For the online exhibition The Byzantine Generals Problem, which is still available online at Distant.Gallery, Aksioma produced an exhibition booklet which still sums up very well what I believe art on the blockchain is and shoud be. Check it out at the link below!
Domenico Quaranta, The Byzantine Generals Problem, exhibition booklet, Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana 2022
Along the last year, I have been working hard along with Lorenzo Giusti, curator and Director of GAMeC, Bergamo, and his wonderful team on a monumental museum exhibition, the third chapter in a trilogy on matter conceived by Lorenzo for the museum. I’m happy and proud to start sharing some information about the artists and works that will take over the museum from February 3 to May 28, 2023.
After the break you can find the full press release. Click on this link to download the press kit.
On November 12, 2022, I had the pleasure to introduce and moderate a conversation between María Paula Fernández, Michelle Kasprzak, Vuk Ćosić and Cornelia Sollfrank in the framework of the conference “From Commons to NFTs”, organized by Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art in Ljubljana. A video recording of the conversation is now available on Youtube. A transcript of my intro speech with references and links has been minted on my Mirror blog for those of my readers who’d like to collect and support.
I’m happy and proud to announce that my book Surfing with Satoshi. Art, Blockchain and NFTs is now available in English! Scheduled for release on May 25, the book can be pre-ordered on Aksioma’s online store with free shipping, alone or in a special combo with Hyperemployment. Post-work, Online Labour and Automation (2019), funnily named “Combo 40”.
Produced and published by Aksioma, Ljubljana, Surfing with Satoshi. Art, Blockchain and NFTs is the English version of my book Surfing con Satoshi. Arte, blockchain e NFT, published in Italian by Postmedia Books in June 2021. Printed in a limited release of 300 copies, this English version features a new design by Superness, color plates and a “Foreword to the English Edition” that offers a major update of the book, and that can be downloaded for free from this link.
Sollecitato da Alberto Fiz, ho contribuito al libro Collezionisti e valore dell’arte in Italia 2022, prodotto da Intesa San Paolo in collaborazione con Skira, con un breve saggio su collezionismo e arte digitale. Di prossima uscita, il volume è stato presentato oggi con un video in streaming presentato da Luca Beatrice, che ospita anche (dal minuto 35.30) una breve conversazione tra me e Alberto sul tema degli NFT. Non sono mai fiero delle mie performance verbali, ma lo splendido sfondo delle Gallerie d’Italia e il logo dell’Ansa valgono ben una condivisione.
On the website of Spike Magazine you can now read an edited excerpt from my book Surfing con Satoshi. Arte, blockchain e NFT, translated into English by Anna Rosemary Carruthers. The excerpt offers a good chance to announce the upcoming English version of the book, that will be made available in spring by Postmedia Books and, in a limited edition designed by Superness, by Aksioma, Ljubljana. Meanwhile, enjoy Truthless Trust!
Domenico Quaranta, “Truthless Trust”, in Spike Magazine, February 1, 2022
The Italian magazine Civiltà delle macchine, published by Fondazione Leonardo, asked me to write an essay about NFT aesthetics. I accepted the challenge. The piece is now available in Italian and English on the paper version of the magazine, which is also available as a free download pdf (pdf download). With some minor changes, the English version of the article has been also minted on my Mirror blog.
Domenico Quaranta, ”L’estetica dei Non-Fungible Token”, in Civiltà delle macchine, n. 4, Dicembre 2021, pp. 66 – 71. Versione inglese “The Aesthetics of Non-Fungible Tokens”, pp. 89 – 91.
Curating Digital Art – From Presenting And Collecting Digital Art To Networked Co-Curation is an extensive publication edited by Annet Dekker and published by Valiz along 2021, featuring a number of interviews with artists and curators. I’ve been included with an old interview discussing medium based definitions, online / offline exhibitions, open source, the future of museums, and my 2011 exhibition Collect the WWWorld. The Artist as Archivist in the Digital Age (catalogue still available here).
Qualche settimana fa NOT ha pubblicato un paio di estratti in italiano dal volume Surfing con Satoshi. Arte, blockchain e NFT (Postmedia Books, Milano 2021), con un breve cappello introduttivo. Lo trovate qui:
Domenico Quaranta, “NFT changed my life! La blockchain sta reinventando il futuro?”, in NOT, 6 ottobre 2021.
What follows is the English translation (courtesy Google Translate, with some editing by yours truly) of an interview originally published in Italian on Artribune, about the end of the Link Art Center (here the official announcement). Together with my long time partners Lucio Chiappa, Matteo Cremonesi, Fabio Paris, I discuss with Valentina Tanni about the increasing awareness of digital cultures in mainstream contemporary art, media art institutions, collaboration, curating, publishing, and working on all this from Italy…
Valentina Tanni, in Artribune, September 19, 2019
After eight years of editorial, curatorial and exhibition activity, the Link Art Center, a cultural association engaged in the dissemination of new media art, announced its closure. We spoke with the founders – Domenico Quaranta, Fabio Paris, Lucio Chiappa and Matteo Cremonesi – to take stock of this important experience.
Let’s start with the inevitable question: why do you stop? Why now?
Domenico Quaranta: The Link Art Center was founded as a cultural association in 2011, with the mission to foster, at national and international level, a greater diffusion and awareness of the “arts of the information age”. At the time we perceived this mission as a burning necessity. We were spectators of a dynamism of the artists that did not find an adequate response in the institutions, in the magazines, in the market. We had to do something, and we did it. But on this front, from 2011 to 2019, there have been enormous changes, both at the artistic level and at a more general level of society, in Italy and in the rest of the world. Just visit a mainstream contemporary art event such as this year’s Venice Biennale to perceive the scale of this change. Themes that once would have been defined as “digital culture”, such as artificial intelligence, are now on the agenda, and not just in a discursive niche; languages that once would have been defined as “new media”, such as virtual reality, are placed in the hands of contemporary art veterans such as Marina Abramovič or Anish Kapoor.