Status Update #4: On Curating NFTs, Selfie Feminism 2.0, and CryptoPunks
On Upcoming Lectures and Publications
On Friday, 6 December 2024, I will be giving a lecture at the OnCurating Academy Berlin: On Curating NFTs. Value in the Age of Digital Scarcity.
📍 Radialsystem Berlin & Zoom (register here to join online)
In 2021, a JPG was sold for 69 million US dollars. In 2024, a "banana" was sold for 6.2 million US dollars. What happened with NFTs between these two events? And what does all of this have to do with digital art and curating?
Kenny Schachter had something to say about my announcement on Twitter:
These are my opening slides for the presentation—and yes, that’s Taylor Swift:
… and there's more:
For the magazine Fräulein (Issue 38, EGO | 02/2024), I wrote a piece about the second wave of selfie feminism in the age of AI.
Nearly a decade after Leah Schrager and Jennifer Chan co-curated the influential online exhibition BODY ANXIETY, discussions around selfie feminism, body positivity, and the female gaze continue. Smartphones and selfie sticks have made it easier for female artists to take and share pictures of themselves. But what is happening now with artificial intelligence? What has changed in the lives of these artists? Are we currently experiencing a second wave of selfie feminism shaped by AI? To find answers to these questions, I grabbed my smartphone, wrote a few DMs and emails, and had conversations with Leah Schrager, Gretchen Andrew, Margaret Murphy, and Sarah Friend, among others.
Next week, on December 10, I will be a guest at the Bauhaus University in Weimar, giving a lecture on the second wave of selfie feminism in the age of AI in Professor Birgit Wudtke's seminar on photographic portraiture. The lecture will also be published in written form in the publication on the topic by Wudtke.
I wrote an essay, THE REVOLUTION IS PUNK, for the book CRYPTOPUNKS: FREE TO CLAIM (Phaidon). Other authors include Hans Ulrich Obrist, Shumon Basar, Michael Connor, Simon Denny, María Paula Fernández, Mindy Seu, Mat Dryhurst, Noam Segal, and more. Here is a short text from the publisher about the book:
FREE TO CLAIM “is about the intersection of art and technology. Launched in 2017, the Punks—10,000 uniquely generated pixel characters—have sold for millions of dollars at Christie’s and Sotheby’s and joined the permanent collections of major art institutions, including ICA Miami, LACMA, and Centre Pompidou.
For the first time, this mega book presents this breakout artwork—alongside essays, interviews, manifestos, blotter art, field reports, Discord threads, and anonymously authored glossary terms—across 800+ pages.”
I spoke with .ART about curating digital art and the state of NFTs; you can read the interview here. An excerpt:
“What has surprised me the most and continues to surprise me is that there is often no connection made between NFTs and the history of digital art, or it is often not even known that digital art has a history dating back to the 1950s.”
Thank you for reading this.
See you soon—offline or online!
Love,
Anika