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Natalie Casemajor, National Institute of Scientific Research (INRS)
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are digital objects that represent something else, such as a work of art, a video, or even a tweet. They certify the existence and ownership of this item through a data record on a blockchain (a distributed ledger technology).
Since the emergence of NFTs in 2016, many artists have been experimenting with this new digital device to market their creations. NFTs are usually bought and resold through auction sites, where payments are made in cryptocurrency (such as ether currency). It is this notion of a certificate registered on a blockchain that distinguishes an NFT from a standard digital work.
Public and media discourse on NFTs is polarized: in the eyes of their biggest enthusiasts, NFTs represent the future of art, while their detractors see them as a huge rip-off and waste of energy.
How can this NFT phenomenon be characterized? To what extent does it challenge the established codes of contemporary art?
As a researcher specialized in media studies and cultural sociology, I will give a brief overview of the situation.
Crypto evangelists and crypto skeptics
On the one hand, there is the camp that can be described as crypto evangelists: they espouse a discourse that presents NFTs as a radical revolution that will change everything.
This is precisely the discourse surrounding the sensational sale in 2021 of a work by the artist Beeple (a collage of vignettes created by digital software) at the prestigious auction house Christie’s for almost 70 million dollars. According to the two main customersthe purchase was “emblematic of a revolution in performance” and marked “the beginning of a movement carried on by an entire generation.”
On the other hand, there are the crypto skeptics. This is the position of Hito Steyerl, a widely recognized media artist. She believes that NFTs are the “equivalent of toxic masculinity” and owe their development to “the worst and most monopolistic actors” who “withdraw labor from insecure workers” and “taking up way too much attention and using up all the oxygen in the room.”
This polarization means that the real potential of NFTs, as well as their shortcomings, which are also very real, tend to be overshadowed by caricatured views of principle. However, within this ecosystem of NFTs, a range of rich and multiple artistic practices exists.
Emerging creative scenes
The NFT format definitely represents a new type of object being traded. It is based on a new type of contract (known as “smart”), which itself is the result of the innovation of blockchain technology. In this way, the NFT format has given rise to the emergence of a new creative scene. Or rather, scenes, in the plural, which are characterized by great effervescence – but also by certain contradictions.
The “native” scenes of the NFT format, that is, those born with the invention of this format, are characterized by a strong media visibility, a size of far-reaching financial investments and, for some of its actors, a wants to reshuffle the cards of the art world by criticizing the established order.
A large portion of NFT creators come from a practice of 3D modeling, graphic design, animation or video game design – in other words, from the creative industry sector. In recent decades, this sector has generated a very large pool of skills, of which creative surplus finds a form of expression in the NFT format, but also a source of additional income to cope with the often precarious conditions of creative work.
Many figures of the native NFT scenes are, to express the sociologist Howard S. Becker, outsiders (neophytes) compared to the established art world. That is, they socialize in circles other than those of the institutional art world, and they break its rules in many respects.
A more egalitarian art world?
The discourse of the main customers of Beeple’s sensational work is very enlightening in that sense. MetaKovan and Twobadour (two crypto investors, both of Indian descent) reveal in an interview:
We have been conditioned from an early age to think that art was not for us. …We have always been against the idea of exclusivity. The metaverse is all inclusive. … A metaverse where everyone will have the same rights, powers, will be legitimate. … It is very egalitarian.
However, there are stark contradictions between the discourse of egalitarianism they advocate here, and its implementation in the projects of these two investors. For example during the technological art event Dream verse which they hosted in New York in 2021, the evening’s admission fee ranged between $175 and $2,500 – a price prohibitive for many amateurs. Rather, this hierarchy of prices leads to the reproduction of a logic of exclusivity that favors the most fortunate.
Museums are careful
The gap between the market value of NFTs and their value in museums is unprecedented. The former is reaching unprecedented heights, the latter is still at an all-time low. Indeed, the collection of NFT by museums remains a very marginal practice to this day. Only a handful of NFTs have been integrated into museum collections. Some have been acquired for an exhibition in a museum, where they are presented on digital screens hanging on the wall.
Cultural legitimacy is compromised by the disintermediation (elimination of middlemen) and reintermediation (introduction of new middlemen) that characterize the world of NFTs. In its disruptive momentum, the heralded revolution of NFTs cuts itself off from a chain of established, legitimate intermediaries – the gallerists, curators, art critics, conventional collectors and government grants.
It has replaced them with new middlemen, mainly “whales” – investors who have made a fortune in cryptocurrency – or popular culture celebrities. These new intermediaries overinvest financial capital in the production of NFTs with the aim of gaining prestige as collectors or enriching themselves by increasing the value of works. But they often lack the social and cultural capital to access museums and their exhibition spaces and their collections.
In search of legitimacy
However, these works are publicly accessible, as all NFTs are freely searchable on their buyers’ e-wallets. Some collectors buy works just to speculate. Others gain visibility by displaying their NFTs in a metaverse (a virtual world) such as Decentralized or Room.
And for others, the search for legitimacy goes even further: in the spring of 2022, a group of artists, curators, collectors and NFT platforms organized a Decentralized Art Pavilion, parallel to the Venice Biennale. Outside the official program, the exhibition aimed to position NFTs in the orbit of this important contemporary art event.
But the presence of NFTs remained marginal in this edition of the biennale. Only the Cameroon Pavilion exhibited NFTs under the direction of a curator with a dark reputationand the result was disappointing.
The acknowledgment of the NFTs by the ordained art world may come about through other avenues, such as the more experimental practices documenta art exhibition in Kassel, Germany this year, or through artistic movements from developing countries, such as the Balot projectwho used an NFT to criticize the appropriation of a work from the Republic of Congo by an American museum.
So recognition could come through the margins. But in these cases, the fringe players could access the established art world more easily because they share its codes.
Natalie CasemajorProfession, National Institute of Scientific Research (INRS)
This article has been republished from The conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.