Objects, Metaphors, Venues and Money

I am starting a new phase of the Blued Trees project with legal graffiti: @legalgraffitiAR.

Not much to show yet except some chicken scratches but it’s the revival of an opera I had been working on before the pandemic. The pandemic has changed so much about my thinking about platforming, venue and audience that my ideas about what I want to do and how have transformed my plans. It has also pushed me to consider how I want to present work that could be shown in more conventional indoors space, such as my brilliant young intern, Elia Min Emery recently assembled for my website gallery.

There is a long-standing debate in the ecoart community about gallery objects of any kind. The argument against them is that it reinstates the reiteration of commodification. It has begged the question of the role of museums in our culture. The argument to save museums is that they represent the ultimate cultural “agora”. The significance of the agora was vigorously argued by Jacques Derrida, implicitly identifying that space as the inbetween of culture and politics.

I am fascinated by the intersection of cultural and political institutions to effect systemic change. In the review I wrote of Laura Raicovich’s book, that was just posted on the ecoartspace website, I summarized how she addressed this intersection and extrapolated from her analysis to ecoart.

As the push pull has evolved between physical objects for sale as art and the implications of those sales, NFTs have emerged as a new genre of art.

Although I am as fascinated by NFTs as a concept as I am of the agora, it has some issues. I’m appalled by the fossil fuel/ mining impacts of most cryptocurrency. In the article below, it refers to alternatives from Etherium,  EOS and Cardano but it’s not clear how verifiable the claims are. Thankfully, I’m not the only one concerned: ‘Purchase any NFT with credit card — which paves the way for adoption’.

https://www.investopedia.com/tech/whats-environmental-impact-cryptocurrency/

NFTs fascinate me because they potentially represent a new metaphor for exchange values disengaged from physicality. Metaphors can change whole cultures. There are a number of fascinating concepts and questions here I plan to explore over the next months. For example, how does a museum effectively tell the story of NFTs as a new system or does it just absorb the form without considering the challenge? Do NFTs redefine the agora?