Art for Art(ist)’s Sake - Arthur and Kathleen Breitman on Tezos’ Grassroots Growth
Bits of Signum | 10.13.22
Culture Meets Crypto | Episode 8
Decentralization is a foundational pillar of blockchain, yet most users don’t realize they need it until they are exploited by centralization in some way. The latest case of mass centralization in blockchain comes to life in the Celsius court proceedings. 14,500 pages of documents were made publicly available online, divulging the names and transactions of thousands of people to be paired with anonymous on-chain activity. Participants who put their trust and personal information into Celsius’ databases may have lost their funds, and now may also be targets.
Arthur Breitman says, “The fact about decentralization is that it's like an insurance policy. You don't realize you want decentralization until you’ve lent your assets to a centralized protocol…Consumers learn over a longer timescale of crises.”
We discussed this concept of not understanding the importance of decentralization until you need it with Arthur and Kathleen Breitman, Founders of Tezos blockchain. We have dubbed Tezos, “Art for Art(ist)’s Sake, a reference to the famous Andy Warhol quote. The example we discussed was Hic-Et-Nunc, an NFT platform on Tezos which served as its ultimate decentralization test. When the Hic-et-Nunc website owner attempted to pull the plug on the website's front end, 20 more websites popped up in its place. Arthur said it was the website owner’s right to do what he wanted to with his site, but thanks to the open source code and the fact that all of the NFTs were on the chain, other people could step in and maintain it.
Art Basel - last year was a crypto conference; this year, only Tezos remained. Evan and I found it fascinating that neither the Breitmans nor the Foundation had to sell well-known performance artists Marina Abramović and many others to join the platform. Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that those who are used to being told, “that's not art” would be attracted to experimentation in NFTs. They came in early 2021 for the energy efficiency, and stayed for the authentic artist culture. “In another conversation we had with Kathleen, she says, “What I like about the NFT space is you meet people and they treat collecting as an expression of themselves.”
After digging into the burgeoning artist community on Tezos in Culture Meets Crypto Episode 8, we learned today that Tezos will be powering a collaboration called ‘Artist Worlds’ 2023, between the crème de la crème Serpentine Gallery in the UK and digital artist Gabriel Massan! This is yet another example of an authentic presence in the broader art world for Tezos. Gabriel Massan is a Berlin-based, multidisciplinary digital artist. Massan investigates notions of strangeness and ignorance regarding the imaginary of the ‘Third World’. The full list of included artists can be found in Serpentine’s Twitter thread.
La Belle Époque
Kathleen refers to Tezos as grassroots. Arthur says it is like Greenwich Village in the 60s. Kathleen says she likes Paris in the 1910s, and Arthur quickly chimes in, “La Belle Époque!” One of ones, editions, and generative series are very different from PFPs, which are themselves different from the subsequent derivatives that stem from them. Are millions of similar Apes, Penguins, and Cats truly unique and “non-fungible”? As Arthur points out, there may be many collections which are derivatives of one collection, and among them are a flood of “rare” traits. So, how rare are they really? Volume on Tezos has been steady through the downturn because it lacks speculation and the flood of derivative copy kitties that burn out quickly.
What is Tezos? An experimental technology that is on the vanguard of a unique way to address digital assets. It's not about getting Christie’s or Sotheby’s on the blockchain - it's about experimentation in art, whether in galleries or in games, and building an organic community - for art’s sake.
Listen to episode 8 of Culture Meets Crypto featuring Arthur and Kathleen below!