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Nathalie Casemajor, National Institute for Scientific Research (INRS)
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are digital objects that represent something else, such as a work of art, a video, or even a tweet. They certify the existence and ownership of this item through a data recording on a blockchain (a distributed ledger technology).
Since the rise of NFTs in 2016, many artists have experimented with this new digital device to market their creations. NFTs are usually purchased and resold through auction sites, where payments are made in cryptocurrency (such as ether currency). It is this idea of a certificate recorded on a blockchain that distinguishes an NFT from a standard digital work.
The public and media discourse about NFTs is polarized: in the eyes of their biggest enthusiasts, NFTs represent the future of art, while their detractors see them as a huge rip-off and a waste of energy.
How can this NFT phenomenon be characterized? To what extent does it challenge the established codes of contemporary art?
As a researcher specialized in media studies and cultural sociology, I will provide a brief overview of the situation.
Cryptoevangelists and crypto-skeptics
On the one hand, there is the camp that can be described as crypto-evangelists: they adhere to a discourse that presents NFTs as a radical revolution that will change everything.
This is precisely the discourse surrounding the sensational 2021 sale of a work by artist Beeple (a collage of vignettes created by digital software) at the prestigious auction house Christie’s for almost $70 million. According to the two main customersthe purchase was ’emblematic of an ongoing revolution’ and marked ‘the beginning of a movement carried out by an entire generation’.
On the other hand, there are the crypto-skeptics. This is the position of Hito Steyerl, a widely recognized media artist. She believes NFTs are the “equivalent of toxic masculinity” and owe their development to “the worst and most monopolistic actors” who “take labor away from precarious workers” and “take up way too much attention and consume all the oxygen in the room.”
This polarization means that the real potential of NFTs, as well as their shortcomings, which are also very real, tend to be overshadowed by caricatured positions of principle. Within this ecosystem of NFTs, however, there exists a range of rich and plural artistic practices.
Emerging creative scenes
The NFT format definitely represents a new type of object being traded. It is based on a new type of contract (known as ‘smart’), which is itself the result of the innovation of blockchain technology. In this way, the NFT format has given rise to the emergence of a new creative scene. Or rather: scenes, in the plural, that are characterized by great effervescence – but also by certain contradictions.
The “original” scenes of the NFT format, that is to say those born with the invention of this format, are characterized by strong media visibility, a volume of far-reaching financial investments and, for some of the actors, a wants to rearrange the cards of the art world by criticizing the established order.
A large portion of NFT creators come from 3D modeling, graphic design, animation, or video game design practices – in other words, from the creative industries sector. Over the past decades, this sector has produced a very large amount of skills creative surplus finds a means of expression in the NFT format, but also a source of additional income to cope with the often precarious conditions of creative work.
Many figures from the original NFT scenes are, to express the sociologist Howard S. Becker, outsiders (neophytes) compared to the established art world. That is, they socialize in circles other than those of the institutional art world, and in many ways they break its rules.
A more egalitarian art world?
The discourse of the main buyers of Beeple’s sensational work is very illuminating in this sense. MetaKovan and Twobadour (two investors from the crypto world, both of Indian origin) reveal in an interview:
We are conditioned from an early age to think that art was not for us. …We have always been against the idea of exclusivity. The metaverse is all-encompassing. …A metaverse in which everyone will have the same rights and powers will be legitimate. … It’s extremely egalitarian.
However, there are major contradictions between the discourse of egalitarianism they advocate here and its implementation in the projects of these two investors. For example during the technological art event Dream verse which they organized in New York in 2021, the entrance fee for the evening ranged from $175 to $2,500 – a prohibitive price for many amateurs. Rather, this hierarchy of prices leads to the reproduction of a logic of exclusivity that favors the most fortunate.
Museums are careful
The gap between the market value of NFTs and their value in museums is unprecedented. The former is reaching unprecedented heights, while the latter is still at rock bottom. NFT collecting by museums remains a very marginal practice to this day. Only a handful of NFTs have been integrated into museum collections. Some of them were acquired following an exhibition in a museum, where they are presented on digital screens hanging on the wall.
Cultural legitimacy is influenced by the disintermediation (elimination of intermediaries) and reintermediation (introduction of new intermediaries) that characterize the world of NFTs. In its disruptive momentum, the proclaimed revolution of NFTs is cutting itself off from a chain of established, legitimate intermediaries – the gallery owners, curators, art critics, conventional collectors and government subsidies.
It has replaced them with new middlemen, mainly “whales” – investors who have made a fortune in cryptocurrency – or celebrities from popular culture. These new intermediaries over-invest financial capital in the production of NFTs with the aim of gaining a prestige position as collectors, or enriching themselves by increasing the value of works. But they often lack the social and cultural capital to find a way to access museums, their exhibition spaces and their collections.
In search of legitimacy
However, these works are publicly accessible, as all NFTs are freely searchable on their buyers’ e-wallets. Some collectors only buy works to speculate. Others gain visibility by displaying their NFTs in a metaverse (a virtual world), such as Decentraland or Room.
And for others, the search for legitimacy goes even further: in the spring of 2022, a group of artists, curators, collectors and NFT platforms organized a Decentralized Art Pavilion, parallel to the Venice Biennale. The exhibition remained outside the official program and aimed to position NFTs in the context of this important contemporary art event.
But the presence of NFTs remained marginal in this edition of the biennale. Only the Cameroon pavilion exhibited NFTs under the direction of a curator with a shady reputationand the result was disappointing.
Recognition of NFTs by the dedicated art world may come through other avenues, such as the more experimental practices presented at the conference. documenta art exhibition in Kassel, Germany this year, or through artistic movements from developing countries, such as the Balot projectthat used an NFT to criticize the appropriation of a work from the Republic of Congo by an American museum.
Recognition could therefore come through the margin. But in these cases, the marginal players could gain easier access to the established art world because they share its codes.
Nathalie CasemajorProfession, National Institute for Scientific Research (INRS)
This article is republished from The conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.