Are NFTs part of the bricks and mortar of a new world?
Hyperallergic just published a study deflating the idea that NFTs are the next brass ring https://hyperallergic.com/697239/new-study-on-nfts-deflates-the-democratic-potential-for-the-medium The premise is that the artworld, like any other, is driven by market, market, market, location location location: who gets there first with the right connections and the gulf between haves and have nots just keeps widening. One artist earns $15, 000, 000. Another, just as deserving, may earn $15.
The same gulf came up today about Zooms, from my colleague, Linn Burchert*, who wrote, “There's something that's been in my mind concerning video conferences from the very beginning of the Corona crisis which I already discussed with colleagues in Germany, but I don't know what's the discussion in the US. Now listening to the audio cast "Treibhaus" where you mentioned the benefits of Zoom meetings, I started thinking about it again. While I think video conferences are a good way to discuss with people you cannot meet in person and avoid travels, I'm really worried about the multinational monopoly Zoom holds and also about the digital industries' doubtful claim for being (more) green and sustainable, not to mention abuse of personal data. To avoid Zoom, I decided to use Big Blue Button whenever I host something, because it's open source and because of data security. In a quick research I found this article on emissions: https://davidmytton.blog/zoom-video-conferencing-energy-and-emissions and this one on data security: https://www.tomsguide.com/news/zoom-security-privacy-woes. I guess (and hope) there's much more concern … There’s also this highly recommendable article from Monde Diplomatique: https://mondediplo.com/2021/11/09digital-waste. ”
Since I Zoom a lot, this has given me pause. Both issues, NFTs and Zooms evoke thoughts on our very undemocratic present and how tech contributes to sustaining ecocide.
I have identified a few issues contributing to our current environmental crises which end in ecocide. They seem to include:
1. Capitalism as an extension of colonialism and grounded in racist thinking.
2. The consumption of resources and the role of commodification in depleting the natural systems humans depend upon.
3. The manipulation of fear and anger to serve fascism, which leads to genocide and ecocide.
4. The education and autonomy of women, including reproductive health, which includes access to abortion as part of family planning.
5. The concentration of much of the world’s wealth is mostly in the hands of a few oligarchic families
I think these are related concerns: the economics of survival, assumptions about natural resources as the source of infinite extraction, the emotional components of the status quo and the gender-based realities that exist in most societies. Each of these issues deserves and have often been the topic of many books. I am curious about considering them from the POV of artmaking, and selfishly, my own artmaking.
My first task is to consider, what are the questions we need to answer to address these issues? If I were to prioritize to reconsider and start with the economic system we call capitalism, the question of working with NFTs or Zooms, in principle, should help solve some of these issues. In reality, they just evoke a whole new slew of the same problems evoked by the same issues
Theoretically, economic systems might be the most salient issue to prioritize, the place to pull the thread to unravel this unholy mess because the survival of most peoples across the globe depends on trade, from which capitaIism emerged. In the Middle Ages, it was the impetus for the rise of a flourishing middle class. Internationally, that middle class has been vanishing as the grip of totalitarian, authoritarian, patriarchal governments tightens. Today, at best, most cultures seem to depend on a degraded version of a capitalist economy. The systems are still called capitalism and free trade but they are really just fascist oligarchies.
So how does this affect my artmaking? I spent yesterday studying and documenting trees in Central Park. I am trying to tell a story. It will be a test for the opera I am working on and include NFTs and some variant on video conferencing. History has taught is that the weapons of war can be beaten into the plowshares of peace. I am here beating on those weapons.
*Linn Burchert is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Art and Visual History, Humboldt University, Berlin. From 2014 to 2017 she was research associate and a doctoral candidate in the Department of Art History at the Friedrich-Schiller University, Jena. Her dissertation Das Bild als Lebensraum. Ökologische Wirkungskonzepte in der abstrakten Kunst, 1910-1960 (Transcript, Bielefeld, 2019) investigates ecological concepts in abstract modern painting. She has published on concepts of nature and rhythm in modernity as well as theories of reception and artistic production. Her recent project is funded by the German Research Foundation and examines art in the context of international climate summits since 1972, addressing issues around the broader sociological and economic contexts of art as well as art’s globalisation.
Website:
German: http://www.kunstgeschichte.hu-berlin.de/personen/wissenschaftliche-mitarbeiterinnen/linn-burchert
English (Project Abstract): http://www.kunstgeschichte.hu-berlin.de/forschung/laufende-forschungsprojekte/klimagipfelkunst/climate-summit-art-art-and-political-event-1972-2022