UPDATE:
“(…) Denny has recently been commissioned to produce work for the Zappos headquarters in Las Vegas. It seems likely that this venture will result in yet another piece of basically inoffensive corporate art, since in such a context the artist’s intentions are almost always effectively moot, whatever they might aspire to be. Such partnerships suggest the considerable commercial potential of para-critical tech art, which ultimately resembles nothing so much as the customized luxury RVs that Silicon Valley execs now routinely bring to Burning Man: it might look neat and be fun to talk about, but its real purpose is to give its owners a comfortable view of what once may have seemed like dissent.”
An interesting review on Simon Denny’s exhibition at Petzel Gallery (now over), written by Weiner, can be found on the art agenda website.
INITIAL ARTICLE:
Blockchain, with its open-source, distributed database using state-of-the-art cryptography, is a hot topic at the moment. Wall Street and multinational companies are highly interested in the technology behind Bitcoin and other crypto currencies. But they are not the only ones: the contemporary art market is also paying close attention to it as more and more artists start to explore blockchain related subjects through their work.
Blockchain Visionaries from Simon Denny at the biennale of Berlin
Simon Denny, who is an artist from New Zealand currently based in Berlin, is one of the first artists presenting narratives surrounding the blockchain’s future. In an exhibition called “Blockchain Future States”, which is currently taking place at New York’s Petzel Gallery, the 33-year-old artist investigates three leading blockchain companies (Ethereum, 21 Inc., and Digital Asset), which are at the cutting edge of decentralized governance systems. These companies propose radically different visions of the world that promise to change much more than the transfer of electronic money.
Denny is also present at the biennale in Berlin (until the 18th of September) with a similar installation in collaboration with the German based artist Linda Kantchev. “Blockchain Visionaries” is ironically presented in the European School of Economics, which is housed in the former building of the East German State Council. “My work is showing these three, real life companies that work in a virtual way. I’m saying if you don’t need a company, real fixed entities, then maybe you don’t need nation-states too,” said Denny, quoted by Aesthetica Magazine in a review of the Berlin biennale.
Simon Denny’s installation at the biennale in Berlin
Often seen as obscure concepts by the general public – often misunderstood – Denny’s goal is to make these technologies more accessible. To do so he uses commonplaces; trough games for example, such as the Risk board game and Pokémon cartoons. In an article published by The Guardian, Denny describes himself as a “geeky fan” that makes “fan art”. For his exhibition at the Petzel Gallery, the space will be used “as an altar to worship” the three blockchain companies (Ethereum, 21 Inc., and Digital Asset). The question is whether worshipping and being a fan allow Denny enough room to be critical of the political realities these technologies create.
While blockchain has been widely marketed towards digital artists as a way to securely share and trace their work (see for example the platform Ascribe which Bruce Pon presented at MoneyLab #2: Economies of Dissent), Denny’s work is interesting in making the concept behind it accessible in an artistic context. However, technologies are not neutral and reflect the interests of those who develop them. Thus, the next step is to examine the political and societal implication of the technology and to critique it from this artistic context. What kind of blockchain future do artists envision?