Franklin Cruz, wearing a bright floral embroidered tunic, gestures while speaking to a seated group.
Franklin Cruz, the prompter discussing biomimicry. (Photo credit: Jenny Nagashima)

Let us listen to the elders
Arapahoe, Cheyenne, Lakota, Kiowa, Pawnee, Ute
And the other 42 tribes that live in Colorado
Who remind us the planet is as much a relative as a resource
If you are in this room recognize this
Heal Colorado to win, win to heal Colorado

Operating as an ecology over an economy
Find out why abuelo embellishes about his ranchos
Where he found tia frijol y calabaza
Biodiversification means humanization
Don’t you know being in rooms with folks only like you
Is a metric of monocultures

Where are the songs for the seasons
I cannot hear any drums anymore
I dream of deafening songs from cranes
Sanctioned marched of tarantulas
Wandering wolves and stable farming
We can’t keep favoring two leggeds

Haven’t you been on tik tok
Kids got podcasts wandering swamps and plant foraging
Pronouns intros, Southern, East coast
And an un-inimitable Albuquerque accent
America panned the camera
Showing folks of all kind benefit outside
Generations of hunters, canoers and birders

Any good field ecologists observes
These youngins are acting different
They’ve been listening despite our bias
Purifying water, legislating and direct actioning
A spunk just like my Mexican grandparents

A person with short curly hair and glasses gestures while speaking. Participants seated on either side listen attentively.
A roundtable participant speaks to attentive listeners. (Photo credit: Jenny Nagashima)

The elders remind us
Mitakoye oyasin
All my relations
The siblings that flow, layer and precipitate
Climbers, guides and conservationists
Educators with headwater knowledge
A biodiverse ecosystem of mind, bodies and souls
Stewarding generations of two legged and four
Brother pike, sister corn, cousin pika
First nations practices cause we going back to them anyway apparently

There’s a lot of spiritual fine tuning left
Get into that mechanic shop heart you got
When you can’t recognize the tools anymore
Remember homo habilis hacked tools up too
Mycological hominids
Epigenetic spiritual advice
Keep the young ones close to Tonanztin
Mother of all sand dunes, rockies and prairies
Conserve the love soil cantos
Any native person knows mother’s worth everything

Why else do run backpacking trips
Prefer herds in green pastures over factories
Fish where the surfactants don’t touch
Camp beyond light and sound pollution
Litigate for legends our grandparents dreamed about
Ascending the prayers for acequias
Facing doubts of democracy and profit
Heal generations of broken promises
Listening to pebble, plant, pond, people stories
Nature doesn’t show everything to everyone
Scar stories cause is wise to learn
Discerning the times we cut in, extract or exploit
Our consumption, bills and responsibilities are man-made and ours

Give native and frontline people your money
Risking reputations and cold shoulders for justice
Redirecting boards, trusts and friends
Freeing waters who miss families in the south
A parade of ribbon skirts and drums return to the forests
Remember its for the sake of us all
Colorado the beautiful is our initiative

A group of people seated in folding chairs in a semicircle listens to a person with long wavy brown hair gesturing with their hand.
Participants engage in conversation about biomimicry, and using nature to model collaborative creative practices. (Photo credit: Jenny Nagashima)

Listen to the elders
Nature is home
Colorado means colorful
I wonder what name it had before
I wonder if we heal if we can remember
I wonder how many names it has had
The elders remind us we’re an ecosystem
I bet you they have the names
I wonder if we’ll heal enough
Just to remember
What the elders said

Pay artists

Period?

Yea, period. Pay artists.
But, I am an artist before you cut the check.
Remember that.
Just like a tulip is a flower before their beauty makes you break your neck and cut the stem and take them home where you share their essence with your friends.

In fact…

I am an artist because I chose to open up and stop caring about your love and started choosing
myself while I send most opinions to hell.
I mean, I have my collective,
I have my people I manifest with,
We should probably be more protective,
But many of us are givers, you see.

Folks witness us pour out and they want to take our seeds.
Some to sow them
And others to deny posterity.

Yet, I’ve learned the sky provides and my roots will have plenty.
So even in a drought, I will always have what I need.
But you should still pay artists,
Yes, pay me…and pay me well.

How is this still a topic?
Why do we not yet believe?
I take the shit from life, feed the earth and produce giving-trees.
Hungry souls pick the fruit, turn into gods and oft forget
The beat, the word, the brush stroke that awakened their deity
Hmm…
Maybe I should stop taking shit.
Hey artists, maybe we should stop taking shit.
That’s why we write and why we sing and why we paint hoping they’ll get it.
We speak louder, we reach farther, wear our dreams in public.
Folks think it’s crazy until we’re like Basquiat…
Started off as vandalism while gentrification creates mural fests.

So I repeat, cut the check.

A group of people sit in a circle in a gallery space, engaged in a discussion. Some are holding knitting materials, and one person is knitting a bright orange piece. The walls are decorated with framed artwork, and the room is brightly lit with overhead track lighting.
Tilt West Roundtable Prompter Todd Edward Herman speaking in a group with three other participants.

Artists are the teachers so pay us…
Wait, y’all don’t even pay them.

Okay,
Artists are the healers, the doctors, the therapists.
Artists break the molds, we pay attention to the “accidents,”
We let failure transform us and transform our world: butterfly effect.

And, real quick, let’s address this:
Art transforms even if aesthetes aren’t around to witness it.
Because if the artist is changed, so is the world they live in.
Let that sink in.
That’s my contribution: a better me.
Artists discover life’s derivatives, call us mathematicians.
We step inside rips in the continuum and come back more than human.
Writing, painting, sculpting…hopefully en-light.
Folks think we’re crazy until death proves us right.
It is too often that creatives are overlooked on park benches; we need post-mortem advances.
Pay us while we are alive.

Pay us in the present.
Pay us in the moment.
Pay us until we kill the blasted term “starving artist.”
Pay us, at least, until we completely transform the system,
Until we reach higher grounds by sharing our inner visions,
Even Stevie Wonder saw it and named it…expanding senses, breaking limits.
Pay us for breaking limits.
Pay us for doing it different.
For those of us that survived hell-like conditions,
Pay us for living.
Pay us for telling these tales so that you could feel something.
Pay us for feeling it first.

Two people sit in a gallery space, engaged in conversation. The person on the left is wearing a yellow beanie, sunglasses, a red sweater, and ripped jeans, while the person on the right is wearing glasses, a beige sweater, and jeans. The background features framed photographs on the wall.
Poet Kerrie Joy making an insightful point during the roundtable conversation.

And although many of us think to change the world, creating worlds that we deserve, creating
worlds that hold up mirrors…this is our world.
A beautiful tragedy:
Wars and the artists that cry out against them, freedom and the supremacies created to deny
them, slave trades and doors of no return, reclamation of roots while books and forests burn,
rhythm and poetry that fight the powers that be, greedy souls that rather move to Mars than pay
their employees or for peace.

We are…indeed…a beautiful tragedy…
And will likely remain to be.
But I thank the gods that I am an artist that will shine love from my chest.
My throat thick with hope because I will not be bested.
I will write and will write so that the children never forget,
And I will be paid for this sacred light.

That’s on periodt.

This piece is offered as a response to the Tilt West guided conversation of May 14, 2024: Art in Public Space: Permission and Freedom. I have avoided direct quotes for fear of mis-quoting, mis-attributing and mis-contextualizing and so what you are reading are my own reflections on what I heard and my own contemplations on that conversation and its subject matter.


I don’t consider myself an artist in that I don’t generally create works that are designed or marketed as art. I do design and implement interventions in the public realm, and these interventions are all designed to provoke a certain response in the viewer, the passer-by — the user.

So while I find myself asking, what is the difference between what I do and Public Art, I’m not sure that’s really an important question. Instead, I find myself questioning what it is that brings together such disparate forms of work under that singular, specific umbrella. Whether we’re talking about graffiti, municipally commissioned and high-budget expressions of civic pride, or developer-bought murals, we’re calling all of them, broadly, public art — with an emphasis on Public.

I’m not sure I believe the creator of public art who tells me that they are doing this for themselves, that they don’t care who the audience is. If the creation is just for yourself, if the audience is irrelevant, why is it in a public place? If the observation of that art wasn’t, at least in some way, part of the point, why does that art ever leave the creator’s basement? Why not paint their own living room walls instead of very intentionally placing their art in the public realm?

Tilt West roundtable prompter, Devin Urioste, introduces the conversation. (Photo credit: Mindy Bray).

What is public art? The City trying to leave convention visitors with a memorable experience — an Instagram-able moment that might prompt them to return. The property-owner communicating to the local graffiti-makers that this wall is no longer available for their musings — and to potential tenants that this neighborhood may be edgy, but it is safe. The frustrated youth who sees that mural as a sign he is no longer wholly welcome in his own neighborhood expressing that frustration by tagging it. The community development agency trying to reassure community members that they still have a place in their own community by commissioning culturally- and place-relevant work. Others signaling who is welcome and who is not — a marking of territory by an American street gang member or a Belfast militant.

We have, in Denver, a few examples of very fine public art which is not visual, but auditory. But isn’t the official sanctioning of (auditioned and approved) buskers simply the auditory version of a municipally-commissioned mural? And perhaps the car with a sub-woofer that makes nearby vehicles shudder in rhythmic harmony is the auditory version of tagging? A statement to passers-by (or those passed by) that I am here and I demand to be seen (heard).

The work may vary, the creators and commissioners of the work may have vastly different intents, but what these all have in common is that the audience lacks agency. Going to a museum or a gallery is a self-selecting activity. Seeing, or hearing, public art is not.

Writer Fred Glick speaks during Tilt West’s roundtable conversation. (Photo credit: Mindy Bray).

I posit that the commonality, what defines public art, is an unwilling viewer.

That doesn’t mean the viewer necessarily dislikes what they see, though they might. That doesn’t mean that they don’twant to see it — they might. And, yes, some viewers might come to a place to see a specific piece of public art, but by and large the viewer comes to a place for a reason other than seeing the art in question and is confronted with it.

Whether in a museum, a gallery or a private collection, art that requires the viewer to enter a space to view it becomes subject to a tacit understanding between artist and audience. Work that is challenging, even confrontational, is still subject to that understanding. The viewer has given their permission to the artist for the exchange. The artist, in return, has created art they expect to be viewed or experienced within certain parameters of control.

Public art, on the other hand, has no such contract. There may be a target audience, but those viewers have no say in the matter. Nor, of course, do the other bystanders who may be but the art equivalent of collateral damage.

That is not to say there aren’t agreements around public art, sometimes explicit ones. These could be the understanding between the makers to respect, and not tag, each other’s work — or the contract between a commissioner of public art and the artist, spelling out payment, placement, and often content. But there is an intent on the part of the artist or commissioner to impose something on the viewer, and without their permission.

That intention drives the art itself, shaping its form, its placement, its message.

Why do we make memorials? We want people to pause in their day to remember an event, a person. We want them to take a moment to remember the youth killed by gun violence. We want them to remember the great deeds of a great leader. And in some cases, we want the viewer to be confronted by things they might rather forget, whether that is the losses of war, as with Maya Lin’s remarkable Vietnam Veterans Memorial, or what their own place in society once was, as with the Confederate memorials which still stain so many Southern cities.

The developer who commissions that mural looks for the artist who helps to complete the brand. Edgy, but safe. Exclusive, but still authentic.

The tagger’s bravado in scaling a bridge earns the admiration of their peers. Their defacing of the developer’s mural earns the developer’s scorn, and just maybe the admiration of fellow victims of cultural and physical displacement.

Public art may have many different ambitions — to bring joy, to provoke, to memorialize, to gain recognition — but it is by definition a public act, a public statement of our presence, our ambition, our love, our pride, our anger. What could be more transgressive than imposing our own vision on others?

Against the backdrop of the Denver Botanical Gardens exhibition, Indigo, Tilt West’s September roundtable participants passionately discussed the intersection of Art and Craft through the lens of Equity, Representation, and Contemporary Politics. Prompter Rebecca Peebles brought years of exploring repetitive, meditative practices rooted in craft for creative and contemplative ends to the conversation. Resources provided before the discussion featured leading contemporary artists using craft practices to dissect the complexities of our modern world. As Peebles asserted in her written prompt for the event, “Craft artists and aesthetic thinkers must now courageously put their hands and hearts back into the work of defining art.” [1]

One theme united the conversation: the concept of craft being “radical.” Peebles, for example, embodies radical approaches to her art and healing. Roundtable participants discussed radical acts of personal and communal well-being; notions that radicalism lies at the heart of craft, which is the revolutionary foundation of our daily lives through hands-on engagement; and the intrinsic radical nature of craft itself.

Three people sit in a gallery space, engaged in a conversation. The person in the center, holding a paper, is speaking with animated gestures, while the others listen attentively. The background features a wall adorned with abstract blue and gray square artworks.
Tilt West roundtable prompter Rebecca Peebles opens the conversation surrounded by two participants. (photo credit: Sarah McKenzie)

In his introduction to Radical Lace and Subversive Knitting, the catalog for a 2007 exhibition at the Museum of Arts & Design, David Revere McFadden asks, “How does something as innocent and harmless as knitting become subversive? How can lace serve radical ends?” [2] This exhibition showed the transformative power artists have through traditional craft techniques. The familiarity of these techniques creates an accessible entry into work that gradually reveals radical content, such as calls to action and visions for a better future.

One artist from this exhibition, Cal Lane, used a plasma cutter as her needle and thread to cut elegant lace patterns in steel car hoods, connecting the history of labor-intensive craft to the mass production of the contemporary automotive industry. “Lane’s work is paradoxical: feminine and masculine associations play against each other; the techniques of industry and handicraft meet; delicate designs overtake durable materials; and positive and negative spaces create a beautiful play of light and shadow merging the high art connotations of sculpture with the aesthetic of craft.” [3]

For roundtable participant Heather Schulte, an interdisciplinary artist based in Colorado, craft transcends cultural and ideological boundaries, offering a common ground for new frontiers of artistic language. Schulterecently discussed the intersection of personal and public forms of language and communication with the Textile Society of America. “I also see textiles as a form of text, as they hold within them the stories of both the animals or plants that are the material and the humans who create new items with said material. Across history, they have also been used as storytelling devices, from quipu knotting systems to medieval tapestries, subversive samplers to contemporary quilts. I draw upon this rich history and utilize modern forms of coding to embed my stitches with messages and commentary on the issues of our day.” [4]

Other participants in the Tilt West roundtable included artists, crafters, musicians, a coffee barista, an avid gardener, and a museum curator aptly named Hannah Craft. All shared personal experiences that supported this unique, organic conversation while exploring craft through the eyes of equity, representation, and contemporary politics. A simple Google search of equity + craft yields 115,000,000 results. As Peebles’ opening statement mentioned, “Artists today are using craft media to claim the variability, diversity, and intersectionality of personhood expressed through creative practice.” [5]

A group of people sit in a semi-circle in a gallery space, engaged in a conversation. The person speaking on the left is wearing glasses and a black outfit. The others listen attentively. The background features a wall adorned with large blue abstract fabric art.
Roundtable participants engage in conversation. (photo credit: Sarah McKenzie)

Craft platforms today address equity in their mission and vision statements as an impetus for change. One craft council wants to foster “livelihoods and ways of living grounded in the artful work of the human hand”while using craft as a catalyst to “draw on the rich legacy of openness and its deep roots in all cultures.” [6] Another international craft forum intends to “Foster awareness among people in the arts globally to prevent our artists from being perceived as artisans rather than true artists.” [7] and to “connect Black craftspeople to the power of place.” [8]

As the discussion continued, roundtable participants challenged the use of labels that tend to separate craft from art and craft artists from fine artists. Setting aside the endless debate of whether craft is “high” or “low” art, one might consider the Four C Model of Creativity researched by creative psychologists James Kaufman and Ronald Beghetto. Grounded in the belief that there is no hierarchy in creativity, the Four C Model of Creativity identifies varying levels of fluid creativity. Little-c creativity, or everyday creativity, includes songwriting, inventing new recipes, or decorating a room. Big-C creativity, or genius creativity, has a broader impact and is often associated with the culmination of work from publications to exhibitions. Mini-c creativity, or personal creativity, refers to new and personally meaningful interpretations, ideas, and insights. Pro-Ccreativity, or expert creativity, describes individuals who have reached a professional level after years of experience and training. [9]

This model helps people overcome the idea that they are not creative if they don’t fall into the Big-C or genius creativity category. An example of this is someone believing they are not creative because they can’t sing as well as Beyoncé. [11] The Four C Model helps expand the idea of creativity. Whether you are making a significant impact on society or making Thanksgiving dinner, everyone makes creative contributions to the world. Educational psychologist Dr. Ruth Richards reminds us that everyday creativity “is not only universal but necessary to our very survival as individuals and as a species.” [12]

As the character of Madame Defarge states in A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, a skill becomes useful when and where it is needed to effect revolutionary change. In this 1859 classic, Madame Defarge encoded a secret list of aristocrats and enemies of the Revolutionary government in the stitches of her knitting. [13] While many things have changed since 1859, it is evident that our response to using our hands to implement world change has remained the same. Artists continue to harness the transformative radical power of craft and subversive stitch, advocating equity, social justice, mental health, and environmental causes to foster a brighter future.

There we were, about two dozen of us sitting in a circle. Something about the arrangement evoked the feeling of a group therapy session for addiction recovery and in the moment when we were called to take our seats, it was hard not to be acutely aware of the stages my own relationship with various social media platforms has been through. I was ready to share, perhaps I wanted to know that I was not alone. Had we all experienced a similar arc? Innocence and curiosity, professional networking and portfolio building, idle addiction, toxic doom scrolling and shit posting. My palms began to moisten. I’ve never been to an addiction support group and I was beginning to feel not only as though I might need one, but that this was going to become one.

Autumn T. Thomas prompted the group discussion with an observation about the cultural shift in the arts from pre to post internet. Having experienced the evolution from analog to digital networks, Autumn noted that the arts had not been shielded from the culture of accelerated production. If before, art was developed through private reflection and encounters with and within the physical world; today, the artist is in a performative role, responding to simulated experiences, managing the (hyper)creation of work under the expectation of opening up processes, sharing — perhaps before work is ready for public consumption/presentation — and perpetuating a culture of consumption of simulated experiences.

It’s 2023 and social media is a pervasive and ubiquitous part of daily life for a majority of internet-connected humans on planet Earth. The utility of the technology is clear. We can all point to experiences where it has helped make connections, opened doors to new communities, or fostered personal or professional growth. On the other hand, a growing body of research reveals the detrimental effects of social media addiction and its unhealthy use, on both mental and physical health. A few have managed to push it out of their lives, but even then, I have to wonder whether deep down the FOMO still smolders.

As an artist, I understood the prompt for this roundtable as inviting a discussion on the role social media plays, could play, or should play in arts practices. How has social media technology impacted the kinds of decisions artists and arts organizations make regarding how they build their careers or organizations, what they share, how much they share, who they share it with? Considerations such as how much of an investment of time and resources to make in post creation, or how to make sure that you’re reaching your audience, must be weighed against what we can reasonably expect to gain from our engagement and how we wish to feel afterwards.

A multimedia art installation in which lighting casts bright blue, bright green and bright pink flashes on a grey-black warehouse space. There are computers, round dials on the wall, tapestries that look like bombs on a table and colorful computer-generated scripted shapes across one wall.
Image from Phillip Stearns’ installation, OPEN VAULT: THE MARKET (2023), consisting of Malware samples, custom software, custom jacquard woven fabric, single board computers, projectors, LEDs, miscellaneous hardware (Courtesy of the artist)

Social Media As A Tool

For artist-users of social media platforms, these sites function as valuable tools for discovering other artists, finding inspiration, learning new techniques, researching culture, connecting to others, forming communities, starting collaborations and growing networks. For the platform creators, the sites are a lucrative system that harvests vast amounts of data on individuals, profiles and categorizes them, and sells their attention to advertisers.

According to an article published by the Pew Research Center, “A substantial share of websites and apps track how people use digital services, and they use that data to deliver services, content or advertising targeted to those with specific interests or traits.”[1] As Richard Serra put it back in 1973, “If something is free, you’re the product.” Though made in reference to television, the remark remains relevant to social media, which reflects a hyper individualization of the ad revenue model used by television, radio and print media. “The feed” is algorithmically populated with content based on the information we provide to the platforms. It has three primary goals: to keep us engaged with the site (scrolling), to gather information about our responses to the content so that the algorithm becomes better attuned to our preferences, and to use that information to build our advertising profile.

The information gathered comprises the totality of our engagement with the platform, its affiliated services, and code hosted by third parties. This includes information we provide when signing up, the content of our posts, our likes, the comments we leave on other posts, who we follow, who follows us, the frequency we post, where we are posting from, how often we open the app, where we are when we open the app, as well as the amount of time we pause on each item in our feeds as we fall into the hypnagogic state of the perpetual (doom) scroll. You don’t even have to be using the app or even signed in. Sites that have a “share” or “like” button for a social media platform and those that use third-party web analytics are part of a wide tracking dragnet. When your browser executes the javascript that powers one of these widgets, it’s phoning home to the social media site to which it’s connected. Every browser you’ve ever used to access your account has its own database entry held by the social media platform and is used to continuously correlate your activity.

A member of our group suggested that social media, as a tool, was akin to a hammer. Another suggested that to complicate the analogy, imagine that this hammer was addictive. Now imagine that the hammer is also watching you, learning your preferences and using what it learns to place things before you that you’re most likely to hit with it. When we use these platforms, we relinquish a degree of our power, control, privacy, anonymity and autonomy. Yet despite the power held by those who designed these systems, they are not totally within their control. Though these platforms are now complex, engineered systems of algorithms aimed at shaping individuals behavior for commercial gains, they will always be more than what they are intended to be. They have their own inherent properties and may behave in ways that run counter to the goals of their creators.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, as vaccines were being developed and approved for emergency use, Facebook made a concerted effort to promote them. But anti-vaccine activists flooded the network with “barrier to vaccination” content, using Facebook’s own tools to sow doubt about the severity of the pandemic’s threat and the safety of vaccines. Despite Facebook’s intent to use its own tools for public benefit, Facebook’s algorithms were exploited to do the opposite.[2]
This example highlights the degree to which algorithms and designed systems possess power independent of their creators. This machine autonomy is precisely what social media companies harness and shape; the downside is its potential to be harnessed by other parties.

In theory, it should be possible to use social media as a tool, while simultaneously limiting the degree to which we are used by the platforms. How do we shift the balance of benefits in our favor, and sacrifice as little as possible in the process?

A group of people gather in chairs in a roundtable format in a white room with floor to ceiling windows. They wear bright pinks and dark colors. In the center of the table and overhead are tapestry-based sculptures. IN the front is a large white knitted sculpture that appears as an abstracted human form.
Another view of Tilt West’s roundtable conversation (photo credit: Mindy Bray)

A number of us use social media as a means to an end, an activity to compliment, develop or promote practices based largely outside of or independent of the platforms. To approach this activity with intent and discipline is what I consider to be a practice of using social media. While a valuable approach to limiting the extent to which we are used by the platforms, a deeper form of critique and social commentary is possible by approaching social media as a practice. What this entails is using the platforms with the intent of addressing the role they play in shaping culture and society, and using aesthetics and format of the platforms (UX/UI) as material.

Pioneering artists through history have embraced, experimented with, and incorporated media technologies into their practices. Artists working today to address sub-cultures developing on social media sites, who use the platforms as an integral part of how their work is produced or experienced, and who question prevailing cultural trends driving their development continue this tradition. These practices fall under the umbrella of new media art, more specifically extending net art into the age of social media.

While not a central or necessary feature of new media art or net art, critique features prominently in much of the work that takes its own conditions and circumstances as its subject matter. This self-reflexivity as a critical perspective is a powerful tool to question, push back against, or draw attention to uncomfortable realities that may reside just beyond our field of view. The following three projects are examples from social media’s early years that leverage social media as a practice to engage in self-reflective cultural critique.

The Jogging: Aestheticism and Compulsive Consumption

Liking a post sends a little dopamine hit to its creator, who then seeks the next hit by creating more content and sharing. The more we share and engage, the more we share and engage. We all keep coming back for that hit in a self-reenforcing cycle. Consumption and creation become compulsions when performed on and for platforms engineered around addictive use.

The Jogging is a Tumblr blog created by Brad Troemel and Lauren Christensen. It was started in 2009 as a direct response to the emerging culture of social media and how it was transforming artistic practices. Rather than oppose the hyper productivity and creation/consumption spiral, The Jogging leans into it.

“The name ‘Jogging’ refers to a work flow,” Troemel says. “Constantly moving, and not really focusing on any one thing, but rather to just continue forward.” This always-on approach means practically everything is a potential creative prompt that can be acted on immediately; Troemel has called this athletic aesthetics — the practice of the “aesthlete.”[3]

Excellences and Perfections: Performance and Reality Making

In 2014 artist Amalia Ulman conducted a scripted, months-long performance on her Instagram account, taking aim at toxic cultural practices supercharged by the democratization of image-making and the desire to project success and wealth by reproducing a luxury consumerist fantasy. “As part of this project, titled Excellences & Perfections, Ulman underwent an extreme, semi-fictionalized makeover.”[4]

Using her own personal account, she leveraged the inherent difficulty in separating fact from fiction on social media platforms to such effect that her closer friends oftentimes confused Ulman’s social media performance for her lived reality. This confusion highlights the way fictions promoted on social media platforms produce their own reality, one which has the power to shape our lived reality.

Her critique is subtle but deep. By embracing the cultural logic of social media and taking it to its conclusion, Amalia was able to draw attention to the imbalance in power that persists despite the democratization of image-making and self-publishing, and the degree to which we’ve internalized and reproduced ideals shaped by a wealthy elite to project fame and success — read: the culture of celebrity and perfection.

Escaping the Sandbox

“In computer security, a sandbox is a security mechanism for separating running programs, usually in an effort to mitigate system failures and/or prevent software vulnerabilities from spreading.”[5] A platform’s interface–the graphical elements, font, page layout, and its overall design, both visual and functional–are analogous to the interior design and architecture of a building. The design establishes an atmosphere, or mood, or vibe, if you will, while also signaling how we should navigate a space or platform. User flow and site functionality create permitted and prohibited behaviors. In this way, the UX and UI of social media sites sandboxes users, dictating through the logic of code what can and cannot be posted and how posts will appear.

Glitch art is a subgenre of digital art that encompasses a range of practices concerning errors and artifacts in systems of logic. Early glitch art (pre-2012s) featured artifacts from systems where the data being displayed on screen had become corrupted. What was discovered through chance encounters quickly became the goal of intentional interventions. By exploiting the fragility of digital systems to achieve outcomes unintended by the system architects, glitch artists became akin to computer hackers.

Glitchr’s work on Facebook leverages flaws in the code of the platform to work with the platform’s fundamental design elements and user interface as expressive media, effectively opening doors in the platform’s walls where there were none before. He blurs the line between artist and hacker and in doing so is able to manipulate the frame Facebook places around all content posted to it. By drawing attention to this frame, and oftentimes filling it with incomprehensible unicode gibberish, Glitchr invites us to consider the control that platforms have on shaping our content and the ways in which we express ourselves, and the degree of technological virtuosity required to break free of this sandboxed environment.

“In computer security, a sandbox is a security mechanism for separating running programs, usually in an effort to mitigate system failures and/or prevent software vulnerabilities from spreading.”[6] A platform’s interface–the graphical elements, font, page layout, and its overall design, both visual and functional–are analogous to the interior design and architecture of a building. The design establishes an atmosphere, or mood, or vibe, if you will, while also signaling how we should navigate a space or platform. User flow and site functionality create permitted and prohibited behaviors. In this way, the UX and UI of social media sites sandboxes users, dictating through the logic of code what can and cannot be posted and how posts will appear.

Glitch art is a subgenre of digital art that encompasses a range of practices concerning errors and artifacts in systems of logic. Early glitch art (pre-2012s) featured artifacts from systems where the data being displayed on screen had become corrupted. What was discovered through chance encounters quickly became the goal of intentional interventions. By exploiting the fragility of digital systems to achieve outcomes unintended by the system architects, glitch artists became akin to computer hackers.

Glitchr’s work on Facebook leverages flaws in the code of the platform to work with the platform’s fundamental design elements and user interface as expressive media, effectively opening doors in the platform’s walls where there were none before. He blurs the line between artist and hacker and in doing so is able to manipulate the frame Facebook places around all content posted to it. By drawing attention to this frame, and oftentimes filling it with incomprehensible unicode gibberish, Glitchr invites us to consider the control that platforms have on shaping our content and the ways in which we express ourselves, and the degree of technological virtuosity required to break free of this sandboxed environment.

Shifting Sands Call for Nimble Feet

Today, something has changed, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. All of the projects presented above have gone silent, their last posts made in 2014. Of course, in the time since, there have been several public and controversial changes to the algorithms of platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr as well as changes of ownership and management. Whole new platforms have emerged, like Tik Tok, which isn’t much different in that it makes its money mostly through advertising[6]. Largely, what has remained unchanged is the presence of social media platforms occupying the center of our lived experience on the internet.

So what happened to the creation of critical work about social media on social media? Has the noisy culture of viral celebrity fame drowned out the subtler forms of critique? Have the algorithms, whether by intent or by consequence of their internal logic, simply ignored the potentially ambiguous content? Is it that our culture as a whole has changed, warped by these very social media technologies so that we no longer have the capacity or patience to register works that ask more from us? I refuse to believe that artists have altogether given up and simply gone along unironically with the internal logic of these systems. Perhaps they’re flying below the radar, or are in plain sight. What I know for sure is that the algorithm does not appear to be serving them up to me.

The platforms and their revenue models have been with us for so long at this point that they feel as though they will inevitably persist into the foreseeable future, at least until something new replaces them. However, their algorithms will continue to evolve, augmented and extended by technological advances, mutated and permuted into new forms. As we in the arts wrestle with the role of online technologies in our practices, it will be vital to take up critical positions if we hope to push back or develop alternatives. Perhaps another reason why the critical work eludes me is that it simply isn’t productive to shout about the void into the void, and the more productive route is through direct political action.

“Once you start approaching your body with curiosity rather than fear, everything shifts.” –Bessel Van Der Kolk

“When did you become aware of being embodied?”

This was one of the first questions posed by Donna Mejia, who co-prompted Tilt West’s March roundtable discussion, The Body as Medium: Somatics in Creation, with Charlie Miller. The participants’ responses had a consistent theme: the moment of embodiment was often the instant when people became aware of their bodily suffering or their difference from others. Awareness came when what had been invisible or imperceptible suddenly became loud and unmistakable, brought about by immobilizing injury or a long bout of illness. Does this imply that we are almost unaware of our bodies before such a moment? Are we merely sensing beings, incidentally in a body we’ve not had to think about? Ironically, being forced by pain to perceive one’s body as an “other” suggests a contradiction: before this point, while we are blissfully unaware of pain–and by extension, our bodies–in our ‘ignorance’ we are probably the most embodied we can possibly be. In other words, perhaps the less you know (of your body), the more you just *are* (embodied). It is when we become aware of this body, and aware that we inhabit it, that we are faced with answering the question of what exactly that means. If we are aware of being embodied, what then are our bodies telling us that we never before had the impulse to question?

A group of people sit in a semi-circle in a room with wooden flooring and large windows covered with bright orange curtains. The person in the center, with long hair and glasses, is speaking while holding a paper, and the others listen attentively.
Close-up of six participants featuring co-prompter Donna Mejia introducing the roundtable

Movement, it turns out, is the original communication, both in human history and human development. It arose before spoken language in prehistoric times [1], and it’s the primary language we have from our time in the womb until around age two. Before we learn words, everything we know about the world is processed as bodily sensation, and much that we express is conveyed through movement. During this small window, our perception of self and our physical experience are one and the same. In his famous declaration on thinking, Descartes unwittingly destroyed the validity of such a fundamentally intuitive way of perceiving the world by positing, “I think, therefore I am.” Five hundred years later, perhaps Descartes’ edict bears re-examining, given that he set humanity on a new path in terms of how we understood ourselves. Where would we be if he had offered instead, “I feel, therefore I am?” And what are the implications of this so-called Cartesian split? In exalting the mind while relegating the world of the body to the primal, we inherently lost connection with our bodies. It follows inevitably then that in this separation from the physical we have come to view our bodies as mere vessels for labor, capital, and worse. We have become distant relatives to ourselves, knowing our bodies more through the eyes and judgments of others than by our own sensations.

Shaping Our Bodies to Fit

As roundtable participants discussed their experiences of their bodies, there seemed to be far more than the 30 identities in the room; the chimeras of the ideals and disappointments everyone attached to their bodies hovered like an additional cast of characters. People spoke of estrangements, reckonings, negotiations, and reconciliations with their bodies — all distinct moments along the deeply human journey of squaring our identities with our senses of our bodily selves.

When the question was posed, ‘“What does embodiment mean to you?” many seemed hopeful about reconnecting their identities with their bodies. It struck me that this yearning for self-connection is universal; we are all trying to make sense of the multiplicity of co-existing narratives we have developed around our bodies. Within each of us, there are at least three conflicting scripts about our bodies taking place simultaneously: the story we tell ourselves about our bodies; the story about ourselves we tell the outside world by adapting our bodies; and the dream of finding our true selves in acceptance rather than adaptation. As people shared honest revelations of how their bodies were manipulated by outside forces — allowed to be or not; accepted or not — a tangible sense of openness and sincerity emerged. One by one people spoke of what had been silenced within themselves in order to accommodate the demand that their bodies conform, and how the pressure to change their bodies had often come as much from them as the outside world. That this overarching theme of bodies co-opted emerged so clearly was poignant, yet stark.

What have we sacrificed in order to pursue the agenda everyone else has for our bodies? In this schism, there seems to be a deep, shared sense of loss, yet an inability to disengage from a view that the body is a project. We sense this loss, but can only respond with the impulse to fix ourselves: our bodies are projects to heal, judge, make sense of, and remodel, or they are a nemesis of physical pain, imprisonment, and betrayal. The idea of embodiment, though idealized as a blissful unification of one’s familiar identity with one’s physical bodily experience, seems to bring with it a less beautiful truth. Unification of the psychological and physical means that pain hurts every part of us, un-delineated. In fact, many described that it was when they tried to silence their physical pain, and thus control it through sheer cognitive willpower, they felt alienated from themselves. We can no more imagine that suffering ends at the boundaries of our cells than that psychic suffering resides only in our minds; to do so erases the memory and voice of the body. When we only see our body as a physical vessel to transport our true self, it becomes a second-class citizen more easily oppressed by ourselves and others. Likewise, if our disembodied mind is left to process suffering in isolation, we come to believe we are only amalgamations of our thoughts. Embodiment, sometimes painfully, reminds us all: the mind cannot unilaterally think its way into well-being.

In my experience as a dancer and choreographer, the realization that I could be estranged from my body –separated from myself and ‘me’ as I knew her– came suddenly and unexpectedly. This new separation caused just such a collapse of spirit; a separation not only from my body but from an ideal for it I had vigorously maintained but never experienced losing. The environment of the dance world in which I grew up is characterized by demands of perfection, beauty, and virtuosity, and I shaped myself to fit the mold without foresight for how this might hurt me later. Every part of my worth bending to fit this world was a performance — a performance of conformity to directors and other dancers, a performance of flawlessness to the audience, a performance of ceaseless discipline to prove my worth to myself. I have been dancing professionally for nearly 20 years, and have reached expert status in adapting my body as a project to fit standards of perfection I didn’t make but definitely bought into — especially when meeting those standards afforded me my career. Inherent in using your body for art is the daunting truth that its value is determined by the subjective whims, desires, and aesthetic tastes of others. What, then, were my options if my body ceased to fit into this sliver-thin definition of success and artistry, in small ways like turning older than 33 (how dare I?), or in more formidable ways, like fracturing my spine? The only version of myself I knew was a dancer, and ‘dancer’ had one rigid and unforgiving definition rooted in physical perfection — which I suddenly found myself unable to produce. The disembodied fall from my sense of who I knew myself to be, both physical and existential, was much farther than if I had never so adeptly adapted myself in the first place.

A group of people sit in a semi-circle in a room with large windows and wooden flooring. One person on the right is holding a laptop, showing an image on the screen to the group. The atmosphere appears to be one of attentive discussion.
Close up of participants featuring co-prompter Charie Miller on screen

Being With What's So: An Act of Personal and Social Justice

What I came to realize (and what so many in the room at Tilt West’s roundtable described) was that in order to come home to my body and find my core body identity rather than conform to an imposed one, I could no longer negotiate an agenda with my physical self. In the brilliant words of one participant, I had to “be with what’s so” — to be with the pain, the changes, and the matter-of-fact, present state of my body. I had to "inhabit my body from within." [2] As a performer, the urge for theatricality called to me even in this most personal of projects: coming home to my body. I decided to rewrite the directions of performance and use my dramatic skills to take back my body instead of constantly offering it to others. Lying in the MRI machine, rather than succumbing to the dread of the circumstances that brought me there, I performed the most beautiful solo of stillness the world had ever seen, for myself and myself alone. Never had there been such poetic stillness! This playful experiment was a serious attempt to reclaim what first drew me to performance while also honoring its real and deep impact in my life, both painfully and creatively. To take back performance would mean I had subverted the very system that had played a role in hurting my body; the weapon that wounded me could be reclaimed as my tool to find myself with physical presence.

This experience brought me back to the dilemma of peering from one’s intellect at one’s body like an object — when you’re trying to repair connections with your body yet still viewing it as an ‘other’ (albeit one you’ve decided you should be nice to), you stay separated. Perhaps what makes it so hard to accept pain in our bodies is that we’ve lost sight of this simple truth: that our minds are our bodies; they are one and the same. Pain runs through our brains, hearts, and mass equally, and even a practice of ‘mindfulness’ offers only the mind to be with the body. What if we could practice bodyfullness, a term coined by somatic scholar Christine Caldwell [3] as a pushback against the limitations inherent in ‘mindfulness,’ which is rooted by its very name in the mind? In being bodyfull, we might reclaim the body’s role in generating meaning and purpose and understand this as an end unto itself. As Caldwell describes it, conscious sensing, breathing, and moving might be seen as a form of bodily prayer. We might be with what’s so, listening within just to hear, looking just to see, feeling just to feel, being with — just to be with. Co-prompter Donna Mejia described her own way of engaging with this idea of being bodyfull as a sort of companionship she found with herself, based on her revelation that ‘your body can’t lie to you.’ When she listened she could hear its truth — or rather, not just its, but her OWN truth.

Being with what’s so is inherently radical. It takes our bodies’ value and function right out of the hands of profit-seekers, employers, societal ideals, and those who oppress and marginalize bodies, and it says our bodies are for ourselves. It shirks somatophobia (the fear and distrust of the bodily self) because if we can be with what’s so, not change what’s so, not judge what’s so, not escape what’s so. It removes the ubiquitous idea that we are projects. When we believe that only our minds are within our capacity to set free, while our bodies stay painfully ensnared, we oppress and cut ourselves off from our wholeness. We liken our bodies to jails; thus becoming unknowing accomplices to our culture’s figurative and literal incarceration of bodies, whether from suffocating beauty and aesthetic standards or actual bodily imprisonment. Accepting our bodies as ourselves through our felt sense of them, rather than othering them, allows us to challenge social structures and oppressive ideologies that seek to make claim on them. It empowers us to experience the world differently despite such ideologies [4].

Being with what’s so in ourselves, then, is not an intellectual truce with our bodies; it’s describing who we are to ourselves by way of sensing as much as conceptualizing. ‘Coming home to ourselves’ might reveal that our deepest identities are ours and ours alone, out of reach of any force that might construct and impose identities to take away from our own. This was captured poignantly by one participant, who detailed the experiences in her body following a traumatic car accident that led to a brain injury. After the accident she would enjoy periods of dissociation whereby she felt she left her body and had visions, a gift of escape from her physical suffering. Suddenly one day this rare side effect disappeared, and she was left to stay in the physical dimension filled with significant pain in a body whose movements she could not control. She had no other option than to ‘be with what’s so’ (in fact those were her words to describe it), yet it was here that she found her most profound spiritual growth and grace. Here she touched her deepest identity, in its fullest, and carried on not despite but WITH everything that was.

When I practice creative bodyfullness, I wonder if I’m looking in on my new form of performance with my own eyes, or if I’m being tricked and am still seeing myself through the gaze of outside judgment (the Great and Powerful Oz that is the ‘dance director’ looking through me). But there are signs that it’s me performing for myself and no one else. There are things that come out of me so intuitively they can only be the signature of my unedited core identity, my body imagination, my me-ness — my mind, body, and soul as just one expression through the medium of my body. When I listen without judgment, conclusions, or even friendship as an impulse, and just allow myself to be with what’s so, I know I’m there with myself. The signature is everywhere: from the innate voice that always comes out in my choreography, to the spontaneous melodies I hum while doing dishes, to the idiosyncrasies of my bodily form, which somehow carry the same essence of ‘me-ness’ made corporeal. I couldn’t invent this signature if I tried (in fact *trying* to be authentic has failed spectacularly, especially when making art). The real art of coming home to the medium of the body is in listening with the heart and not the head. While our brains may process our pain, our hearts emit the strongest electromagnetic field in our bodies, 5,000 times stronger than the brain [5]. Perhaps we might tap into this current not just as a pulse but as a powerful source of knowing ourselves beyond the concepts created by our brains. Maybe Buddhists have the antidote to Descartes’ division–they consider the heart to be the center of human perception. We can use our compassionate hearts to be with ourselves — we have the wattage to do it.

In November 2022, Tilt West’s roundtable convening took ‘Artist Collectives and Collaboration’ as its topic. Over the course of the discussion, we mused on foundational aspects of collectives and collectivity: critical definitions of their function and role, the types of power they hold, and the benefits or risks they could yield. Being a fresh Denverite, I was grateful for the rootedness of the discussion in local collectives, past and present. Participants included artists and members of collectives, co-ops, and collaborative projects, such as isPress, Denver Digital Land Grab, and Mo’Print, among others. The resulting meditation on collectivity was situated in personal experience and knowledge.

The conversation began with a parsing of definitions: What constitutes a typical artist collective? Are formal membership, hierarchy, or organization necessary? These questions, posed by co-prompters Anthony Garcia and Raymundo Muñoz of Globeville’s Birdseed Collective, reflected a desire to identify the nature and potential of collectivity within the artistic and cultural realm. As practicing members of a collectively run organization, Garcia and Muñoz spoke from firsthand experience of wanting to amplify the impact of their individual work as artists by working together to engage the non-artist community. True to its name, Birdseed Collective, founded in 2009, endeavors to collectively plant the seeds for a thriving community, functioning as an “outreach organization that is dedicated to improving the socio-economic climate of Denver, Colorado through innovative arts and humanities offerings.” Birdseed follows in the footsteps of other community-focused, collectively run cultural organizations in Denver like Chicano Humanities and Arts Council (CHAC), which was founded in 1978 by a group of visual and performing artists. CHAC began as a place where Chicano/Latino artists were provided with a venue to explore visual and performance art and to promote and preserve the Chicano/Latino culture through the expression of the arts. [1] As community supporters and generators, CHAC and Birdseed provide cultural sustenance through collective work and a belief that shared talents, experiences, and resources are stronger than those of individuals.

A Lexicon of Collectivity

So, what constitutes an artist collective? How is it different from or related to other terms like collaboration and cooperation? The inherent flexibility of collective work imbues it with a slipperiness that makes it difficult to define in totality. Perhaps the sense of wholeness derived from being part of a group rather than working as a singular individual is tricky to understand within the capitalistic, patriarchal societies of the western world. To be part of a collective implies a named commitment to a set of shared stakes, shared values, and shared resources. In short, collective work requires the sense of generosity that informs the counter-societal structures mentioned above. Often eschewing hierarchy, collectives propose horizontal organizational structures that distribute and harness power across their membership.

Within an artistic context, collectivity has been defined as a group of artists “united by shared ideologies, aesthetics and, or political beliefs.” [2] The Toolkit for Cooperative, Collective, Collaborative Cultural Works, published by Press Press and the Institute for Expanded Research in 2020, outlines the following definitions:

Collaboration: Collaboration means being a co-author of the work in some way. Collaboration may feel closer to your heart.

"Collective Work: Collective work is a broad term that can be used to describe different types of processes and structures that involve a group of people working together in some way. It may imply a longer-term working relationship that spans multiple projects.

Cooperation: Cooperation is an act or instance of working or acting together for a common purpose or benefit. Cooperation can happen with many people and may include a more hierarchical structure." [3]

The Toolkit is the written result of multiple convenings and discussions around collective practices by collective practitioners in the Baltimore and Los Angeles areas. Much like the Tilt West discussion, the Toolkit convenings, and subsequent publication aimed to identify, “why we choose, or are often compelled, to do our work through collective models, the challenges we face, and advice we can offer on how to address our various difficulties…[as well as] the circumstances, intentions, and desires that drive the collective work models we engage with, thrive within, and sometimes struggle through.”[4]

A group of four men sit in a row, attentively listening during a discussion. The background includes a partially visible canvas frame with a yellow covering.
Prompters Anthony Garcia and Raymundo Muñoz of Birdseed Collective (Photo credit: Tricia Waddell)

The Fruits of Collective Practice

While each of these terms share values of togetherness and shared work/outputs, I see the transition from collaboration to collective as marked by intentionality. In a collective, collaboration is given a structure, mission, and perhaps a name. Once the decision to exist and work collectively is made, possibilities abound.

The output and practices of collectives can vary, often adopting a malleable approach to the needs of members (internal) or of a community (external) served or interacting with their work. Whatever the shared goal of a collective may be, all collective work is ultimately political because it offers a model that is alternative and resistant to hegemonic, capitalist ideologies. Collective art practice can expand on and complicate an individual’s practice, amplifying a conceptual message through shared authorship and faculties. Artists have come together to organize and collectively rent, buy, or occupy studio space in the absence of more affordable options, as in the case of TANK Studios or the now defunct Rhinoceropolis in Denver. Collectives can emerge through affinities based on physical and cultural proximity. Neighborhood-based orgs like Birdseed, CHAC, and the newly formed North Side Arts Collaborative are a few local examples. [5] Collectives can also operate as skill-sharing networks and educational platforms filling gaps in conventional school curricula. Gudskul, the Jakarta-based super collective formed by ruangrupa, Serrum, and Grafis Huru Hara operates a school for collectives open to anyone “interested in co-learning, developing collective-based artistic practices, and art-making with a focus on collaboration.” [6]

Collectivity and collaboration have been at the forefront of the art world zeitgeist in recent years. In 2019, the nominees for theTate Museum’s prestigious annual Turner Prize opted to collectively share the prize winnings; in 2021 all the nominees for the prize were collectives. Recently, ruangrupa, the 22-year-old artist collective from Indonesia, was appointed to curate documenta, the important quinquennial. Although artists have been working as collectives at least since the first half of the 20th century, perhaps the advent of the “post-truth” era, the political and social fracturing of the Trump presidency, and the COVID-19 pandemic have now jolted a broader public to consider the value of shared world-building, knowledge exchange, and mutual aid as alternatives to the dominant institutions at play. The accolades and platforms recently offered to artist collectives legitimize collective practices and increase study and scrutiny of their machinations.

The freedom from individualistic thinking and making, and this turn towards giving and sharing, don’t necessarily negate responsibility for one’s own actions when operating within a group. Participation in a collective also includes shared risks and responsibilities, whether they be moral, financial, or physical. This point is not meant to expose a “dark side” of collaboration or collectives, but rather to move beyond the notion of collectivism as a utopian ideal and to illuminate the potentiality of applying collectivity as a model at different scales or contexts.

Collective Power and Responsibility

Sayings like “many hands make light work,” “strength in numbers,” and “stronger together” indicate the power embedded in collectivity. Though often formed in resistance to hegemonic structures of power, collectivity generates its own power — be it social, political, physical or otherwise.

Another adage warns that with the influx of power comes great responsibility. How does an ethos of responsibility play out collectively? With collectives, the locus point of power is obscured, if non-existent, so the dynamics of individual responsibility while participating and acting as a collective become slippery. This interplay of relations between individual and group actions/work/practices was at the crux of controversies that arose over the recent documenta fifteen, curated by ruangrupa in Kassel, Germany. [7]

documenta fifteen unfolded over 100 days, from June to September 2022, adapting ruangrupa’s ethos of lumbung, a shared pot of resources derived from Indonesian and Southeast Asian communal food pantries, as the conceptual and curatorial framework for the city-wide exhibition. For ruangrupa, “lumbung is not only a building or object but also a set of values and a cosmology that describes the living practice of a society.” [8] ruangrupa’s dually embedded approach unfolded through work with partners locally in Kassel and a strong rootedness within a global network of 14 lumbung members — community-based, activist, and creative groups operating around the globe — from Cuba and Colombia to New Zealand, Mali, and Dhaka. [9] The resulting exhibition was a rich constellation of collective work, varying widely in form, method, message, and medium,and reflective of diverse world-views and social, political, and environmental concerns. Documentation of the process of working collectively to organize the exhibition and the resulting knowledge production was also displayed.

Core to ruangrupa’s approach was a decentralized mode of operating: lumbung collectives were asked to invite others to join the exhibition, eventually totaling around 1500 participants. With this volume of minds, thoughts, and contributors based around the world, a lack of control seems inevitable. Indeed, in this case it was intentional. One member commented that the “approach always comes with a degree of risk,”[10] while another characterized the scaled-up collective model as “not fully controllable…That’s fine, we don’t want to control.” [11]

While this approach to curating an exhibition through horizontal, non-hierarchical methods of collectivity is a valuable model, the strategic lack of control seemed to avoid the critical oversight that curators are traditionally tasked with having over artists or artworks. ruangrupa was subject to public outcry and criticism for the inclusion of People’s Justice (2002) by another Indonesian collective, Taring Padi. Made in response to the collective’s “disappointment, frustration and anger as politicized art students who had also lost many of our friends in the street fighting of the 1998 popular uprising that finally led to the disposal of the dictator,” [12] the work contained imagery that evoked antisemitic tropes, which were triggering and offensive to many of the public. Although ruangrupa and Taring Padi publicly apologized, [14] attempting to give context to the work’s creation, the work was eventually covered, and the controversy overshadowed the inclusive and convivial atmosphere intended by the exhibition.

Who was to blame? What is the responsibility of the collective here? In this case, is the responsibility solely with Taring Padi, with ruangrupa for allowing the work to be included, or with documenta as an institution for lack of oversight? The answer is complicated by the shared authorship embedded within the entire project. In the absence of a single “culprit” behind the charged imagery, the implications refracted across the network of collectives.
The documenta controversy called into question ‘collectivity as method’ and its tenuous legitimacy within conventional artworld structures. Analyzing how the events unfolded, Indonesian cultural scholars Wulan Dirgantoro and Elly Kent reflected on how the controversy was likely further exacerbated because of the friction between cultural institutions like documenta and the collective model. They note:

Cultural institutions are notoriously risk-averse, with the primary motivation being to avoid reputational damage. A side-effect of this reputational risk aversion is that contextual and cultural sensitivities are usually managed, and creating a safe environment for audiences, artists and artworks is prioritized. All of this is achieved through a hierarchy of responsibility which ultimately means the institution has a duty of care to all its stakeholders. Artists, at the bottom of the institutional hierarchy but simultaneously the most visible part of it, are somewhat off the hook. It’s a paradox that also deserves scrutiny, and experimental methods like lumbung take this on. [15]

Despite these controversies and perceived failures, the annual “Power 100” list by Art Review of the most influential people in the artworld listed ruangrupa as #1 in 2022. The text accompanying the ranking cited the collective’s exposure and disruption of hierarchical power structures as the reason for their top place. Decrying the documenta organization, the article argues, “you can’t, as a powerful, hierarchical organization, pretend to value delegation, collaboration and devolution of power only to be surprised when events no longer stay under your control.” This ranking does not absolve them for the misstep of including Taring Padi’s People’s Justice, but does foreground the closing questions from our Tilt West roundtable: What kinds of projects benefit most from collaborating? What kinds of new relationships might intra- and inter-collective collaboration foster? Perhaps extra-collective collaborations between collectives and institutions, government bodies, and cities–like those exemplified by ruangrupa and documenta­–may be the most necessary, despite being messy and uncomfortable at times.

The Tilt West discussion showed that there are manifold methods of practicing collectively, each with its own structure and vision. Collectivity is an active state. It is a practice that requires continual shared commitment and care to maintain. It’s heartening to see how artists and creators locally and internationally have found ways to thrive and amplify their work through shared authorship, valuing multiplicity and abundance over solitary gain. Yet, although the value and necessity of collective work are evident and visible (at least in the artistic realm), the question of sustainability remains. How can we nurture and sustain alternative structures like collectives so that they may continue to challenge notions of hierarchy, power and control? While I’m not exactly sure how, I know we should work on it together.

On any given day while sitting at a traffic light between Here and There, I like to contemplate what rush hour might look like on other planets. One planet might have significantly weaker gravity, giving commuting a comically slo-mo feel, with plushy organisms grazing the surface of the planet and floating up in graceful arcs like dandelion seeds in a bouncy house. On another planet life might be reliant on echolocation–the location of objects by sound rather than sight. There, beings ping chaotically between obstacles in a screaming din of noise. A third planet might orbit three suns, so no matter which direction you’re headed, the sun is always, always, always in your eyes. Mercy.

These places are fanciful, yet not out of the realm of possibility. NASA’s exoplanet encyclopedia puts the number of confirmed planets revolving around our nearest-star neighbors at 5190, but they are comically beyond our reach to visit or even see (hundreds to thousands of light years away). To date, we’ve only sent two spacecraft outside the boundaries of our solar system. Launched in 1977, the space probes Voyager I and Voyager II have been traveling for 45 years and are 14.75 and 12.26 billion miles from Earth. The farthest a human being has been from Earth is just beyond the moon: 248,655 miles away. For comparison, our closest star neighbor, Alpha Centauri, and presumably its exoplanets, are just over four light years away. That’s more than 25 trillion miles. The distances in space are punishingly large.

Our Place in the Cosmos is Here On Earth

As a twenty-something, I spent a portion of the summer of 2001 in the high Canadian Arctic on a fossil expedition. The following year, the same expedition would recover the ancient pioneer, Tiktaalik roseae, a fossil fish that illustrates how the transition from water to land happened 375 million years ago. Each evening while we were there, we had a radio check-in with the Polar Continental Shelf Program, which provided logistical support to all the field researchers scattered across the Arctic each summer. They were also the ones who received our gear from Chicago, flew it (and us) to a rocky airstrip in the tundra around the 78th parallel, and then helicoptered us the remaining miles to our field site. If you missed your nightly check-in, they’d send a rescue mission whether you needed it or not, and if you hadn’t died of exposure, you might instead die from a truly frightening bill. So we’d fire up our radio fifteen minutes early just to be safe and sit waiting as all the other scientific field crews checked in to relay the news that all was well.
Our place in line was immediately after a team of researchers on Devon Island who were holed up in an impact crater determined to be as close as one could get to simulating life on Mars. We used to giggle about it, but it’s a serious research program backed by NASA. Normally, I’m a dedicated supporter of basic research, but anyone who thinks this research will pan out as a near-term solution to climate change is kidding themselves. If you’ve read or seen The Martian or heard the often repeated phrase, “There is no Planet B,” you can appreciate the option of simply moving to another planet is impractical. The glorious experiment of life in which we are enmeshed only exists for us here, now, on this planet, period. Full stop. And that makes dire warnings of pending climate catastrophe all the more perilous.

What Doesn’t Bend, Breaks

When humans invented agriculture 10,000 years ago, they defined a new way of living. Nomadic lifestyles receded. A steadier food supply allowed for larger communities and ultimately the technological advancements that define humanity today. People freed from toiling for every calorie could specialize, which enabled them to build cities of skyscrapers, museums of art, information superhighways, and the global supply chain. Paradoxically, as we’ve become more virtuosic in some ways, we’ve grown more brittle in others. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the face of climate curveballs. Our nomadic ancestors might have responded to an ice age by migrating to greener pastures, but our hands are tied (or, as Sara Bareilles sings, “The tide’s coming in, and I’m bound for a swim, in a pair of cement shoes.”) The increasing frequency and severity of storms, wildfires, and droughts of the last decade reveal what we have too long taken for granted: society was built on a steady, predictable climate.

In my work on plastic pollution, I often point out that every era in human history has its triumphs and its missteps. It makes no more sense to go back in time before plastic was ubiquitous than it does to bring back asbestos because it was such a great insulator. (Plastic, it bears mentioning, is just another symptom of life in the petroleum age.) After all, plastic confers benefits on modern life, including lighter vehicles that are more fuel efficient, PPE that protects us from pathogens, and synthetic materials that reduce pressure on our forests, agricultural land and freshwater resources. Going back to life before plastic would be renouncing important gains. Similarly, it follows that the answer to our dependence on fossil fuels is not to bring back the horse and buggy. The only way out of this bed we’ve made with its suffocating CO2 blanket is through innovation and problem solving. Our only path is forward.

Three women sit in chairs arranged in a row, engaged in a discussion. The woman in the middle is gesturing with her hands as she speaks, while the other two listen attentively. The room features a wooden floor and artwork on the walls, including a vintage car partially visible in the background.
Tilt West’s prompter Anna Kaye gets the conversation started (photo credit: Sarah McKenzie)

Mirrors, Visionaries, and Purveyors of Hope

Where does that leave us as artists? Likely, our skill set doesn’t put us in a position to find the key to nuclear fission any time soon, and I’d bet decent money we won’t be calculating the specs on any future manned flights to Mars. (I might be underestimating some of you, and if so, mad respect!) Instead, I find it more likely that we are the eyes and ears and often the conscience of society. Some of us will draw attention through art to the suffering that climate pressures create, which fall disproportionately on those most marginalized and oppressed. Some will hold mirrors up to the powerful to expose how the stories we tell ourselves about who we want to be don’t quite align with who we actually are. Others will remind us of our connection to nature, and still others will envision alternative, greener futures that give us hope.

With almost eight billion humans on the planet, it is right and appropriate that each of us reflects what we see from our unique outpost. None of us can capture the whole picture, but together our perspectives form a compound eye where each lens conveys a unique and important piece of a larger puzzle. As artists, we see, hear, and feel deeply. We also have the unique ability to make others do the same.

My sincere hope is that all of us take a moment — in traffic, perhaps, or wherever you do your best reflection — to appreciate just how precious this planet is. It holds everything we’ve ever known. It’s hokey, and yet profound to think that if we each add “Earthling” to the list of identities we carry with us — and maybe even consider putting it first, above all others — we might have more success in banding together to protect this planet that sustains us all.

Pig Hill is a sharp (24% grade), riverside incline on Rialto Street in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania that connects The Strip District with the Troy Hill neighborhood. Now a two-way, paved road with adjacent pedestrian stairs, locals gave the hill its colloquial name due to its husbandry-related past. During the late 1800s, stockyards on Herr Island — located on the Allegheny River just south of the hill — used the Rialto Street incline as passage for herding pigs to slaughterhouses located uphill in Spring Garden.

Gallery Closed — a storefront art space operated by Lenka Clayton and Phillip Andrews Lewis — sits just one block west of Pig Hill’s summit. The Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation designated the small, wood-fronted building which the gallery occupies as a historic site because, as the official signage notes, it was “the upper station of the first incline in Allegheny completed in 1887.” These inclines, or funiculars, offered commuters motorized travel up and down Pittsburgh’s notoriously steep ascents.

In partnership with Denver’s Black Cube Nomadic Art Museum, Clayton and Lewis recently conceptualized and installed a public-facing art project titled Historic Site. Historic Site consists of an over-sized, bronze plaque that materially and formally mimics the official historic plaque beside it. But unlike the official plaque — which memorializes the building’s usage as an incline between 1887 and 1898 — Clayton and Lewis’ plaque honors the location’s entire history. For the plaque to encase the whole narrative, though, Historic Site appears comically large next to its sanctioned predecessor.

Commencing with geologic time, the plaque opens with the statement: “Between 400 and 600 million years ago, this exact location lay deep underwater at the bottom of the sea and rose up towards the sky when the three continents shifted, collided, and eventually attached to one another, forming the super-continent Pangea.” After a lengthy preamble that outlines the area’s geologic development, the plaque’s narrative notes that the “earliest documented humans lived in this area around 16,000 years ago. The Haudenosaunee, Lenape, Shawnee, and the ancestors who came before them were all early stewards of the land.”

Following asides that reference Monarch butterfly migrations and indigenous tree growth, Historic Site maps out the nascent stages of Western colonization, surveying, and cartography that concludes with the creation of the first “hill climber”: the Troy Hill Incline. From this point onward, the plaque narrates how subsequent occupants of the building used the location: silent movie theater, bakery, grocery store, ice cream parlor, dry cleaner, restaurant, bank, and art gallery.

After a moment of aesthetic self-awareness wherein the plaque acknowledges that “In 2021, these words were cast in bronze,” Historic Site recognizes the audience’s contemporaneity: “At this very moment, you are standing here.” It concludes with a speculative projection about the future: “the climate will change, and the ocean will return.” Beyond providing a broader historical context for the building and its location, the expansive scope of this project also clarifies (through thorough research and scale-related humor) our dynamic present, a post-human future, and a temporal fluidity that renders everything ephemeral.

A group of people sit in a circle in a spacious room with wooden flooring and large windows. The discussion appears to be ongoing, with some participants taking notes while others listen or speak.
Tilt West roundtable conversation (photo credit: Autumn Thomas)

Twenty-four hours after participating in Tilt West’s roundtable discussion titled Re-Thinking Space: Architecture, Land, and Democracy, I traveled to Pittsburgh for an art residency. I visited Historic Site a few days later.

Standing before the two plaques mounted on the façade of Gallery Closed, I considered how we use land, space, and place — or, perhaps better stated, the way uses of land, space, and place alter over time independent of individual desires or human intervention. This is not to say someone’s personal vicissitudes or the civic sway of a powerful group of people cannot affect change (the portion of Historic Site’s narrative documenting Euro-colonial intrusion and development between 1785 and 2021 demonstrates that fact clearly), but it also illustrates the contingent, temporary, and relatively inconsequential nature of such interventions. Indeed, the ocean will return regardless of our actions.
In their introductory statement for Re-Thinking Space, discussion prompters Chris Hassig and Derrick Velasquez address Denver’s “influx of new inhabitants before and during the pandemic” and articulate a need to “contemplate what to do with precious pieces of land that might have the opportunity to enrich the spirit of how we live.” The prompters touch on issues relating to “colonization and the new frontierism” and the relationship of these ideas to gentrification, as well as “speculative development” and “fervent growth in the West.”

At issue, to the prompters’ minds, is how current building practices in Denver (and the West, in general) foreground a uniform, architectural modernism billed as luxury dwellings that necessarily destroys aesthetic and social diversity. Ultimately, Hassig and Velasquez argue, the manner in which developers are transforming the urban landscape of Denver abjures “human-centered growth” that facilitates “opportunity for diverse development.” Instead, they claim that the “obdurate building” practices of developers afford the city “no opportunity to change over time” while simultaneously “tower[ing] over and affect[ing] our psyche.”

In principle, I agree with many of the sentiments the prompters express in their introductory statement. Anyone who resided in Denver before the city’s population explosion and has remained has an anecdotal understanding of the way in which the city has morphed into an almost entirely new urban space — architecturally, socially, economically, and civically. With new buildings and new residents, the city seems intent on erasing its past by eradicating its previous infrastructural and human histories. In their place? High-rise “luxury” residences for an influx of wealthy, out-of-state transplants.

Standing before Historic Site, though, I re-oriented my understanding of these issues. If I set aside my personal nostalgia for the Denver I arrived at in 2002 and, rather, think of the city within a broader historical context, the perceived permanence of Denver’s current transformation doesn’t appear permanent at all. In fact, the city’s contemporary condition is nothing more than a temporary, fleeting moment. The towers erected for the droves relocating to this region will eventually transform in use and in form. As land shifts and oceans return, these towers will no longer exist. Everything changes. Everything disappears. What is here today will not remain.

But while the Earth’s life is long, human life is not. Issues relating to land use, water rights, and the inequalities generated by them seem minor, if not inconsequential, on a geologic time-table. Yet those who have been marginalized, disenfranchised, displaced, and rendered vulnerable don’t have the luxury to wait for developers’ towering money-grabs to transform into ruins of a past epoch. For those of us who exist in a state of precarity vis-à-vis housing. For those of us who don’t have housing or have been displaced. For those of us who have seen their neighborhoods transformed into something for which they did not ask. The victory of geological time over everything is but little consolation. Yes, the ocean will return, but where do we live while we wait?

Of course, Historic Site also provides us with another, non-geologic narrative. From 1887 through 2022, the building that originally housed the Troy Hill Incline changed purpose and ownership dozens of times over. And radically so. A structure once operating as a pulley-based mechanism to hoist people up and down the side of a steep hill became a movie theater, bakery, laundry mat, bank, and art gallery — among other things. The diversity of uses, frankly, is rather stunning. The narrative of Historic Site highlights the fungibility of use and mutability of purpose for the site’s current structure.

The location of Historic Site, though, is not a multi-family luxury high-rise; it is, rather, a structure that resembles a one-story, single-family dwelling. Is there any architectural aspect of this structure that lends itself to 125 years of regular, operational transformation? Conversely, is there any architectural aspect of Denver’s recent and currently under-construction buildings that prohibit different or re-imagined uses in the future? I’m hard-pressed to believe that a fundamental architectural or ontological aspect of a building either prohibits or encourages an “opportunity to change over time,” particularly a large, multi-family complex that offers space enough for a variety of activities and engagements. The use and purpose of a structure, I would argue, results more from the human imagination, zoning regulations, and perceived financial windfalls than any inherent quality of design or construction.

But just as biding geologic time is impossible, waiting decades for civic and cultural imaginations, zoning regulations, or economic speculation to change is both interminable and inequitable. What reads as a flurry of changes in rapid succession inscribed on a bronze plaque, in all reality, can be a life-time for an individual or community. What Denver and the West might look like in 2042 or 2062 lacks immediacy and relevance for those struggling with issues of space and place in 2022.

“Although it appears stationary,” Historic Site explains, “the ground beneath your feet is still in motion, moving westward at a rate of one inch per year.” The land upon which we stand moves perpetually, effecting shifts and transformations of all that is above it: communities, structures, and individuals. But what do we do while the land shifts and we wait for the ocean? Is there a way to foster change that promotes diversity and ushers in an era of social and civic equity?

A group of people sit in a room with wooden flooring, engaged in a conversation. In the foreground, a cinder block on the floor holds several lit candles of varying sizes and shapes, some placed on small objects.
Photo of co prompters (Photo credit: Autumn Thomas)

During the Re-Thinking Space roundtable, there were generic suggestions for “policy change” in order to create progressive environments that wrest control from developers and offer more agency to the community at large. If the last few years have taught us anything, though, it’s that we can’t depend upon the government to help us. Whether it’s a slow reaction to a global pandemic, gutting our social systems, stripping women of reproductive rights, affirming racist police and immigration policies, denying protections for members of the LGBTQ community, or validating systems and legislation that increase economic disparities, governmental agencies (whether federal, state, or city) show little interest in upholding a “for the people, by the people” ethic.

In Denver’s last mayoral run-off election, for instance, both candidates vying for the position were backed primarily by developers. The choice was not between unchecked urban development and thoughtful use of city space; instead, ballots essentially asked residents to select which developer would receive the most lucrative contracts. Likewise, when apparently progressive policy change does occur, unintended ramifications often result in marginalized communities suffering new indignities. For instance, when the City of Denver and the State of Colorado championed the legalization of marijuana as a progressive step toward drug reform, little did the general populace know how the legislation would affect property value. As commercial property and leases increased in cost to meet the demand of grow operations, previous tenants could no longer afford rental rates or property taxes. In 2016, the Peoria Emergency Overflow Shelter, which serviced over 200 unhoused men per night and acted as “one of the most significant services for the homeless funded by the City of Denver,” closed due to “rising property values and the prohibitive costs of buying large shelter spaces close to the heart of the city.”

Certainly, I would not advocate for a wholesale dismissal or disengagement from local politics. If only nominally, active disruption and resistance to the political machine is necessary for communities to articulate dissent. But with regard to practical and immediate results, policy and political engagement often function as impotent tools which foster the naïve belief that we live in a functional democracy seeking to protect and uplift its populace. The United States runs on capitalism, not democracy.

What, then, can we do? Personally, I can’t say that I’m an optimist when it comes to politicians championing equitable, community-centered approaches to reshaping urban spaces. In America, money and power win. If a qualification for the title of artist or poet is pursuit of a utopian ideal or future, I fail miserably. As a life-long renter and an artist/writer who struggles with financial security, it’s difficult to imagine a future wherein security around place — let alone an ability to foster wide-spread, positive change — exists.

While I don’t hold hope for a better tomorrow, neither do I believe that we should devolve into nihilistic fatalism. On the level of personal action, though, asking the following questions might be more pragmatic and functional: How are we using the space we are afforded? Is it thoughtful? Is it intentional? Do we use our spaces and land for means that assist or amplify our communities?

I look to DIY galleries, such as Velasquez’s Yes, Ma’am and Sommer Browning’s GEORGIA, as practical examples of how members of the art community leverage their own spaces into resources for others. Obviously, there are many other ways in which to re-think space; transforming one’s home into a temporary art gallery isn’t the only way in which to help others.

As a long-term renter of a small house in the Lincoln Park neighborhood, I’ve transformed the property’s front yard into an urban garden by building eight, above-ground plant beds to go along with a slew of potted plants. Last year, I grew over forty pounds of tomatoes (and other vegetables) that I gifted to friends and neighbors. Given Lincoln Park’s dearth of trees and its relationship to economic disparity, such greening, gardening, and cultivation efforts feel necessary. And I am not alone in this effort; Dateline in RiNo has also created an urban garden along the south-facing sidewalk of their building. Although such examples might not alter the overall infrastructural and civic trajectory of our city, the resulting effects of these projects provide real opportunities and resources for people in the communities associated with them.

And, of course, there are also “words…cast in bronze” on the façade of a house — a certain type of socially conscious art that, as Toni Morrison writes, “invites us to take the journey beyond price, beyond costs into bearing witness to the world as it is.” Trusting in art as social praxis, to Morrison’s mind, though, shouldn’t be “irrational or naïve” with expectations that it will usher in a utopic state; rather, it allows us to “know beauty and solicit it from even the most tragic of circumstances…remind[ing] us that we belong here.” Yes, we belong here, as well as anyone, as we wait for the ocean to envelop everything.

Consider this: Art no longer requires a physical presence to activate its “aura.” Back in the 1930s, philosopher Walter Benjamin famously wrote about the aura of an artwork, which had to be experienced in person, could not be replicated, and was inexorably linked to the work’s provenance, as well as to the so-called “cult rituals” associated with its existence. [1] These cult rituals started in caves, moved into churches and then broke off into secular spaces like the cinema, stadiums, and other mainstream arenas. Fast forward to now, and social media has emerged as a new altar for cult rituals — on a scale that literally transcends both time and space.

More people now experience art digitally, via smartphones and their social media feeds, than in person. Often, what is perceived is not the art itself, but a simulacrum. And yet, the simulacrum has the power to transform the original art object. Like Baudrillard said, the simulacrum is real. [2]

The aura, as Benjamin described it, has been digitized. This process of cultural dematerialization has been underway for decades, but the recent implosion of NFTs as a collectible artform — and, yes, as a speculative asset class — is also really just the result of pure circumstance.

Simply stated, the “unprecedented times” of the 2020s — the social, economic, and, of course, technological conditions of our current zeitgeist — lit the match that made the NFT molotov cocktail explode.

A large group of people sit in a circle of chairs in a spacious gallery room, engaged in a discussion. The room features a brick wall adorned with colorful, abstract artwork and a large central painting.
Full group shot of Tilt West’s roundtable conversation (photo credit: Sarah McKenzie)

In 2017, the same year the first NFT was invented [3] by an artist and a tech entrepreneur during a hackathon spearheaded by the New Museum in New York, a widely-circulated article published by The Economist announced that data had replaced oil as the world’s most valuable resource. [4] Three years later, a glitch in the natural world’s ecosystem went bezerk, resulting in the global coronavirus pandemic that has — to date — killed more than six million people and locked down entire cities, and even countries, for months at a time.

The lockdowns had two immediate effects — demand for gasoline dropped off a cliff, and our reliance on data skyrocketed. Covid data visualizations and dashboards published online by the World Health Organization, Johns Hopkins University and other institutions became our digital divining rod, telling us each day if we should be afraid, or brave, or hopeful, or morose. [5]

In response to social isolation mandates, humanity’s screen time hit an all-time high. The black mirror became a cybernetic lifeline, permitting our species to still organize and cooperate — to get on with the business of existence — despite the absence of in-person contact.

In 2021, as the pandemic wreaked havoc, the United States watched in utter shock as a heavily-armed mob attacked the capitol — all live streamed by the mob itself on social media. Social media is also where said mob was recruited, organized, and effectively deployed by the then-President (who, it bears mentioning, was arguably elected thanks to Russian-controlled social media weaponization). The spectacle of society, as described by Guy Debord, had reached a historic fever pitch, catalyzed by networked data.

Just a few months later, Christie’s auction house sold a jpeg file by an artist named Beeple for $69 million, sparking the media blitz and market frenzy around NFTs. [6] Literally overnight, digital art became mainstream news and Beeple became the third most expensive living artist, after David Hockney and Jeff Koons (not bad for a guy based in South Carolina who had never even exhibited in a traditional white cube gallery before.)

The Beeple auction announced a new era of the art market and, by extension, a new era of cultural production. Art reflects — and critiques — the values of the society in which it is produced. Bits, bytes, data and technology have proven themselves of paramount value in the 21st century. In truth, the ascendent digital art market owes a great debt to the coronavirus pandemic.

The titans of 20th century industry — those same patrons who previously made headlines with their big-ticket art purchases — are now being challenged by tech and crypto billionaires. This new money class not only possesses a different aesthetic, it generally holds different social and political values than its predecessors. Tech money also understands “material” differently, i.e., Zuckerberg is the new Carnegie, and data is the new steel.

A group of men sit in a row of chairs, engaged in a lively discussion. The man in the center is gesturing with his hands while speaking, as the others listen attentively.
Close up of Tilt West’s roundtable conversation (photo credit: Sarah McKenzie)

“In Code We Trust”

NFTs (non-fungible tokens) are essentially digital certificates of authenticity that include “smart contracts” — sets of pre-programmed conditions that must be met in order to execute a transaction between two parties. Before blockchain and cryptocurrency, a 3rd party intermediary — such as a bank, or an auction house — was generally required to conduct said transaction. The fact that Christie’s inserted themselves in the Beeple transaction was not in keeping with the original spirit of a blockchain-backed NFT sale, but it was a relatively predictable move for one of the world’s oldest businesses.

Blockchain’s genesis mission was to enable peer-to-peer transactions with public transparency, personal anonymity, cryptographic security, and perpetual immutability. The NFT, a digital token associated with the “wallet” of a user, can be applied to an asset — digital or physical — and traded on the blockchain. NFTs authenticate ownership and scarcity (i.e., edition size) of their underlying asset, digital or otherwise.

Thus, the provenance of said asset is indelibly recorded on a digital public ledger (the blockchain) that, due to its “distributed” nature as a network maintained by many different nodes, is theoretically impervious to both hackers and widespread system failure. In theory, the blockchain will never “go down,” because there are hundreds of computers maintaining it at any given time.

These nodes are incentivized to maintain the blockchain through the cryptocurrency they are awarded by successfully mining a block. Mining a block basically just means that a node has solved the math problem faster than the other nodes and thereby added a “block,” or series of transactions to the blockchain.

The smart contract programmed into the NFT means that the creator of said asset can collect resale royalties on that asset in perpetuity. For digital artists, who had never really had any meaningful access to the art market before, the advent of the NFT is nothing less than an event horizon of incalculable magnitude. According to the most recent Art Basel and UBS Art Market Report, the average NFT is traded on the secondary market within 33 days, unlike traditional fine art, which the report’s authors calculated had an average resale period of more than ten years. [7]

NFTs have created a new commodity, a new marketplace, and a new class system. Blockchain/cryptocurrency/NFT evangelists believe that these emerging technologies will lead to the total democratization of essentially everything. No more intermediaries, 3rd party regulators, or even bad actors trying to overtake the network for personal gain. They have been algorithmically filtered out, in theory, by complex math problems whose solutions require a greater energy expenditure than the average European household uses in a month.

In fact, a recent study found that the carbon footprint created by Bitcoin transactions in 2021 alone could be responsible for “around 19,000 future deaths.” [8] This is due to the Co2 emissions created by the consensus protocol first introduced by Satoshi Nakamoto, the anonymous inventor of Bitcoin, which requires significant computational energy to execute.

Nakamoto originally designed the blockchain so that the math problems that nodes must compete to solve could only be correctly calculated every ten minutes. That is obviously not efficient at all (imagine if every time you swipe your credit card, it takes 10 minutes to process) and is also impossible to scale.

Every node, or computer (or miner, or whatever term you choose), has to complete a “proof of work” and solve the math problem in order to “mine a block” and add its transactions to the chain, receiving a cryptocurrency reward for doing so. They also needed a bit of luck to solve the equation, as an element of randomness was built into the system. So, it’s also sort of like gambling. Fun, right?

In Nakamoto’s Bitcoin whitepaper, published in 2008 and only eight pages long, this “proof of work” [9] protocol was touted as the solution to one of computation’s most complicated and long-standing issues, known as the Byzantine Generals Problem. [10] In summary, a 21st century digital protocol that’s been touted as a “new society” boils down to a military “game theory” riddle: How can Generals trust each other in order to execute a common goal? Spoiler alert: They can’t.

Trust is therefore programmed into a system as a series of conditional parameters that require each stakeholder to sacrifice some of their own “power” (in this case, computational energy) in order to reach consensus and ensure the success of the larger mission — the “greater good” as it were. And yet, we’ve repeatedly seen that hackers have been able to break into cryptographically secure “wallets” (including Beeple’s, ironically), copy NFTs, transfer them into other wallets, and then demand cryptocurrency ransom to return them. [11]

So, while the NFT gold rush has certainly created some instant millionaires, it’s also a deeply flawed system that doesn’t live up to its ideals (sort of like the art market, itself).

A recent article in the New York Times with the headline “How ‘Trustless’ Is Bitcoin, Really?” discussed the work of data scientist Alyssa Blackburn, whose research on blockchain and the ur-cryptocurrency discovered that, rather than a widespread network, only 64 nodes controlled the majority of mining and, “on many occasions, just one or two people held most of the mining power.” [12] According to her findings, “within a few months of the cryptocurrency’s introduction — and contrary to Bitcoin’s egalitarian promise — a classic distribution of income inequality emerged: A small fraction of the miners held most of the wealth and power.” [13] So much for utopia.

Today, there are many different blockchains and “para-chains,” and there are many different types of cryptocurrencies. NFTs were introduced to the masses via the Ethereum blockchain, which uses the cryptocurrency Ether. Ethereum was also originally programmed to run on a proof of work (PoW) protocol, however, an uproar from eco-conscious users aghast at the carbon footprint of PoW has pressured the network to adopt a new consensus protocol, known as proof of stake, which they plan to launch sometime this summer. Proof of stake (PoS) allegedly requires 99.9% less energy than proof of work, but it’s also not a perfect solution to the environmental crisis plaguing the mass adoption of blockchain, crypto, and NFTs.

Digital Art and the New Political Stage

As I type this essay from the comfort of my couch, Ukrainian citizens are desperately — and heroically — fighting for their lives against an onslaught of Russian invaders intent to destroy them. The war has been raging now for more than 100 days, cities have been reduced to smoldering ash, and more than 7 million Ukrainian civilians have fled their homes.

The Ukrainians, however, are not backing down. Against all odds, they’ve been racking up victories — but also weathering terrible losses. Like the Trump mob’s coup attempt in the US, this political spectacle is being live streamed — like a David vs. Goliath reality show — but with very real casualties, trauma, devastation, death and despair.

Ukraine’s embattled president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has leveraged every means of defense to expel the Russians, but it’s his command of the digital stage and his social media strategy that has given his country a surprising advantage. While Russians are being subjected to hardcore pro-Putin propogranda that has labeled this war “a liberation” operation, Zelensky is recruiting support on an unprecedented scale, from the palm of his hand and without leaving his troops. Meanwhile, Putin appears sickly, bloated, potentially terminally ill. The optics bolster the narrative — the folk hero underdog going round for round against the oligarch villain — all of which makes the spectacle even more sensational.

If art sometimes seems frivolous — an investment vehicle for the super rich, or a bourgeois navel-gazing pastime — look to Russia, and to Cuba, and to other places where artists are political prisoners, and reconsider. Pussy Riot, the feminist political collective whose members have been imprisoned for criticizing Putin, standing up for LBGTQ+ rights, sewing in public, and performing punk rock on Kremlin buildings, among other “crimes,” exemplifies the power of art — and the threat it can pose in an oppressive society.

When the war first broke out, Nadya Tolokonnikova, one of the Pussy Riot members who has spent years in prison, created an artwork to benefit the Ukraine resistance and auctioned it off online to the highest bidder. It ultimately sold for over $7 million dollars. It was a jpeg image composed of two colors, blue and yellow, the Ukrainian flag.

This is the power of the digital stage, its open-access forums — which transcend geo-political borders and have no nation-state allegiances (or regulations) — and the immaterial economy that is emerging right now.

Nadya obviously made herself a target for Russian authorities (again) by selling her art to benefit their military opponent. Because of cryptocurrency, blockchain, and NFTs, she was able to recruit her cult following and global community to execute an altruistic act of political art activism (and which technically also made her one of history’s most “expensive” female artists, dead or alive).

Three people sit in a row of chairs against a brick wall, engaged in a conversation. The woman on the left is speaking, with the other two men listening attentively.
Close up of Tilt West’s roundtable conversation (photo credit: Sarah McKenzie)

For cryptocurrency naysayers, consider your government, your banks, your net worth. If you generally trust these institutions and the wealth they steward in your name, consider yourself a lottery winner. Many countries don’t have the luxury of economic stability — for these populations, cryptocurrency is understandably enticing. Nadya points to DAOs — decentralized autonomous organizations that emerged in concert with blockchain — as a historical movement capable of standing up to corrupt regimes and entrenched authoritarian systems.

In Marxist terms, these are the digital proletariats, uniting in a common cause against a gargantuan foe. Just as Marx touted “historical materialism,” we have crossed over into an era of historical dematerialization, in which digital proletariats — “workers” whose own data is mined by social media for profit gain — can rise up through power in numbers, protected by a shield of cryptographic anonymity. [14] This is the utopian dream of blockchain, of Bitcoin — and yes — of NFTs, manifest.

You can’t separate capital from power, and that’s one core mission that cryptocurrency touts as having achieved. After the NFT auction, Nadya wrote via Twitter, “Revolution could not be achieved with conventional currencies, there are too many ways for traditional funds to be intercepted by traditional institutions, governments, other factions with intent to control, harm, simply shift funds without transparency.”

NFTs are a new tool for artists to connect with a new marketplace, a new stage, and a new audience. They are not an end in and of themselves. While technologists work to make blockchain and cryptocurrencies more sustainable and secure, artists will be the ones exploring and experimenting with how best to leverage this new tool for cultural and social progress — and even revolution.

Like almost all new technologies, NFTs are a source of much controversy, skepticism, and even fear. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, for sure, but how you feel about NFTs, blockchain and crypto may be indicative of your role in society, whether you like it or not. Ultimately, throwing the Molotov cocktail is an act of revolution for one side, and an act of violence and destruction for the other: The question is simple, but also complex — what side are you on?