…Clubhouse & NFT’s
SEASON 1 EP 03
Mentioned in this episode:
NFT’s??? A Quick Guide for Emerging Artists A short form podcast and list of resources about all things NFT’s by Isotta Page & Reuben Noronha. Check It Out
Episode Transcript:
Hi, it's me Isotta. Welcome to Episode 3 of Art Is… a seven-part podcast for artists. Last episode, I discussed the value of art based knowledge tools: iteration and critique. And today I'm diving into emerging technologies that are shedding light on the art business divide. Thanks, and enjoy!
As we continue to live remote lives beyond the studio and the pandemic is now over a year old, it's interesting to reflect on what new technologies have emerged and how artists and art world players are adopting them. NFT's and the app Clubhouse, are making a big splash. And for an industry that has not always embraced innovation, it's exciting to see new tech impacting the space. What I find fascinating is that these technologies are bringing up the internal divisions between art and business. A binary that holds an outdated stigma for early-career artists, and something we must overcome in our vision for the future art world.
This is Art Is... An art podcast where we visualize the future of the art world.
Because of the pandemic, the in-person nature of the art industry is currently being challenged. Exhibitions are now online. Auctions are too. And the conversations, lectures, and panel discussions that accompany curatorial practice and contemporary art shows that were normally only accessible to the elite few who attended art fairs or exhibition openings are now more widely distributed online.
One memorable experience for me was back in the summer of 2020. The Pace Gallery held one of its first fully remote and fully free panel discussions on the future of public sculpture in the wake of the BLM protests and the tearing down of statuary that promoted racist and colonial histories across the US and in the UK. This was one of the first impactful Zoom webinars that I attended. I remember thinking that this conversation would have normally happened behind closed doors in an exhibition space in New York or London. In the wake of the increased accessibility of talks and seminars, we've had the rise of an app like Clubhouse, where there's no need for a formal event, like an exhibition opening or art fair to initiate discussions. The drop-in audio app is fostering all sorts of dialogues and debates. I find that whether they're ten or a thousand people in the room, there's an intimacy being fostered.
Probably because there's no video and people can't hide behind passive-aggressive comments because there's no chat function. I hope that, unlike most social media, it can be an equalizer in the art industry and serve as a community connection tool, not as a technology seeking to imitate interactions in real life. Mostly because the connections happening on Clubhouse are unprecedented in the traditional art world, which has always been inaccessible, sequestered in VIP-only areas behind walls of wealth and status.
The Clubhouse reality is new. Artists, students, gallerists, and industry players are all mixing. Sharing personal experiences and professional advice and talking art. Voices are being shared and connections are being made internationally. And it's great to hear people who are genuinely excited to help each other out.
On Clubhouse, you can meet people you admire, whose work inspires you without needing to fly across the world! Buy a ticket to an expensive art fair or museum, and speak up either in a crowded conference hall or nervously hover around a person. Now, all you need to do is join a virtual room and unmute.
I like the spontaneity of it all. The conversations are candid. Especially since the app is so new and people are still experimenting. I don't want to pretend that Clubhouse is a match that will burn down old systems and replace centuries, long traditions of in-person events. I'm simply interested in it as a parallel and accessible alternative that, at this rate, could help a lot of creatives out of a pandemic rut.
I hope to see thought leaders emerge and converge with an increasingly diverse and participatory audience of artists breaking down barriers and creating new, professional cultures where asking questions is encouraged and you don't have to worry about getting a blank stare or discouraging shake of the head. Conversation, dialogue, and debate are central to contemporary art.
And as people get more comfortable doing things virtually, the physical side of buying and distributing art has also gone remote. Digitally native artworks are getting their moment–thanks to the NFT boom. Non-fungible tokens have swept the digital art world and made millions for artists and collectors in the primary and secondary markets. In the wake of the people's $69 million sales at Christie's, the whole anti-establishment impetus of blockchain tech, the ethos of eliminating the middleman and centralized authority in order to give people the opportunity and means to self-govern their money and ownership is all being heavily debated.
True believers and blockchain's revolutionary potential are speaking out. Because the ideological aim of NFTs was to eliminate gatekeepers of all types. So the Christie’s sale is seen as a betrayal of cryptos core values and the multitudes of personalities and the ever-growing NFT space right now is entertaining. Seeing this hardcore mission-driven ideology associated with crypto now intersecting with the elite art world financial domain is proving to be interesting, to say the least. But like everything in the art world, this unprecedented overlap of old-world institutions and new tech is not as interesting as the parallel conversations, projects, and implications NFTs breaking into space.
First off, it's great to see digital art being valued. Digital artists can now sell their work because of the tokenization of it on the blockchain. I find mixed media or cross-media NFTs to be really interesting. Some NFTs are records of ownership of digital objects and some of the physical ones. And artists like Carlos Luna James combines digital animation and physical sculpture. He has made art at Burning Man with Meow Wolf, the collective focused on building experiential immersive art installations.
And another artist I wanted to flag was Trevor Jones, who actually graduated from the same MA as me back in 2008. His NFT, Bitcoin Angel, is actually a scan or photo of an oil painting he made based on the famous baroque Ecstasy of St. Teresa statue, but he places a gold Bitcoin symbol in the space of the golden light of God. There's some thinly veiled symbolism there, which I enjoy, especially since I grew up visiting that statue in the original church it's housed in and Rome.
These artists are pioneering the relationship between NFTs and physical works of art, and what's happening in the digital art world and the stamp of approval the medium has garnered over the past months is major news for other less tangible art forms like performance work or sound art. And I'm really excited to see how creatives in these sectors can start exploring NFTs as a way to sell and distribute their art.
But as an artist working primarily in sculpture, I've been thinking a lot about how NFTs could help support physical fine art. In one such way, could be as an alternative funding method instead of grants or donations for large-scale projects or more time-consuming series of work.
I think about this, not actually through a contemporary lens, but through the work of Christo and Jean-Claude, the art star power couple, who for decades realized enormous mixed-media installations. Think the London Mastaba in 2016 or the Wrapped Islands in Miami's Biscayne Bay in 1983.
These amazing and immersive installations cost millions of dollars and the artists brought them to live entirely on their own using no public or corporate money. They did this by raising money through the sale of other pieces in their collection and through the marketing of drawings, collages, and early works related to the large installations they were building. This included selling sketches, prep drawings, collages, and other early works for these monumental and femoral installations.
What they were doing was essentially building a “hype machine” around these works. Turning sketches into valuable, one-of-a-kind marketing materials. But Christo and Jean-Claude's work took years to realize. So they planned it all out. And as the date of the big installation opening approached, the early works related to the large project would increase in value due to public anticipation and excitement.
This is obviously an oversimplification of their business strategy because what's important to mention, is the artists also formed a corporation in order to gain access to loan programs provided by large banks. To get these loans, Christo and Jean-Claude maintained ownership over the vast majority of their collection of artwork, including these prep works. And they often had to buy them back at a premium to use as collateral for the loans. But in doing so, they always ended up increasing the value of their artwork in the process.
I don't think the Christo and Jean-Claude model is something we need to emulate too closely, however, just by skimming the surface of their business strategy I see connections to how artists could start using NFTs…
Say you were working on a time-intensive series of art works or large installation. You could build up hype around that, through the strategic release of NFTs, which introduced the themes and visuals of that installation to your audience, creating a Christo like financial feedback loop, where the first NFT sells for a low price, but the second and the third sell for higher prices as you start revealing more and the opening of the installation or drop of the new series approaches.
However, there's also another business model to explore here. Because NFTs can represent digital items or physical ones, if you were working on a large piece, you could associate it to an NFT, which would serve as the certificate of authenticity for that work. But essentially you could pre-sell that NFT, much like how venture capital works for startups. And instead of selling the whole thing to one person, you could sell different shares to different people. Kind of like a crowdfunded project. Or like in a startup when you raise capital from many different people who each fit varying stakes in that company.
But with NFTs, what's great is you're investing in artwork and you can transfer that contribution over to someone else at any time or liquidate it all together and sell that ownership over to someone else in a secondary market like that of the Open Sea. The best part of this is that the artists would always get a cut of each sale because NFTs are built as smart contracts where the artist always gets resale royalty rights.
This means that the artistic work that goes into making that piece has longevity beyond the initial sale and is valued throughout the lifespan of the art. It's important to note here that these artists resale royalty rights, or artists gaining a fee every time their work trades hands, is not a new concept. It's just one that's been basically impossible to enforce because of the fragmented and shady financial practices of the art world. But with NFTs, smart contracts are automated. Meaning people aren't enforcing it, so it's hard to cheat. It's written into the code of how NFTs work. I'm no expert on NFTs or crypto, but perhaps this could have a meaningful impact on artistic financial stability moving forward.
Twenty years ago, the art dealer René Gimpel wrote, “artists do not compete with each other in their work methods, the hours of labor they spend in the studio or the number of canvases they produce in a day. In the studio, there's no going rate and no hourly fee.”
That resonated with me because the nature of artistic work is independent of the nine to five workday and in a world where time is money and money is the currency of life, I think we have to start embracing new tech as one way to create alternative business solutions for artists everywhere.
Cryptocurrency and Clubhouse are both technologies that are not native to the art world, nor specifically built for the contemporary art community. However, both have been adopted in a way to address crucial pain points, and in the process, shed light on the art business divide.
Clubhouse is providing opportunities to connect and share personal and professional experiences–a parallel, intimate kind of networking. And now with NFTs, there are new business models to explore and artistic work is finally being valued beyond the initial point of sale–thanks to smart contracts.
There's always going to be hesitation and naysayers, but as we embark on this journey of visualizing the future art world, I think it's important to cast a wide net. Explore and experiment and learn from other industries beyond the studio and traditional art world, because that is the spirit of artistic knowledge. Looking in unfamiliar locations and seeking inspiration from beyond the confines of our own experiences.
This episode, I'd like to thank my brother Oliver Page, who introduced me to Clubhouse, and Reuben Noronha, a crypto enthusiast, who explained NFTs to me a few months back. We actually recorded my first ever podcast together and created a guide for emerging artists looking to learn more about NFTs. You can find that in the episode description.
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