After the Bubble: NFTs as a long-term artistic medium?
Channel: Aksioma
Date: 2022-11-12

Moderator: Domenico Quaranta
Speakers: Cornelia Sollfrank, Michelle Kasprzak, Vuk Ćosić, María Paula Fernández

Over the last year, NFTs came to prominence mainly as a means of applying artificial scarcity and value to digital assets, and facilitating a highly speculative market of digital art objects and collectibles. Even those projects that engaged the medium in a more experimental way or attempted to establish emancipatory social dynamics were deemed successful only when they generated a consistent flow of money and investments. Attention was measured in crypto; audience engagement meant wallet engagement. Crazy financial speculation dominated everything.

Now that the bubble has burst, many questions arise about the whole techno-social infrastructure and the artistic practices emerging from it. Is speculation somehow intrinsic to the NFT environment? Is it possible to use blockchains as a means of authentication and to creatively experiment with smart contracts without indulging in the speculative behaviours typically associated with crypto? Is there a future for NFTs without WAGMI? How can art and artists have a role in criticising and reshaping the Web3 scenario? Which creative tactics and practices that have already been introduced carry more future potential? What can we learn from early net art and the way it responded to the increasing commercialisation of the internet commons? Can NFTs be used to build communities? These are some of the questions that net art pioneers Cornelia Sollfrank and Vuk Ćosić, co-founder of the JPG protocol María Paula Fernández and researcher Michelle Kasprzak will address in this panel.

Keywords: speculation, medium-specificity, community