The Non-Standard Head mock-up, courtesy Larysa Pauk
The Non-Standard Head is a curatorial project for A Slice of the Pie, a work by artists Silvio Lorusso and Sebastian Schmieg open to remote collaboration. Conceived by Domenico Quaranta in collaboration with the Net Art class at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, Milan, The Non-Standard Head sees participants working collaboratively and performatively to design a non-binary, multi-gender, multi-racial, multi-species, post-human, post-anthropocentric human subject. The action will unfold over the course of the day on Dec. 22, 2022 (2-7 p.m.), and can be followed online at a-slice-of-the-pie.live.
More info after the break. Italiano giù giù (°Д°) ლ(° ◡ુ° )ლ︵‿
On October 22, 2022 I took part in a round table hosted by the Uzbekistan National Pavilion at La Biennale di Venezia, organized and moderated by Silvia Dal Dosso and Giacomo Scandolara, with Andrea Baronchelli, María Paula Fernández and Ryder Ripps. The complete recording is available online, kindly provided by the Art and Culture Development Foundation under the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Uzbekistan and the Giga Design Studio. Additionally, an edited transcript of the conversation has been recently made available by Silvia Dal Dosso on Nero Magazine. Check it out!
Riesco a malapena a guardare il trailer, ma ho fatto questa cosa e ho pure un codice sconto per chi mi segue, quindi la condivido con piacere. edulia Masterclass è la piattaforma di e-learning allestita da Treccani e dedicata a chi vuole imparare sempre qualcosa di nuovo. Io ho preso parte al progetto realizzando il minicorso “Arte, Blockchain e NFT” che potete trovare qui. Gli abbonamenti sono molto accessibili, e usando questo codice potrete avere uno sconto del 30% al momento dell’acquisto: quaranta30 😅
The academic journal VCS – Visual Cultural Studies, published by Mimesis, just came out with a special double issue on Art in the Age of Ubiquitous Media, edited by Sean Cubitt and Valentino Catricalà. It features a gorgeous selection of essays by great authors, including my essay “Crypto Art Does Not Exist. Coming to Terms with an Unfortunate Art Label”. You can find and buy the journal on Mimesis’ website. Don’t be mislead by the deep time of academic journals: it is a text written in January 2022, adapting a chapter of my book Surfing with Satoshi, at the time still unpublished in English. The plus value, here, is reading it in a different context and company, with essays on related topics by Sean Cubitt, Delinda Collier, Andrea Pinotti, Ashley Lee Wong, Roger Malina among others. A short abstract is available after the break.
Domenico Quaranta, “Crypto Art Does Not Exist. Coming to Terms with an Unfortunate Art Label”, in VCS – Visual Cultural Studies, Issue 03/04, June 2022, ISSN 724-2307
An alternative to capitalism, or capitalism at its worst? An emancipatory network economy where everyone has a stake, or a dystopian panopticon where only the best man wins? An opportunity for democracy, or a techno-libertarian wet dream? A new creative economy or a pyramid scheme? A planet saver or a planet burner? Rarely has the debate around a technology been so polarised as with blockchains, Web3 and NFTs. We are facing a problem of consensus, trapped within a Byzantine Generals Problem. A group of generals is besieging Byzantium. In order to avoid catastrophic failure, they must agree on a concerted strategy, but some of them are unreliable. Used to illustrate how consensus is reached within distributed systems, this allegory can be applied to blockchains as well as societies. Yet, in a peer-to-peer debate with no central authority, consensus is hard to reach for a reason; and the disagreeing general, the unreliable actor, may be our best resource against the common sense of the crypto-yuppies. The Byzantine Generals Problem is an online exhibition focused on artworks which do not avoid an engagement with blockchains and crypto culture, but do so in a critically constructive way: questioning dominant narratives, raising problems and sometimes proposing alternative solutions. Featuring works by Anna Ridler, Ben Grosser, Constant Dullaart, DIS, Face or Factory, Kyle McDonald, LaTurbo Avedon, Moxie Marlinspike, Nascent, Rhea Myers, Sarah Friend, Sarah Meyohas, Simon Denny / Guile Twardowski / Cosmographia, Sterling Crispin, The Miha Artnak. Curated by Domenico Quaranta and produced by Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana, The Byzantine Generals Problem is hosted by distant.gallery,a not for profit organization making an innovative independent and noncommercial online platform available for partners to reach their audience online. During the opening, on July 04, 2022 at 1 PM CEST, the platform will host a short guided tour with the curator and the available artists.
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.
I’ve been watching “Collateral Murder” with my students again and again since it was released in 2007. Watching it together is a kind of ritual, a group prayer, a tribute to the victims of the killing, a way to refresh (in my mind) and to distribute and implant (in the minds of others) one of the most outstanding images of war of all times and one of the most representative of our time. And we have to thank Chelsea Manning and Wikileaks for it. This is why I engaged in censored.art and tokenized this sentence. Proceeds raised from the NFT sale will benefit Assange’s legal defense fund and campaign to raise awareness about the free speech implications of his case. More information here.
I have my (outspoken) concerns about crypto, but honestly – I didn’t stop using PayPal and Visa when they boycotted Wikileaks for gifting us “Collateral Murder” and other truth about wars. Nobody on the bright side of the chain is doing a darn thing to save Assange from 175 years in prison, so why not mint a fucking #NFT instead?
Sull’ultimo numero di Artribune, Valentina Tanni ha curato un bello speciale sul metaverso, invitando artisti e autori (Marco Cadioli, Miltos Manetas, Matteo Lupetti, Auriea Harvey) a dire la loro. Io dico la mia a pagina 75.
Domenico Quaranta, “Il metaverso come spazio espositivo”, in Artribune, n. 64, gennaio – febbraio 2022, p. 75
Before the summer, I’ve been interviewed by the Italian magazine Inside Art on topics related to my fresh book, Surfing con Satoshi. Arte, blockchain e NFT (Postmediabooks, Milano 2021). The interview is now available in printed form, in Italian and English (pdf scan here). Below, I’m releasing the full original text file for the sake of archiving.
Francesco Angelucci, Fabrizia Carabelli, “In the Crypto Jungle”, in Inside Art, Issue 122, July 2021, pp. 58 – 67. Online version (Italian)
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:
