We are very pleased to inform you about Proof of Stake – Technological Claims, a group exhibition, symposium, educational project and publication initiated by the Kunstverein in Hamburg and artist Simon Denny.

The exhibition will reflect on themes of technology, and ownership, which have also been central to a related seminar series and forthcoming pair of publications. The exhibition is named after an ownership-based blockchain protocol which has increase in visibility after competing systems were criticized for incentivizing high energy consumption. Proof of Stake questions how the framing of processes or objects as ‘technological’ performs cultural work – from blockchain protocols to museum reification practices. It will foreground the question of who gets to claim the technical, which is often accompanied with a legitimacy or naturalization of what could otherwise read as political processes. In dialogue with some of the region’s most important institutions like the MARKK (Museum am Rothenbaum), Denny and collaborators such as artist Timur Si-Qin and scholars of media and organization Timon Beyes and Claus Pias (Leuphana University Lüneburg) and Robin Holt (Copenhagen Business School) will unpack who and what plays a role in technology’s legitimation processes and how they interact with ownership and power.

In cooperation with Centre for Digital Cultures, Leuphana University Lüneburg, Museum am Rothenbaum. Kulturen und Künste der Welt and University of Fine Arts Hamburg (HFBK).

Curated by Bettina Steinbrügge and Simon Denny.