On NFTs

Texts

I’m in this big expensive book with a short text about an artist I love and I’m happy to share it with you! “Encompassing the entire NFTs ecosystem — from algorithmic art to avatars — the first major art history survey of this field includes 10 academic essays and richly illustrated profiles of 101 key artists. Connecting the disruptive contemporary medium to its art historical context, this volume offers a deep dive into the sphere of non-fungible tokens and is also available for purchase in crypto.”

“Domenico Quaranta On Casey Reas”, in Robert Alice (Ed.), On NFTs. Collector’s Edition, Taschen, Koln 2024, pp. 144-145

Beyond Financialization: Blockchain, Mysticism, Community and Art

Lectures

[English version below] Nel corso degli ultimi anni, la blockchain si è imposta non solo per la sua funzione originaria di registro destinato al conio e alla circolazione delle criptovalute, ma anche come infrastruttura fondante di una nuova visione di internet, basata sull’anonimato, la crittografia, la decentralizzazione, la protezione e il controllo individuale dei dati: il cosiddetto Web3. All’indomani dell’esplosione della bolla speculativa degli NFT, e in una fase di crisi delle criptovalute, è urgente in ambito artistico una riconsiderazione degli aspetti meno visibili e meno discussi della blockchain, per capire non solo come l’arte possa usarla, ma anche come possa condizionarne lo sviluppo futuro: analizzando e decostruendo le narrative dominanti, investigando le culture e le ideologie che l’hanno plasmata, approfondendo le sue applicazioni sociali e le potenzialità che offre in termini di costruzione comunitaria e di governance.

Introdotta e moderata dal prof. Domenico Quaranta, la conferenza Beyond Financialization: Blockchain, Mysticism, Community and Art approfondirà queste questioni con l’aiuto del prof. Martin Zeilinger, ricercatore, curatore e Senior Lecturer in Computational Arts and Technology alla Abertay University di Dundee, Scotland; e della ricercatrice e curatrice Inte Gloerich, attualmente impegnata in un dottorato di ricerca promosso dalla Utrecht University e dall’Institute of Network Cultures di Amsterdam sugli immaginari tecnosociali della blockchain.

The Byzantine Generals Problem – Essay

Exhibitions, Texts
the byzantine generals problem

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

The Non-Standard Head for A Slice of the Pie at Kunsthalle Zürich

Exhibitions
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︵‿

Browsing bottom-up alternatives for Art on Web3

Lectures

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!

After the Bubble: NFTs as a long-term artistic medium?

Lectures

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.

“Arte, Blockchain e NFT” su edulia Masterclass

Lectures

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 😅

Art in the Age of Ubiquitous Media

Texts

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

“History in the Present Progressive” . Surfing with Satoshi review on Outland

Texts

Brian Droitcour, one of my favorite art writers ever, honored me with a review of my book Surfing with Satoshi. Art, Blockchain and NFTs (a few copies are still available here). It’s criticism, so don’t expect only kind words, but some of them really make me proud as they confirm the value and durability of all the work I put in this book (with the priceless support of my publishers, Postmedia Books and Aksioma). A few quotes:

“Quaranta’s account, which addresses the rise of NFTs and the connections between artists’ recent use of blockchains and historical interventions into art markets, sets a high bar for others that will follow.

So far Surfing with Satoshi is the only book of its kind: an attempt by a single author to weave a motley array of histories—of art movements, markets, technologies, and critiques—into a coherent narrative.”

“His book’s greatest strength is the persuasiveness of his links between blockchain-based art and twentieth-century conceptualism. The historical orientation of Surfing with Satoshi is what makes it durable, despite being written in response to—and during—a specific moment.”

Of course, I publicly apologize with artist and theorist Rhea Myers if I inadvertedly misgendered her. Her work, ethos and life embody so much of what this book is taking stance for. A new run of print will come out soon, and these and other mistakes that readers helped me to detect will be amended.

Brian Droitcour, “History in the Present Progressive”, in Outland, July 19, 2022,
https://outland.art/domenico-quaranta-surfing-with-satoshi/

“How Can Art Exist on a Distributed Ledger?” in The Book of X

Texts

The Book of X. 10 Years of Computation, Communication, Aesthetics & X, an anthology of texts and images celebrating the 10th anniversary of the international conference xCoAx, is now available for free download and in printed form (free – you pay only the postage. Among many relevant contributions by authors and artists I admire (Philip Galanter, Andreas Broeckmann, Frieder Nake, Amy Alexander, Alessandro Ludovico, Olia Lialina just to name a few), the book includes a short essay in which I try to address how can art exist on a distributed ledger without simply using it as a system for blowing up prices and documenting ownership and provenance. Included are examples of projects focused on artists and art workers rights, on-chain generative works, and artists turning DAOs into an art form. The effort is to “show how art and blockchain should “X”: at the crossroads between these two fields, art shouldn’t just peruse the blockchain as a given, an immutable, existing substrate, but actively, creatively implement, criticize or correct its infrastructure, nurture and manipulate this substrate to make it evolve in ways not yet envisioned.” Have a nice reading!

Domenico Quaranta, “How Can Art Exist on a Distributed Ledger?”, pp. 207 – 219. Published in Miguel Carvalhais, André Rangel, Luísa Ribas, Mario Verdicchio (Eds.), The Book of X. 10 Years of Computation, Communication, Aesthetics & X, i2ADS: Research Institute in Art, Design and Society, Porto 2022. ISBN: 978-989-9049-25-3 (Paperback), DOI: https://doi.org/10.24840/978-989-9049-26-0.