and look. I just want more options for artists, not less.

Yeah. It you know, totally. And I I know, you know, from following your Twitter feed, and listening a little bit to what you've, you know, done, like, I know that, you know, you're interested in blockchain as being a pathway, like, towards a socialist future, and I'm, not I'm a I'm a little more skeptical on all of that. That's not that's that's not how I would characterize it. But Okay. How would you characterize that? I get that a

That that's such a perfect characterization, actually, of how I feel about this. It's like, well, there's this thing that's coming. And so, like, how am I gonna deal with it? Right? Like, I'm not gonna put my head in the sand, but how are we gonna, you know, have a critical conversation about it and create space for that? So, yeah, I mean, I'm I'm I'm sort of fascinated now to, you know, watch the development of DAOs and the way in which people are trying to bring together, like, art and socialist values, let's say. And blockchain maybe. Collectivist values. There you go. And, you know, I really respect the work of, you know, groups like Furtherfield to have these conversations. We've been having these conversations for a long time now. So I'm very curious. I'm sort of sitting from the sidelines and, you know, we'll I mean, we'll we'll see, I guess. I don't know. I'm also incredibly skeptical. I think, you know, there's as always, we just need to do a lot of work to define our terms. Right? Like, what is the difference between socialism, like, class solidarity, mutual aid? You know, it's it's like, what is it exactly that we're fighting for? Even, like, democracy, and this is something I pointed out in my art review piece, from the end of last year is, like, what do we mean when we say democracy? Because I think in a lot of DAOs, the idea of democracy is, like, well, one person, one vote, and that's and then it's majority rule. But there are reasons why, like, the founding fathers of America argued for a representative democracy, and, like, part of that has to do with, like, really terrible things like slavery, but also, you know, part of it has to do with how do you protect a minority from mob rule. And so I'm not saying it's an impossible project, but it's like, how do we, how do we, you know, imagine social spaces that, that have protections for the most vulnerable? And how do we imagine social and financial systems that don't create, like, not just privilege, but, like, generational forms of inherited privilege. Right? Like, how do we how do we think about these things in a sort of systemic level? And, until we are having those conversations and, again, there's some people that I think are trying to have those conversations, but at this point, it's like, if your idea of democracy is, like, you know, one person, one vote, or, god forbid, one token, one vote, which is, like, the worst nightmare, It's really hard to not see these spaces as just being, like, technologically encoded hyper capitalism.

Yeah. Totally. And then sorry. I almost like to interject you because I was like, you remind me of something else I was gonna say earlier, which is that, you know, another thing I get frustrated by in a sense in the conversations in this space is that, like, the so called, like, evil trad art world was actually having these conversations before NFTs came along. And this is something else I said in my art review article. I just gestured towards it. Like, you know, maybe it wasn't moving fast enough. Right? But, like, there was a real sort of movement building. Like, if you look at the work of Caroline Woolard, who's an artist who, helped start this group, art co op, like, really thinking about what it would mean to have artists cooperatives and to try to work not just collaboratively, but, like, collectively. Right. And so the contemporary art space was one space in which those kinds of ideas were being tested out. And, I guess I just get a little frustrated with a lot of the discourse coming out of the crypto space because it's just like we get painted as these, like, you know, you never cared about digital art and, you know, you never, like, you know, thought about, these issues or, like, you never, like, you you weren't working on, like, collectivism or you weren't working on representation or diversity or anything. It's like, actually, this is what we've been working on for, like, a decade. Where have you been? Like, these are, like, the hottest topics actually in the field of contemporary art. So, and again, I totally acknowledge it's, like, not enough, but I just think to throw the baby out with the bathwater and to erase the good work that's been done largely by, like, queer, trans, non binary, like, artists of color. Like, that's kind of problematic to me. Not just artists, but curators too. Like, I mean, or even if you think about what's going on right now with disability and contemporary art where there's, like, a lot of new interest in thinking about that. I mean, Colby Chamberlain wrote a major article in an art forum about this. And, you know, you have now, like, disabled artists being more represented in, like, the Whitney Biennial, like, people like Christine Sun Kim. And, you know, it's just like it's it it we were having these conversations, and it it seems like it's a shame not to build on them together, and to just sort of say, well, you know, this space has, like, nothing to offer me. I have nothing to say to it. So and that goes both ways. You know? That goes both ways.

Well, but it's always been the case, right, that, like, the most interesting conversations don't necessarily align with where the money is. And this is another thing that I think those of us in the traditional art will get a little frustrated by is people keep talking about the traditional art market and conflating it with the traditional art world. And I keep trying to explain for those of the people who don't know a lot about the art world and how it works. Well, first of all, there's many art worlds. But second of all, you know, the art market is, like, one sector. Right? The, like, for profit commercial side with these, you know, blue chip galleries and these crazy auction results that, you know, everyone loves to make fun of. But, there are, you know, arts writers, critics, art historians, artists who work in a different way or outside of that model, nonprofit spaces, like, artist run spaces, arts workers, like, you know, art handlers and registrars and museum frontline staff and educators. And, like, there's just a whole world of people, many worlds of people who frankly, like, you know, most of us work for, like, no money, and or, like, we don't you know, like, we're not all, like, super rich or super privileged. And we, are having these critical conversations. And at some points, it intersects with what the, like, high end market is doing. But at and and some you know, a lot of that work is sustained by the high end market, right, through the form of, like, you know, board members giving, you know, financial donations and things like that. But, it's also kind of independent. And so I think, you know, but this comes from just people not being familiar. Right? Like, not knowing where to find those conversations. It's like they know about the sales because that's what gets written about and that would kind of what kind of, like, crosses over into mainstream consciousness, you know, thanks to, like, the lack of art education and also, like, the firing of most full time art critics on most major museum newspaper staff. So it's like the kinds of conversations that the rest of the art world is having beyond the market. There's just not as many outlets, and there's not as many advocates, not as many voices to sort of bring that work to the general public. So, again, I don't really blame anyone for, like, not knowing these things. Right? It's more of a systemic thing of, like, the way that, like, you know, hedge funds took over newspapers and gutted their staff, like, in you know, like, twenty years ago. Like, that like, what we're seeing now is we're reaping what we sow. It's like we fucked around and now we're finding out. Right? And, like, it's all related. And I don't think you can talk about, you know, NFTs without talking about all of this larger context. Right? Yeah. For sure. I it's,

personally, I guess. No. That's a that's a really good point, and it's something I'm trying to be really cognizant of is that it's I was actually just having this debate with a friend earlier today. Like, I think it's really important to be critical. It's, like, really important to say what you are against. That's the function of criticism and critique is that sometimes you can't figure out what you're for until you figure out what you're against. Right? Like, it's a it's a learning process. It's a pathway. And definitely is, like, speaking as, like, a critic and a curator, like, I'm not an artist. I'm not the visionary. I'm not the one with the ideas. Right? I can sit here and sort of react. And so I can say, well, not this or this isn't good, but it's not my job to say what is good, right, or what it should be because I'm not an artist. Right? I'm a critic. And so I can have, like, productive dialogue, but, I'm not the one with the solutions. Right? So I think that that's a really important function, right, is is for that space of critique. On the other hand, I I've been thinking a lot about the fact that it's also really important to amplify the the work that you do want to see amplified out in there in the world, the whether it's art or whether it's, you know, political movements or whether it's, like, certain activists or organizations. Like, I'm a big believer in amplifying. Like, I say that fundamentally, my job is basically to amplify, like, to platform artists who I think are making good and important work. I I see myself as a kind of facilitator, so, and interpreter. So, I think it's I think you're right. It's sort of exhausting to constantly be against against against, and I try to make sure that, you know, that in between all of my tweets being against something, I am also offering up information about, like, what I'm for. Right? Which is why, like, yesterday, I was like, hey. Let's talk about UBI again. Right? That, like, artist pensions are sort of problematic because their gate captain who gets to qualify for them. And the market is obviously problematic because the market will never really support work that is truly experimental or that is against hegemonic values or against capital or against certain kinds of privilege. Right? Like so, you know, so you don't really want the market to be the only thing either. And so that's why I'm saying, okay. Well, what about UBI? Right? What about something that's, like, truly universal that, would get around some of these problems that would, like, materially improve the lives of artists and give them the space that they need to do the work that they wanna do. So, you know, trying to be you know, to to sort of seize upon positive alternatives and to to, like, draw attention to them is also, you know, what I think we all need to be doing.

there's obviously a need for critique. You weren't saying it to somebody else I was talking to today was, like, just focus on the good stuff. And I was, like, no. No. No. You also have to focus on the bad stuff. Right? Like, you kinda need both to happen.

Yeah. Because you also don't wanna, like, platform bad ideas. Right? I mean, this is why, like, everyone always says, like, don't dunk on somebody on Twitter by just, like, retweeting them. Right? Like, you're just, you know, amplifying things that don't need to get amplified. So I'm also, like, cognizant of that dynamic. Got it.

I mean, I think that ship has sailed. I do think that the market is cooling. I think the crypto whales aren't being as active. I think, you know, you're seeing more, like, projects that aren't instantly sold out. But then I don't know. Outland had a drop yesterday. Their first drop that, like, sold out in five seconds. So what do I know? You know? It's like, you think things are cooling and, you know, I heard that, like, a lot of activity on Tazo said really cooled off and then suddenly it's like, you know? So, anyway, so I I think I've talked to a lot of, like, major collectors who in the NFT space who actually think that, like, a correction is coming. Right? And I don't know if bubble bursting is the right metaphor, but, you know, that things will sort of cool off and then you'll you know, once the money the quick money doesn't seem to be there anymore, it'll flush out a lot of the scammers and the grifters and the spammers, and we'll be left with, you know, more serious artists and collectors who are really in it for the art. So, you know, and also to make money. Nothing wrong with that. So, I hope that happens, personally, just because I don't like spam and scamming and grifting to exist in anywhere, not just, you know, in the art world. I what I would like to see then, assuming that that happens, or maybe even if it doesn't, if there's a way that we can carve out a corner of this activity for a kind of conversation around digital art, that includes exhibitions, like curated exhibitions, publications, communities speaking with each other in spaces like Twitter spaces and Discord and Clubhouse, if anyone still uses that, that really reflects the kind of values that I hold and that a part of the traditional art world holds as well. And, again, people love to dunk on, like, the high end market. Like, well, it's just about money for you guys too. It's not about the art. It's not about the ideas. And it's like, well, don't conflate, like, one aspect of it, you know, where, yes, artworks are treated as, you know, appreciating assets, and they're just commodities that are stored in Freeports. It's like, that's fine, but that's also, like, a tiny, tiny, tiny sliver at the top of the art world. Right? Like, there's a much bigger world. And so for many of us, it is about, these values of, you know, like, without sounding totally sappy and romantic and, like, retrograde, but, like, I don't know, like, beauty and truth and community and, you know, always understanding, of course, that these terms are not universal and that they're sort of culturally specific and that we need to always question, like, what do we mean when we say beautiful and who are we excluding from that story? But, you know, I I do believe that art is really powerful. I, you know, I art is the most important thing in my life. Art, like, is what I would get out of bed in the morning. Art is I mean, and and, you know, people can define it differently. Like, some people call it poetry. Some people call it presence. But, like, art is how it it's what makes life worth living. Right? Like, it makes me, not just exist or, like, subsist on this planet. Right? It makes me glad to be alive and to be here and to feel, you know, like I'm, making the best use of my time and, you know, like, actually experiencing it and not just sort of suffering through it. So, okay. So there's my very romantic ideas about art, which are, like, you know, probably highly problematic, and I'm gonna get canceled, but, in ways that I can't even anticipate. But, I, I really truly believe that digital art is art. And, you know, I have seen digital works of art that have made me cry. I have seen digital works of art that have made me burst out laughing, like, the full spectrum of the human experience and the full spectrum of what art can do. And so I would love if, you know, there's there's space for us to, like, actually appreciate art together, whatever that looks like, even if it's, like, asynchronous, even if it's virtual. I hope that there is space for us to talk about art, to talk about and not just for the sake of, like, being fancy and flexing. Right? But, like, to really connect with each other and to connect over these meaningful, profound experiences and to work out together, like, how it means and what it means and to share that experience, which is, like, as, you know, can be as important as the art itself. Right? It's like the community that it engenders, the conversations that it stimulates, the connections that it helps forge. So I I I hope that we see that. And I think that if you look at a publication like Outland, which is also an NFT platform now, if you look at, you know, some of these new initiatives that are trying to create more space for curation, whatever that might mean, and it means different things to different people. But, you know, on a very basic level, it's like, I'm a big believer in Marshall McLuhan's, like, the medium is the message and that, you know, how you code things actually conditions what you're able to say. And so one of my one of the reasons I instantly hated all of these platforms that emerged a year ago or that, you know, had been emerging since 2018 is that they literally didn't have a text box to be able to say something about the tokenized asset. It was literally just like a listing where you have the JPEG file and, like, hash for the wallet, whatever, and, like, you know, like, links to IPFS, whatever. Like, you had all of the information you would need to understand that thing as an asset, as a digital record, but you didn't have anything that would help you understand it as a work of art. Like, for the artist to say something about their piece of art. Like, the artist or Right. Like, a or a curator or somebody that there's literally not like a text box, you know, or, you know, it doesn't even have to be text based, but, like, the ability to juxtapose different objects in space together. I mean, this is what curators fundamentally do. We bring artworks together in space. Right? And we we select them and we arrange them so that they are so that we're creating dialogues between them. Right? And these dialogues tell a story even without words. So, you know, the fact that there wasn't, you know, immediately any easy way to do that, that basically the only way you could collect your NFTs was by having them exist together in a wallet, but that's not a context. It's not a meaningful context. Right? It's just like this randomness of, like, they all happen to be in a wallet together. So, you know, there literally weren't mechanisms for meaningfully juxtaposing works of art. There weren't mechanisms for sharing texts about works of art where an artist could sort of explain their process or why they did what they did. Right? It was just, like, commodities listing. And,

Yeah. No. No. Totally. You know, it's like yeah. It's like, you know, basically, it was just the information you needed in order to indicate its provenance, and, and that's it. But, like, that is the Just so you can say it looks rare, dude. Like, it looks rare, dude. Exactly. It's like you're you're focusing on the scarcity, but it's like, well, why is this object even an interesting thing? Or, you know, by object when I say object in the space of digital art, I just mean, like, asset or file. But we refer to art objects in the expanded sense. So, like, you can call a website an object as far as I'm concerned. So, like, we look at these things, you know, it's like, well, why? Like, why is this something that's interesting to collect? Why is this something that's interesting to have? And, like, you know, a lot of the conversations that I would drop into, it's like, well, it's so dank or, like, it's so, you know, like, it's just so cool. I love it. It looks so cool. And I'm like, that's fine, but my job as a critic, a historian, and a curator is to actually increase your appreciation of this thing by walking you through it, by working with you. You know? Like, one of the classic questions when you teach art history is, what did you see that made you say that? So I would love to have these conversations where it's like, okay. You think it looks cool? Well, like, what do you see that makes you say that? Oh, well, you know, I just I really love, like, you know, the colors on it. I was like, okay. Well, what do you see that make you say that? Oh, well, I really love that they're, like, bright colors. It's like, okay. And so you have these this is, like, the conversations I would have with my undergrads, and it actually would make the work more meaningful to them because they would understand why they liked it. You know? Like and that's actually a big part of of art appreciation and, like, making it meaningful to people's lives. So and anybody's able to do that. You just need you just need the desire to do it, and you just need the patience. And, you know, you need markets and you need platforms that create the space for that to happen. Right? And one of the frustrations has been that, you know, the space has moved so quickly. It's been really hard to build all of that and to create that time. And I know, you know, one thing everyone keeps saying that somewhat encourages me is that it's still early days. We're talking about something that it's been, like, less than a year since the Beeple sale, which, like, blows my mind. It it feels like a decade. It's not one year. I'm I mean yeah. I mean, between that and COVID, I'm like, I don't know what year it is anymore. I don't know what's going on. I've lived, like, five years in the past five months, but then also the last three years has only been six months together. So, like, I don't understand anything that's happening anymore. But, yeah, I mean, it is it is it is probably really true that it's still early days. And if the space doesn't completely burn out and just disappear in three months, which, you know, everyone's been thinking is gonna happen for the past fifteen months, then, you know, maybe maybe we'll get to that point. And, you know, maybe there's still a lot of maturing that needs to happen. But money just makes everything complicated, you know, like, in a good way and in a bad way. And I think that when there's this much money at stake, people and, again, as we talked about, when when so many people are so precarious, right, then the focus is just on getting that bag as quickly as possible before everything goes away. You know? Like, nobody's really having these, like, long term conversations about, well, what does it look like to build an NFT platform that's gonna be around in five years? And what kind of value would it have to bring to artists and to collectors beyond just financial value? So,

And the other thing, you know, we didn't talk about is that we talk about NFTs as opportunities for artists, but there's also, you know, there's also damage being inflicted. Right? And I don't wanna, you know, make too much out of it because I know it's like a a you know, there's a lot of debate over this. But, like, the fact that now you can have people so freely plagiarizing other artists' art. And not only is it much easier now to plagiarize a work of art because it's literally right click save, but there's it's also harder for artists who have been plagiarized to fight it because what are the mechanisms in place? Like, okay. You can, like, try to petition OpenSea to, like, delist it, but it's still on chain. And, you know, it's not like you can easily, like, sue somebody. Like, you can't sue an anonymous wallet, that easily. I don't know of anybody doing that yet. So how would you even recover the funds that somebody made by, like, passing off, like, selling work as if it was, you know, your work as if it was theirs? You know, it's like, it's just kind of a nightmare for artists in many ways too. And, again, this is what happens when you build a system without thinking about unintended consequences. Like, you focus so much on, like, it's so great because now we don't have gatekeepers. So now every artist, they won't need to fight for years to get gallery representation. They can just go on OpenSea and list it right there themselves, and there's no gatekeeping. It's like, okay. Well, that sounds great until you think about, well, what happens when somebody rips off your work? And what mechanisms are you gonna put in place to address it? It's like, okay. Well, now if you're gonna start talking about mechanisms to address it, guess what? Now we're no longer having this whole decentralized thing. Now we're back to having gatekeepers. Now we're back to having, you know, middleman who can sort of step in. So it it's just a mess. Right? Like, it just needs to, and I don't know what the solution is. I truly don't. Like, how do you keep the good part but get rid of the bad?

But, like, you wouldn't even know. Right? Like, say you like, it's one thing to be like, oh, well, you knew this work was by John Smith, and you didn't verify that the wallet that it came from that, like, John Smith didn't tweet out. Like, I attest that this is my Tezos wallet or whatever. Right? But what if you don't even know that John Smith made it? Like, what if you're just randomly looking on OpenSea and you find some cool stuff and it's being sold by, you know, Adam Brown, and you buy it and you don't know that actually John Smith made it, you know, because there's, like, no watermarks. There's, like, no indication. I mean, you could do a reverse Google image search and try to see, like you know, and then maybe you would get to John Smith's website and you would see. But, like, so much information now I mean, this is one of the big problems with web two, right, is, like, locked behind, you know, is locked behind platforms. And so you may not even be able to find it that easily. And, I mean, yes, you could have always in theory, you know, plagiarize somebody's work, but there was never really an incentive too, as you said. And, also, you know, something else that's worth considering is that the rise of NFTs has also changed the nature of digital art. Because what we're seeing now is that, because of the technical limitations of the platforms, it really incentivizes artists to make or at least to try to sell certain kinds of work, right, like JPEG files or GIFs or MPEG files. And, like, the digital artists in the nineties, they were making, like, websites. Like, they were making HTML. And, like, you can or they were making software. And in theory, of course, you could tokenize software. You could tokenize my office chair. You could tokenize this microphone I'm talking to you on. Right? Like, you can tokenize anything. It's just a a token literally that stands in for something else. Right? But what what we're seeing is that it is really and this is something I brought up in my Artforum article, and I took a lot of heat for it. And I tried to be really careful with how I phrased it to basically say, like, on a technical level, does it encourage digital artists to make only static discrete objects in the sense of, like, a JPEG file as opposed to interactive, fluid experiences, that, you know, are, like, real time, open to their environment, that pull new information, like, you know, software and Internet based projects. Does it technically constrain them? Not necessarily. But it also does. You know? Like, it also clearly privileges just because in a philosophical way, right, it's suggesting that what you're buying is this kind of, like, discrete asset that's, like, registered forever on the blockchain even though the work is not itself on chain, that it's a discrete asset that's not gonna change. You know, like, one of the big things about digital art is that it's iterative. Like, one of the advantages of working with digital tools is that you can keep iterating a project over and over. You can just, like, slightly change the parameters or you can do this or that. And, you can introduce new variables and and you can have people participate. And so, you you know, the digital artwork becomes this kind of umbrella project that contains lots of different instances and iterations. And that's very different philosophically from, you know, having this, like, one fixed JPEG file. Right? And so I guess what I'm trying to say is that, like, what digital art looked like before, not that people aren't you know, weren't making JPEGs and GIFs and stuff back then, but it also included these other things that, like, you couldn't really even, like, copy in that sense because it was, like, fluid and dynamic and iterative. And so

or me ranting about, like, iteration. But, anyway, so, I have a website, which is just my full name, tinariversryan.com. And, I tried to post PDFs of all of my published work there. All of the reviews that I've written for Artforum over the years are just hyperlinked to, but Artforum, I think for its old stuff, like you can create a free account and access a lot of that. And you certainly are allowed like a certain number of free articles per month. So if anyone wants to read my old reviews, I've been reviewing shows of digital artists, you know, for a decade now. So, yeah, so I try to put new work up there. And then, my exhibition. So one of my exhibitions, I mentioned Difference Machines, it just closed in January last month. I have new projects, that are, you know, being developed for 2024 and beyond. So you'll just have to follow me. You can, sign up for my, newsletter on my website, which I, like, email maybe once a year. But mostly, I'm on I'm on social. I'm on Twitter and Instagram, mostly on Twitter now. And my handle on both is at Tina Rivers Ryan. Cool. Well, thanks a lot. Thank you so much. It's nice to talk to somebody who, wants to have the conversation and doesn't just wanna completely shut it down from either side, frankly, and, who also, you know, likes to think about things like privilege and and power and equity, justice. What a concept.