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.

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.

“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).

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?

In her opening statement at the recent Tilt West roundtable on Curation & Identity, prompter Jane Burke stated there was a “burden of representation” in her work as Curatorial Fellow of Textile Art and Fashion at the Denver Art Museum. I have long felt this sentiment, but never have three words so adequately and succinctly summed up the great tension of my entire creative career. I have worked with, in, and among the largest minority community in the country for more than four decades: people with disabilities.

Daily, I feel the weight of being an ally to, advocate for, and curator of art in a community I am both part of and not part of — depending on who is making the designation. The word curate comes from the Latin root cura, meaning “to take care.” As our discussion unfolded, it struck me how far these discussions have come and how much care had been put into the exhibit, Another Angle: “Asian American” Art, curated by Burke for the University of Denver Museum of Anthropology where we met. I was particularly struck by the paradox of discussing a fine art exhibit mounted in an anthropology museum at a private university. I was encouraged and reminded that things are changing and that boundaries are being broken down, even as progress and change are rarely linear, neat or simple.

There is a saying in the disability community: “boldly going where everyone else has already been.” While it is somewhat tongue in cheek, the saying describes very accurately so many aspects of our world. By conservative estimates there are between 54 and 58 million Americans living with a disability. In sheer numbers, this represents the largest minority group in this country, and it’s the only one you can join at any time. Disability does not care what age, race, ethnicity, or socio-economic status you have — disability does not discriminate. Yet the disability community is often left out of critical conversations that directly affect it. Throughout history people with disabilities have only been seen through a medical, programmatic, or academic lens. The medical model perceives disability as something that needs to be cured or fixed rather than as a normal — or even celebrated — part of the human experience. Thirty years after the passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), people with disabilities still remain largely excluded from society. We no longer routinely warehouse them in institutions, but we have failed to integrate people with disabilities into many aspects of social and economic life. The unemployment rate for people with disabilities in this country, for example, hovers near 70%.

As I listened to Burke talk about the burden of representation and her desire to have the Asian American artists in the University of Denver show choose the art they would exhibit, I thought of how much trouble could be avoided if we included the perspectives of people with disabilities in discussions and planning particularly in the built and public art arenas. As disability activists have said, “nothing about us without us!”

Yet projects are routinely undertaken without the input from the proverbial “us” of the disability community. A recent example is the Hunters Point Library in Queens, New York. After 20 years of planning and a $41 million budget, the building was lauded as a “stunning architectural marvel” and a “beacon of learning, literacy and culture.” [1] However, within weeks of its opening, there was also a class action suit filed in Brooklyn federal court stating the building was not fully accessible to people with disabilities, particularly those with mobility issues. The issue revolves around three floors of the library that are only accessible to those who can climb stairs. Yes, people with disabilities can access the top and the bottom floors, but we all know the good stuff is in the middle. And partial access is not what the law and inclusion pretty plainly require. Even one stair or inoperable door opener can mean the difference between inclusion and exclusion for someone with a mobility impairment.

Also in New York, the Vessel, an architectural piece of public art by British designer Thomas Heatherwick, was recently permanently closed due to multiple suicides. Prior to that, it too had come under fire for not being ADA compliant: the structure was only accessible on three of the 80 platforms, and often the elevators were instructed to bypass two of the three levels during high attendance times which meant that people who cannot climb stairs had access to only one viewing platform. The facility operators eventually agreed to make a one-of-a-kind, likely very expensive lift to have people with mobility issues be able to access more of the upper platforms, but not to everything. The Vessel is currently shuttered as Related Companies, the company that manages the site, ponders ways to keep people from jumping off the platforms. So far, their response has been to increase security, institute a buddy system (I don’t understand what this fully entails or even what it would do), and put signs up about mental health resources.

According to Jacob Alspector, a distinguished lecturer at the Spitzer School of Architecture at The City College of New York, “The Vessel is like some MC Escher nightmare,” referring to the famed graphic artist known for his staircases to nowhere. “It’s kind of relentless. It’s very gaudy, it’s very cold… people who feel alienated with the world may not be supported very well by an experience like that.” [2] I saw the Vessel myself a couple of years ago pre-pandemic and had no interest in climbing 2500 stairs. I did not know the history of the project, but I felt it was a jarring and confrontational structure, especially compared with the serenity of the Highline, right next door. By contrast with the Vessel, the Highline is an exemplar of accessibility: its pathways are wide enough for two wheelchair users to traverse next to each other, and its Sunken Overlook at the 10th Avenue Square boasts a creative and integrated series of ramps.

Our collective avoidance and exclusion of people with disabilities in the creative world is not confined to buildings and structures. During the roundtable discussion, we touched on the importance of representation in movies like Black Panther and Shang Chi that feature stories of Black and Asian Superheroes. We rarely see similar representation of people with disabilities in popular culture. A 2019 study of broadcast media found that only 3.1% of characters had a disability (and even fewer were played by actors with disabilities) — yet, astonishingly, that was a ten-year high in representation. [3] Given that people with disabilities make up 20–25% of the population, it seems we have a long way to go to bridge this gap of seeing.

One interesting representation of disability in the arts is artist Marc Quinn’s stunning 15-ton white Carrera marble statue called Allison Lapper Pregnant, unveiled in 2005 in London’s Trafalgar Square as part of the Fourth Plinth Project. Quinn’s sculpture is technically brilliant: A large, white marble statue made by an up-and-coming artist on view in one of the busiest areas of London. This type of marble has been used for big heroic sculptures, such as Michelangelo’s David and the statue of Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. However, Quinn’s sculpture depicts Allison Lapper, a woman with a visible disability. Lapper was born without arms and with shortened legs.

This sculpture received more public response than any other sculpture in the history of the Fourth Plinth project. As one might imagine, the response was mixed: some positive, some not so much, but never before had a piece of art sparked so much discussion about disability. When asked about the piece, Lapper replied, “I’ve explored these issues in my own work, through photography and installations, but I never would have been able to afford to do so in 15-ft high Italian marble, as Marc will be able to do with this sculpture. I love the fact that it has got the UK talking; that it gives disability a platform for debate. It’s a positive image of womanhood, even though it’s not going to appeal to those who wanted the Queen Mother up there.” [4] It appeals to me: I love the in-your-face aspect of this work.

By casting Lapper in marble, a material typically reserved for the famous, Quinn has claimed a space for disability in much the way that artist Kehinde Wiley has reclaimed the heroic portrait by featuring young Black men he meets on the streets. But while Wiley is himself Black, Quinn is not disabled. Some may ask: Why is it ok for an artist without a disability to depict a disabled person? Personally, I have no problem with this, as I believe art should at its core help us understand each other. And it certainly encouraged engagement with disability. Lapper participated in this work as the model and the muse, and I find the sculpture beautiful. I only wish Lapper’s career had taken off the way Marc Quinn’s did.

As we continue to tackle issues of social justice and to shift paradigms at the intersections of art and identity, we truly do need to include people with disabilities not only in the final products, but also in the process. Imagine if the architecture firm that built the library in New York had had a person with a disability on staff, or if the Corporation that built the Vessel had listened to the warnings of people concerned about the suicide potential or lack of elevators. The idea of access cannot be fulfilled by a check box on a grant application. The ADA sets the bare minimum and not a very high bar (although both of the facilities violated even the floor for inclusion that the law establishes). The burden of representation, particularly for people with disabilities, cannot be an afterthought. At the end of the day, we are them and they are us.

One of the greatest barriers to moving outside your comfort zone in life is the fear that you’re not worthy. Feeling like an imposter — like you’re not good enough and other people are going to see right through you. This was my biggest fear growing up, that I would be ‘found out.’ My parents were immigrants, and I spent many years trying to find a sense of belonging. The community I grew up in was mostly white and conservative, so there weren’t many people with my background, let alone those who could relate to my experience as the child of immigrants.

Experiencing self-doubt and insecurity about our place in the world is actually very common, but it cripples many of us to the point that we can’t put our best foot forward. We’re not able to project real confidence or enthusiasm or passion in the things we do, and we’re not able to truly show what we’re capable of because we shrink in the face of our perceived inadequacy.

Perhaps the biggest villain in all of our lives is this feeling that we’re going to be ‘found out.’ So we put on a mask, or many masks. We pretend to be whoever or whatever we need to be — who we think other people expect or want us to be — in order to fit in. I did this. I became whatever my environment told me I needed to be. I hid behind a mask, because masks shield us from close scrutiny. We wear them because we’re scared. We’re scared of being seen or noticed, and of not measuring up. We tell ourselves that without the mask, others will realise that we’re not supposed to be here. And that idea is a heartbreak so inconsolable that we do everything we can to avoid it.

I wonder how many people put masks on as they step out into the world. Is it all of us? Do we all leave our true selves behind in some way while we search for our place in society? I want you to ask yourself what masks you wear. Are you afraid of rejection, a people pleaser, in need of validation, or are you trying to hide a vulnerability and protect yourself? Maybe you’ve guarded yourself in the past because you were worried about being misunderstood. This desire to belong is human, but when we mold ourselves into who we think others want us to be, we’re not able to live up to our true potential. We’re not able to bring everything about us and all of who we are to all that we do. We dim our light in a world that needs to be lit up, in a world that is already dark and gloomy.

Something that has become even more apparent during this pandemic is how important it is to have strong connections and relationships in our lives. How connected we feel to others is actually a strong predictor of our feelings of self worth and happiness. And the more deeply connected we are with others, the more meaning and purpose we have in our lives. Even our neurobiology tells us that we are wired for connection. Connection increases levels of oxytocin, a hormone that acts as a neurotransmitter in our brains to build feelings of trust.

When we wear our masks, though, we’re not able to really connect with those around us, because we’re not able to be our authentic selves. We withhold parts of ourselves, and that withholding can limit our ability to build deep trust. We are left feeling disconnected and lonely, which floods our body with cortisol, the ‘flight or fight’ hormone. Our feelings of social and emotional anxiety are heightened, and we fall further into the trap of thinking that we need to be somebody else to belong. So we wear our masks. How else will we fit into a world that doesn’t understand us? How else will we find those connections that we so desperately crave?

The truth is that we’ll never be able to truly connect if we’re carving out pieces of who we really are. I’m still coming to terms with this in my own life. I’m trying to strip away this facade. I hope I can one day find the courage to leave all of my masks at home. Then I will truly be seen, and I’ll be able to share my gifts with the world.

But maybe that’s also a facade. Maybe the world doesn’t want to see me. Maybe I won’t ever be accepted, since exclusion has been the universal experience of every minority in every land across the globe. The mask is a way to counter the labels and stereotypes that others have placed on me. I am more than my identity, and the mask protects me from inequities that exist in the world. Yes, like everyone, I crave connection, but in the face of indifference and rejection, I yearn for safety even more. And the mask keeps me safe. Maybe it’s who I really am. Maybe it’s who we all really are.

“We are listening,” was a refrain that sounded from nearly all quarters of American commerce during the summer of 2020. Across the United States, for-profit and non-profit institutions alike pledged to listen harder, learn more, and become more sensitive to the causes and effects of systemic racism. In the wake of still more Black lives lost to violence at the hands of law enforcement and the wave of protests and advocacy from the Black Lives Matter movement, institutions in the art world and beyond were forced to reckon with the fallibility of their organizational structures, and their own roles in perpetuating racist ideologies. Perhaps for the first time in the museum field since its inception, there was an industry-wide display of humility. Institutions both large and small acknowledged that the existing frameworks needed to change, and that listening was perhaps one of the most important tasks ahead in their path towards improvement.

At present it is an open question whether these pledges from institutions will lead to substantive or lasting change. In the meantime, I find it interesting to consider what this sweeping acknowledgement of the role of listening means for a field of art whose existence pivots on being heard. What could expansive listening mean for the future of sound art? For years I have loved engaging with works of sound art because they have heightened my perception of sounds that are beautiful, layered, complex, and at times challenging and strange. Now I am asking if this medium has (or has had?) the ability to also fire the synapses in our brain that make us more empathic, more receptive, and more willing to change to accommodate the needs of others. In the Tilt West roundtable discussion, it was expressed that “listening requires one to give of oneself.” This definition shifts the act of listening from a passive act (albeit one which requires perceptiveness) to one which demands that after hearing something we cannot remain the same.
Generally speaking, the type of listening demanded by movements such as Black Lives Matter is not about the literal perception of sounds. It focuses rather on the decentralizing of authority, the recognition of BIPOC voices, and the inclusion of those voices in decision-making spaces as ways of ending the deleterious effects of racism. In this context, listening has to do with the absorption of speech and ideas, and it does not end with perception but with action. Listening is not the end game but, rather, a means to an end. For this change to happen, institutions have to become more porous and less didactic. This ties in with what roundtable prompter Nathan Hall posits as a possible future for sound art: that it may become not only about putting sound into the world but also about eliciting a two-way dialogue. Tilt West host Bianca Mikahn linked this approach to the Black lineage of “call and response;” an action is not complete until it receives a response.

If sound art is now securely accepted within the canon of art history, then arguably it bears scrutinizing which stories are being told and whose sounds are being heard. Two examples of artworks that advance the sounds of under recognized voices are Tania Candiani’s Pulso and Postcommodity’s The Ears Between Worlds are Always Speaking. In 2016 Tania Candiani orchestrated the performance Pulso (Spanish for “Pulse”) in the subway system of Mexico City. This one-day performance comprised of 195 women playing pre-Hispanic drums in the tunnels, stairways, and corridors of the Metro, filling the spaces with indigenous-inspired percussive beats. The project centered on the artist asking, “What is the pulse of Mexico City today, and is it possible to recover the ancient pulse of an old Aztec city?” Employing instruments traditionally played only by men, the artwork addresses the role of women in society. In 2017, the indigenous art collective Postcommodity created The Ears Between Worlds are Always Speaking, which was broadcast into ancient grounds of Aristotle’s Lyceum of Athens, Greece as part of Documenta 14. This “hyperdirectional opera” encompassing oral stories and recorded vocals told by migrants based in North America, Syria, and the Middle East was projected from two Long Range Acoustic Devices or LRADs. Acknowledging the ongoing tragedies associated with mass migrations globally, Postcommodity artist Raven Chacon explained, “In this work, we are also considering examples of forced migration in North America, like The Trail of Tears when the Cherokee Nation were forced from their lands and relocated to Oklahoma, and The Long Walk, the deportation of the Navajo people.” In this context, LRADs, which are devices often used by the military or police to disperse crowds, have been reconstituted into instruments for teaching. They ask us to listen to voices that have historically gone unnoticed.

Words can do harm, and so can the feeling of being unheard. During our discussion on deep listening Mikahn shared: “Deep listening is the most important thing in my world, because I am often very unheard. Extremely, egregiously unheard.” With this in mind, how can we tilt sound art towards listening so that it is not solely focused on the creation of sound? The term “deep listening,” as Nathan Hall acknowledged, comes from queer sound artist and pioneer composer Pauline Oliveros. Oliveros has defined deep listening as a practice of radical attentiveness, where listening is an inherently empathetic act, requiring receptivity to the intentions of others and the natural world. Currently, with the advent of multi-million-dollar NFTs, resistance to digitally-based artworks is rapidly evaporating, and my hope is that this will have positive ramifications for the lives and livelihoods of sound artists. The next challenge for sound art, after overcoming the intangibility of its medium, is perhaps exploring the elusive nature of listening, an invisible process that occurs in the mind both individually and collectively. How do we encourage listening? How do we know if it has happened? And how do ensure that others feel heard? Sound has always been about reciprocity. The frontier is arguably about our ability to process a more diverse range of sounds, hold them in our minds, and integrate their implications into our daily lives.

We are a nation divided — this much seems clear no matter what part of the political spectrum you hail from. And it has me worried, not because I think we all need to believe the same things but because we can’t even agree on what to disagree on. Meaning: shared beliefs on what constitutes basic “facts” have become rhetorical weapons in a war of competing realities.

I suppose I saw it coming over a decade ago, when people were disputing that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii, arguing that he wasn’t a US citizen and wasn’t a Christian, despite his claims (and evidence) to support what seemed irrefutable facts about his identity. I recently watched a CNN news piece in which a reporter discussed with a QANON supporter that there was no evidence to support the assertion that Hollywood elites were running an underground pedophile ring. The QANON supporter said that the lack of evidence was actually evidence of it happening.

I don’t even know how to respond to that, so let me just repeat this so you can sit with it: the lack of evidence is evidence itself.

I was interested in the T\LT WEST roundtable, “The Semiotics of the Stay-At-Home,” because I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be sheltering-in-place. I’m interested in signs and symbols related to quarantine and COVID-19, especially the politics of it all. And when I say politics, I mean both ideological and electoral — politics have been front and center of my thinking about our global pandemic given the inadequate leadership at the federal level. That artist/roundtable prompter Rebecca Vaughan would be leading us through her process of baking sourdough bread seemed like a great bonus, since I love food and am fascinated by the symbolism of foodways.

This was my first T\LT WEST event, so I wasn’t sure if the demographics of those in the room, at least optically speaking, were typical or not. It seemed all of us save two people were female-identified or perhaps a more accurate way of putting this was that only two out of 18 participants used male pronouns in their Zoom name and/or when they spoke about themselves. Only four of the 18 seemed optically not to be white, though again that’s more difficult to suss out since there are white-appearing Latinx, Indigenous, and multiracial people. Certainly all of us had enough technological know-how to be on Zoom, and since these events are by invitation to those on the T\LT WEST mailing list, my best guess was that most of us had some level of college education, some knowledge of what terms like “semiotics” means, some connection to arts, literature, humanities, and/or non-profit work, and I’d have placed bets that none of us had voted for the current president in the US elections that took place the week before.

You may be wondering why I was paying attention to demographics, so now is the time for me to say: I always pay attention to demographics. I don’t know how unique I am, but I’m guessing that finding myself “the only one” in a room more often than not is one reason I am habituated to seeing who else may be “like me” in any situation I find myself in. And by “like me” I will just say that while it seems my racial difference has been one of the most obvious and salient forms of difference that finds me “the only one” most of the time, I’ve also found myself a minority in other ways: in my political views, in what I research, in my gender, and — in this Zoom room — I was probably one of the few, if only, people who doesn’t like sourdough bread, or really any fermented foods; beer, kombucha, and sauerkraut just don’t do it for me.

For roughly the first hour the conversation felt like one you’d have with the demographics of this group of people — a lot of acknowledgement of our privilege and disclosing how we were coping with COVID-19 and staying at home. Different projects — food, art, crafts — were shared, and, for the most part, things felt polite, cautious, and respectful, like what you would hear at a Quaker meeting as people made statements that weren’t necessarily in response to anyone else — more sharing than dialogue or conversation.

And then I asked the question that had been on my mind: if sourdough is the symbol of an elite liberal left, what is the equivalent for the MAGA conservative Republican?

I suppose one could and should quibble with my assertion that sourdough, bread or otherwise, is a food symbol of the elite overly-educated middle-class left-leaning liberal. And I do not have a lot of people in my social circles who identify as right-leaning MAGA-supporting conservatives, so my belief that they may not also be staying at home, tending to their sourdough starter, feeling isolated because of COVID, and talking about microbiomes on our bodies and ecosystems — may be completely off. But I have increasingly been feeling like my reality is not the same reality of many people — certainly not of the nearly 74 million people who voted for a second term of our current president. And I don’t know that I can make any sense of that.

Maybe I’m a one issue voter (that issue being human rights), but I can’t make sense of voting for someone who incarcerated children at the US southern border, effectually kidnapping them and causing 545 of them to be orphaned. I can’t make sense of someone who won’t disavow white supremacists, and who claimed there were fine people “on both sides” at the Charlottesville pro-white supremacy demonstration. And I can’t make sense of voting for someone who has politicized mask wearing and doesn’t support basic public health, medical, and science recommendations for how to conduct yourself during a global pandemic.

So I wanted to know what everyone else thought about the semiotics of sourdough as symbolic of a type of person, one that seemed to be like the people in the roundtable’s Zoom room and not like the people I see on TV that were protesting election results in Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. If sourdough is the emblem of the stay-at-home left-leaning liberal, what do we think the MAGA conservative is making during their COVID-19 stay-at-home time? What followed was a lively and not altogether harmonious discussion about those of us on the left, those on the right, evangelical Christians who make kombucha, Amish who practice artisanal crafts, people on the right from more working-class and working-poor backgrounds who bake bread out of necessity rather than craft, and a gentle admonishment from another woman of color in the room about “othering” Republicans, combined with her belief that we are all more alike than unalike, no matter our political differences.

I’m genuinely not so sure about the last point. I’ll take being admonished for my othering of MAGA supporters. I am othering them. I don’t wish to demonize anyone, truly. It’s just this: I know I am not considered a fully enfranchised human being deserving of the same rights and respect as a white American man by a fair sector of US society and a fair number of people who wear red “Make America Great Again” hats. The exponential rise of anti-Asian violence and harassment in the wake of COVID-19 reinforces my forever foreign status. The fact that I am a hyphenated Chinese-American and not someone who is identified solely and simply as “American” is proof of this.

So, too, is the fact that women continue to be treated as second-class citizens. One recent example can be seen in the announcement that President-elect Biden has selected an all-female communication team. Don’t get me wrong — I’m very happy that the seven members of the senior communication team for Biden and Harris will be all women, with half optically appearing as non-white women. But this shouldn’t be news in the second decade of the 21st century. It shouldn’t have taken this long to elect the first woman Vice President, to have women play such prominent roles in politics, and for people of color to be recognized for what they are: fully enfranchised humans who should not have to fear that being pulled over by a police officer may result in their death, or that their desire to come to the US will be met with hostility and the false conviction that they are coming here to steal from US citizens, or that, if their religious beliefs differ from the Judeo-Christian system, those beliefs will be used as a reason to question their patriotism or citizenship status.

The semiotics of staying at home are probably not the same for me, the PhD ethnic studies professor who is in an inter-racial marriage and who owns a home in Boulder County, as they are for a white, Christian, evangelical high school graduate who works a retail shift at Target in Montrose County. But honestly, I have no idea. And that’s part of the problem. There is so much division in the US — so much strife, mistrust, so many bad feelings, and a conviction that anyone who voted for the person you believe would ruin the country must not share your values, culture, and foodstuffs.

I’m open to sharing space with someone whose political views don’t match mine — but we’d have to establish some common ground first. For one thing, I’d have to know that they view me as a fully enfranchised human being, and it would go a long way to know that they don’t think COVID-19 is a hoax and that they believe in wearing a mask. I’m not sure how to overcome the divided state of America that we find ourselves in, but I hope we can find common ground and facts we can agree on, even if where we land is disagreement. After years of disinformation campaigns, agreeing to disagree may just be the only state we can imagine, even if the glass-half-full part of me would like to imagine a united state of being.

In March of 2020, the country was forced into introversion at the onset of a worldwide pandemic. A “safer at home” mandate was put in place to save as many people as possible from the threat of a widespread infection, yet the result forced many people to face unsafe circumstances at home. We were forced to deal with our families, our personalities, our thoughts, our addictions. We were forced to see one another, vulnerable and scared, with no means of escape. For some of us, the world was safer than our homes. For many others, the world was never safe.

After 2 months of collective self-reflection, we found some semblance of unity in that we were all suffering together. Together. We were all at home and miserable in our own existence.

Then George Floyd was murdered…

and the country went into an uproar.

People protested, many who had never protested before. Brown people and white people stood alongside one another, supporting each other and supporting themselves. There was more collective suffering, a collective experience of trauma.

The word trauma, in fact, has an interesting history. According to the Ngram Viewer, usage of the word has spiked since the 1950s and 60s. What was happening in the 50s and 60s? Race riots. What was happening before? Racial inequality, racism and bias toward certain groups of people and the resistance thereof. So what is more traumatic today in 2020 than in 2019? I would say that 2020 brought new awareness — awareness of ourselves, of our inequities, and of our inability to mask our trauma with external stimulation. We have become aware of our own trauma, coupled with the new experience of the trauma of others.

For some, this trauma is not new…

and this grief is not new.

For some, this grief has been unsheathed, drawn from the stone of naiveté and thrust into collective consciousness. For others, it hangs at the hip, its blade constantly sharpened by layers of unacknowledged trauma, drawing blood at every step and leaving a trail of blood in its owner’s wake. Yet, we have all been walking on spilled blood whether we have been aware of it or not.

For those of you who are newly aware…

welcome.

Artists have expressed trauma for centuries. The concept of art, trauma and resistance is not new. The current moment, what I’ll call The Movement of 2020, is unlike any other movement, simply because the world was forced into a sort of collective time-out. Everything slowed, even the production of art. I, like many other artists, thrive in the kind of silence that was created: the buzzing energy of the world quelled with everyone inside their homes, the streets emptied, and we shared the echo of the night. The quiet energy was like an early winter morning, all sound buffered by a heavy blanket of snow. In the quiet, a new energy drove me to want to create, despite my own quarantine. I was fortunate enough to have a studio inside my home so I combined my own solitary sadness with the abundance of energy newly available to me and poured it into my art. I was miserable but I had to create. I had to, with every ounce of my soul and my being.

The same is not true for every artist, nor should that be the expectation, but somehow it was for me and for many. And as the race riots grew, fires burned, and Black blood continued to spill, more and more people created more art that expressed the rage that so many were experiencing. The self-taught, quiet rage that I bottled up into a nice little package so as not to appear as an angry Black woman no longer seemed acceptable. The call was for loud radical art, forceful and belligerent.

What do I do with myself if I am not belligerent? Am I still relevant to the cause? Does my work still reach an audience that expects boisterous and radical protest? No one came to me and requested or demanded that I change my style. No one told me that my art was no longer acceptable, that I should change or get trampled by the cause.

I am more angry today than before 2020:

traumatized by my personal struggles and the struggles of Black and brown culture;

traumatized by the ripping away of bandages placed and replaced over wounds that never heal, at the hands of white people who are newly aware of those wounds and want to poke and prod for their own understanding.

I am angry, and working in my studio quells that anger, twists it into shapes and forms, the likes of which people never expect. My work is abstract: it doesn’t contain literal narratives or reveal obvious rage. But it is relevant. I recognize that I do not have to change my voice in order to stay relevant. I need to stay true, as does every other artist who uses their voice at octaves most appropriate for them. I encourage any other artist who faces the same struggle: stay true to your voice and we will listen.

There’s a new podcast I just started listening to called Field Recordings. They describe their show as, “A podcast where audio-makers stand silently in fields (or things that could be broadly interpreted as fields).” And whatever you’re thinking that sounds like is probably close to correct. There’s no host, no editing; just the sound of a field, or a park, or ocean waves. The pieces range from one to fifteen minutes in length. Outside of the sounds of random people passing by, there’s no talking, so there’s no story, no emotional arc, no payoff at the end. Just the sound of tall grass in the breeze or ice skates on a pond or row boats passing under a bridge. They began releasing episodes right before the Covid-19 lockdowns started. And for me, during this time we’re living in, it’s a salve for my ears and thoughts. This kind of audio is not made for impatient listening. It’s not “content.” It falls into a category of what’s now called “slow radio.” And I’m all in.

This new show seems to go against what the heavy hitters in the podcasting world advise. I once read an interview with Ira Glass where he said that something interesting needs to happen in This American Life stories every ninety seconds. Ninety seconds! That is 40 actions per hour, so those waves in Field Recordings better be crashing or causing peril quite often. On the show 99% Invisible, Roman Mars breaks in with his beautiful, mellifluous, voice every couple of minutes to tell you what the story is about, where it’s been and where it’s going. Both of these examples are an expansion on the way NPR radio makers and related documentarians have been making stories for a long time. This format itself was designed for station identification and sponsor breaks. It does move along the story, but I’ve found this kind of storytelling doesn’t reward patience. It doesn’t reward close listening. I don’t mean to sound like I’m denigrating these shows. In fact, both of those creators have been my unspoken mentors through the years. Also, I’ve employed this very method in my own work. And these shows are clearly making vital, entertaining, and important work. What I am saying though is that they define the industry. If they created and followed these rules (they do), then so does everyone else. And that means that a larger variety of stories and a diversity of voices is not being heard.

Let’s return to the idea of slow radio. It’s a new term for an old practice. Essentially it means letting people tell a story and really listening. Across the pond in England, the BBC has been making these kinds of stories since… forever. It’s a little more rare here, as it’s not a commercially viable model. This kind of storytelling can be fun, interesting, informative, and sometimes even boring! For instance, I once heard a story of a tugboat captain out on his rounds. It was lovingly produced, sound rich and, on the surface, dry as dust. The radio producer spent the whole day, if not a couple of days, with the tugboat captain. Then they cut the tape together into a full half hour piece. The piece itself spends time with the sounds of the tugboat’s little engine as it drifts through the water or bumps up against a dock or another boat. You hear the cries of seagulls on the shore and the sound of ropes being thrown. You listen to a man with a strong Welsh accent telling you what it’s like to go about his day in a tugboat. There is no story arc, no emotional payoff, just an old man in a boat, towing other boats around, talking about his life and work. The beauty of it isn’t transcendent or heartbreaking. You have to slow yourself down to hear it. You have to adjust your expectations, quiet your mind and really listen. There’s another kind of listening at play here too. A kind of listening that invites one to go deeper into someone else’s lived experience. To find empathy for people you will never know. You do have to work for it a little bit though. You have to be curious and patient.

Like listening, curiosity takes time and is iterative. And, with both, you need patience. In my own work I try to focus on the intersection among these three concepts, deliberately removing myself from the narrative so people listening can absorb the content and meaning of the subject and narrative from their own viewpoint. I try to embrace the pauses between sentences, allowing someone to speak and think and speak some more without interruption. During interviews, I allow space between when people speak and when I ask follow up questions so I can easily remove my questions and let them delve into their own story.

Obviously many of you (well, most of you) are not as immersed in audio storytelling as I am, but, hopefully after this read, you will go check out some slow radio programs. I’ll throw some links in at the end of this. I believe there are ideas we can all take in around listening, like curiosity and patience in what we care about and create.

I was excited to be part of the latest Tilt West roundtable on Curiosity & Deceleration, and part of a discussion that speaks to my practice so well. Here are some things I’ve been ruminating on since:

Listen: I’ve heard others in my field saying they have to stop themselves from “editing” while others are talking. This is something I’ve struggled with a little myself. But I think that slowing down and really listening to others’ experiences and thoughts is a skill that has to be developed. The lockdowns have introduced this idea to me in a way, and I hope to keep working on this.

Be curious: Ask why. And don’t stop with the first why. Continuing to explore something through that simple question- or even reflection- allows an excavation of sorts that really gets to the heart of a problem. This also gets to the heart of a story. Your story and the story of someone who thinks differently than you.

Be patient: Let pauses happen. I know I have a tendency to want to fill empty spaces with noise but it’s not always necessary. Allow spaces to occur within your thoughts. I’m going to try to accept the idea of idleness, to allow for time and space to find inspiration.

Tilt West’s roundtable conversation centered on deceleration and explored the value of slowing down — something quarantines and closures have also fostered for many of us. Perhaps this cultural shift in perspective (even the experience of boredom) will foster a new appreciation for slow looking, slow listening, and slow radio.