Thread by Jæn 🌜back from actual space 🛰
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- Jun 10, 2022
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The weird place of connectors/curators/critiques in the cryptoart world 🧵/17
Imagine being needed in a scene that basically fantasises about "no more middlepersons", when you technically are one. Let's have a talk about that. 1/x
Imagine being needed in a scene that basically fantasises about "no more middlepersons", when you technically are one. Let's have a talk about that. 1/x
For simplicity, I will call them "periartists", because they deal with everything around the art itself. Why are they needed? Can it not just be artists and collectors? Well, that went quite well when the space was smaller. Now, there's a lot of artists, a lot of noise. 2/ 
Information overload is one of the defining challenges of our era, and filtering information in the cryptoart space is done through curation. Some don't like it, think it's gatekeeping & clique mindset. 3/ 
Yet, keep it a self-regulating free market all the time, and you'll have everyone welcome, but gems lost in an ocean of meh, a big popularity contest, wash bidding/influencer ops/clique mindset. No time, no space for depth either. Curation should curb that a bit. 4/ 
giving a chance to lesser-known good (?) artists to be seen, elevate art and expand it through curation, writings, talks, exhibitions, and networking with collectors. Art would be very naked without that. 5/ 
Curation faces challenges clearly seen in the scene today: relying on sales and skewed popularity metrics (both very flawed & easy to cheat on), nepotism of course, lack of diversity. Tl;dr, some curation is just influencer shit, lazy top selling lists, celeb worshipping. 6/ 
Real curation does exist, and while the art world needed a shake-up to stop the artist-leeching vampire middleperson culture, volume and noise make the "no middleperson" ideal very unrealistic, and frankly not that desirable. What now? 7/ 
Some of the roles of the periartist can be done by collectors (buying a piece IS curating (when it's not ONLY an investment), otherwise exhibiting and promoting artists, interviewing them, etc.) & artists (same as collectors + they can talk about their art). Are they enough? 8/ 
Drawbacks: collectors have a limited collecting capacity, are more incentivised to shill their bags, can be too busy to do curation properly, get their curation reputation solely based on their capacity to spend money on art, sometimes are too concerned about flexing, etc. 9/ 
Artist+periartist drawbacks: I can speak from 1st hand experience (artist, art director, collector, dabbling in critique, interviewing, exhibition setting, curating, etc.) - it's too much. Artists need down time to produce something else than eye candies. /11 
I had a burn-out recently, and all the pressure for each of these skills adds up in an ugly way. I love all of it though. But the best art I make is when I have the luxury to be idle. And lots of artists are introverts, or just bad with language & organising shit. /12 
So, why not good old middlepersoning periartists? What do they face besides a relevance & identity crisis? Funding problems. Some refuse to let artists give them a commission when they help sales, when it's only fair (go check @ourZORA 's "finder fee", I love the concept). /13 
I personally love it. Help me sell, get rewarded, no brainer, all is fair. Platform fees creeping lower helps that. Then, there's grants/patrons, national or private, but it's obviously unstable af, although the current way. If i'm rich, I'd sure build a foundation for that. /14 
The journalist path: being a decently paid art journalist is already a miracle, so imagine a cryptoart jounalist. Good luck. One interesting way is also being the periartist AND the marketplace, à la SuperRare. Can't imagine a lot of similar stuff surviving but it's cool. /15 
Then getting paid to set up exhibitions. That works sometimes, not always, despite the incredible amount of work. I Know that first hand as well.
Tl;dr, you need to do that periartist stuff full time and it's incredibly hard & requires lots of energy / brainpower to survive./16
Tl;dr, you need to do that periartist stuff full time and it's incredibly hard & requires lots of energy / brainpower to survive./16
Lastly, the @ProfessorJun_ way: tokenising your work.
Conclusion: let's celebrate necessary middlepersons, you bunch o' cryptopirates. Shout out to @m00sv1 @flakoubay @SerenaTabacchi @co1born @Arthemort & more who dedicate their life to put clothes on your naked art. Fin/17
Conclusion: let's celebrate necessary middlepersons, you bunch o' cryptopirates. Shout out to @m00sv1 @flakoubay @SerenaTabacchi @co1born @Arthemort & more who dedicate their life to put clothes on your naked art. Fin/17
