9 January 4pm

Kunsthalle Giessen about crypto art, NFTs and St. Beisel:

NFT - Non Fungible Token - means something like 'non-exchangeable character*.
This is a digital file that only exists in virtual space. As a firmly defined form, the token is unique. The NFT is secured by a so-called blockchain - a kind of collectively visible "account book" [Kolja Reichert 2021, p. 10].

The data chains contained therein are forgery-proof and document a digital product as well as its ownership history (provenance) permanently and unchangeably. The unique digital file and the security of sale guaranteed by the blockchain make NFTs attractive for a wide variety of areas, whether in the music, film and gaming industries, sports or the fine arts. With the help of blockchain technology, artists are able to upload their digital works quickly and securely to online platforms, make them visible to a wide audience and sell them. The type of art is extremely diverse. NFTs can be singular images as well as videos, animations, collages or purely auditory. Due to their unique data chains, these works of art are equivalent to a signed original. At the same time, the described data chain makes it possible to distinguish the NFT from sensitively identical copies as a digital one-off. On online platforms like OpenSea and Nifty Gateway they can, mostly  through the use of cryptocurrencies.

Kevin McCoy's Quantum (#1) is considered the first NFT today. The digital artwork was presented by McCoy at a conference hosted by Rhizome, a digital culture magazine, in 2014 and sold for $1.4 million at Sotheby's last June. Sales values in the millions are no longer a rarity. The auction house Christie's recently auctioned the NFT collage Everydays: The First 5000 Days by the artist Beeple for the equivalent of more than 58 million euros. Existential Questions With their first institutional solo exhibition St. Beisel in the Kunsthalle Gießen, the artist duo Studio Beisel gives the global hype surrounding digital artworks an 'existential' dimension. Guided by a pilgrim's pass, visitors are not only accompanied on a journey from this world to the afterlife, but are also led into the gaming arena of crypto culture. Because in their walk-in installation, the artists combine physical space with the digital: when roaming through the installation, the audience is asked to leave visual or acoustic traces, from which Laurenz Raschke and Kajetan Skurski generate NFTs. These will be sold to the highest bidders at the finissage on January 9, 2022 during a trade fair. In a humorously broken way, the artists transfer the reflection on life after death, the human desire to leave traces of one's own existence, into the virtual present. The visitors' NFTs become a form of digital immortality that can also be purchased. In this way, the buyers secure their own obituary in virtual space. NFT fair and sacred fair merge with each other - and raise questions, also with regard to their ecological, social and ideological function. At the same time, the NFT auction, dubbed a trade fair, can be understood as an ironic dig at the great hype surrounding the new digital art genre. Because the future potential of NFTs is not undisputed: proponents refer, among other things, to the democratizing potential and the utopian idea of being able to establish a new art sphere and genre through NFTs, which – detached from traditional evaluation criteria and institutional gatekeepers – can be collectively co-determined . Dissenting voices, on the other hand, emphasize the immense energy consumption in the generation of the data chains, the lack of any evaluation standards and the associated risk of bad investments as well as a rapidly growing monopoly. The artist duo incorporates the global phenomenon of NFTs, their promises and risks in St. Beisel and thus poses new long-term questions about artistic quality and the economic benefits for art and society. A selection of these unique digital works of art made by Studio Beisel can be purchased at the NFT fair for the finissage of the exhibition on January 9, 2022 in the Kunsthalle Gießen. The website of the artists studiobeisel.com will be developed into a virtual showroom for the duration of the exhibition, in which curious visitors and potential buyers can obtain information in advance of the auction.



* A sign here means a unit of information, one that is structurally defined and accepted
Data set consisting of several individual data points.

Text:
Giessen art gallery