Exchange Values
The thematic cycle Exchange Values revolves around the question of what has what value in society and why, and how the dynamics of value formation have changed. In particular, it is about the opportunities of blockchain technology for new models of participation.
Contracts for Earth
15 June 2022
Within a mere two hundred years, the capitalist way of running the economy has revealed itself as unsustainable: it is destroying its own ecological and social foundations. Indigenous economies, on the other hand, have worked for millennia – and are increasingly being discussed as solutions for coping with climate change. Studio Bonn presents three models of global cooperation that combine sustainability and social justice.
Who controls the Bundeskunsthalle?
16 March 2022
Blockchain vs. the state: Hito Steyerl has occupied the Bundeskunsthalle and is producing a new work there with the audience.
An evening about the future of the public, culture and its institutions.
On July 15, 2021, the artist Hito Steyerl declared the Bundeskunsthalle occupied at STUDIO BONN. She had registered the address of the Bundeskunsthalle on the Ethereum blockchain and thus controlled it via NFT. (See the conversation with Hito Steyerl, Joseph Vogl and Ville Haimala here). With this satirical action, Hito Steyerl demonstrated how arbitrary ownership claims are in the booming market for digital certificates of ownership (NFTs). By "minting" an entire institution as an NFT, Steyerl simultaneously got serious about the anarchist utopia of blockchain, which promises to distribute control of money and culture from the hands of gatekeepers into the hands of the masses. But how democratic is the blockchain really? And is the Bundeskunsthalle really that undemocratic?
To whom does art belong?
20 November 2021
What connects Renaissance princely portraits with digital art and NFTs? How do forms of collecting differ in different forms of society? How do decentralized collectives challenge museums, and what new concepts of art do they make conceivable? Is the accumulation of art treasures still in keeping with the times? Studio Bonn moderator Kolja Reichert discusses these questions with Eike Schmidt, director of the Uffizi in Florence, the artist Harm van den Dorpel as well as curator and professor Clémentine Deliss.
Crypto-Capitalism
15 July 2021
The craze around crypto art and NFTs (non-fungible tokens, i.e. digital certificates of ownership) blurs the boundaries of culture, economy and politics. Does blockchain technology offer ways out of parasitic platform capitalism, in which all users feed the ledgers of tech gigants? Or will it lead to even greater inequality and the complete financialization of human relationships? Artist Hito Steyerl, the cultural scientist Joseph Vogl and the musician Ville Haimala, one half of the duo Amnesia Scanner, discuss the opportunities and risks of a decentralised internet for the arts and democracy.
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Contact
Dr. Sven Sappelt
Curator for Discourse & Head of Studio Bonn
sappelt (at) bundeskunsthalle.de