Week in Review: November 11th, 2024
Welcome to our inaugural guest-curated edition of Contemporary NFT Daily. This week is curated by Gilbert. In the curatorial statement that follows, Gilbert reflects on their selection and the radical and utopian aspirations of the works.
More than pure artworks, more than artless utility tokens, these NFT projects represented the promise of onchain artistic community. Worlds apart from the moronic platitudes of the Moonbirds nesting roadmap and the Bored Apes commercial rights license, they were the best efforts of the most compelling artists, technologists, and organisers in the space to create and share value by building cryptomedia infrastructure.
These were my adopted artistic communities. The objects of my fleeting dreams of financial interdependence, of my heady mints, of my nod-along sincerity-posting. I harvested $WISDOM; I wrote Tomb Series fan-fiction; I spoke up enthusiastically in the first (and only) Channel community call; and in the Writing Token holder's calls. I was proud to curate the first community-initiated canon on JPG. A good and faithful citizen I aspired to be.
The dissolution of these projects has been a telling illustration of the dynamics of onchain profilicity. After the market slipped in 2022, an artistic exodus from mainnet ETH began and a disposable, devalued mints are just likes sentiment took hold. The conditions for projects funded in 2021 changed beyond recognition. Through no fault of their own they could not sustain themselves. But the time never quite seemed right. The artist-founders never quite had the heart. Their project PFPs were quietly retired and their tragic announcement posts poned forever. Across the mostly deserted Discords whose disheartened disciples still kept vigil, the WENs turned to whys? What happened?
Back in 2021, I immediately preferred the upfront inextricability of art and finance onchain to the IRL museum world's white cube with a BP logo tastefully placed in the corner. I learned to look at a preview of one of my beloved tokens on OpenSea, in a browser window, surrounded by price-trend charts and low-ball offers, without corrupting my idealised image of it as an artwork. But, despite whatever I presumably told myself at the time, that's not financial literacy. I'll keep hodling though, if only for the dear life-affirming optimism that these projects represent. And who am I to argue that grafting on X to drive enough micro-transactional mints to earn 10,000 sparks, well, "it's better than not getting paid at all."
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Gilbert is CEO and Head of Derivatives at Netmorf and a curator at Folklore. Active as an onchain graphic design commentator and NFT ghostwriter, David Rudnick has called them "the Geoffrey Chaucer of our cursed graphic age." |
Galerie Yeche Lange Pie Key Un, Red Plate Pie Key 69, 2022. Ethereum. Private collection of inanimatesensation.eth.
Mirror L2 Launch Invite, Mirror L2 Launch Invite 59/150. 2022. Ethereum. Private collection of 0xe62d...A32E.
David Rudnick and Luke Miles, V1 Index Marker Sarcophagus. 2022. Ethereum. Private collection of losingmyego.eth.
Gabagool.eth | Writing Token, Gabagool.eth | Writing Token 899/1000. 2022. Ethereum. Private collection of 0x2f6D...12F5.
JPG Canonicon, Canonicon #63. 2022. Ethereum. Private collection of kirstenbevin.eth.
π²πΎππΉπππ π»ππ π©πππππ, Harmonizing digital experiences. 2023. Ethereum. Private collection of claracxw.eth.
Channel-S0, Channel Season 0 Founder Token. 2022. Ethereum. Private collection of jon-kyle.eth.
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