Blockchain exists in the context of the stock market and uses enormous amounts of energy. But it is only a tool in the making; through a series of presentations and demos, participants will learn about the current landscape of blockchain, its applications and its communities.

No knowledge of blockchain, NFTs or Web 3.0 is required.

Together, we will reflect on the following questions: what good is an immutable database for a community? What should be made permanent, visible to all? What kind of information about ourselves are we willing to archive this way?

An introduction to the history of archiving will open the workshop; from the library of Alexandria to the Wayback Machine, we will touch on various attempts at longterm storage and focus on alternative archival practices that push back against traditional preservation conventions.

Participants of this workshop are collectively building and reframing a community together. We will create a public archive of materials that are meaningful to our research/practice/life (resources, references, readings, tips or skills) on a shared are.na channel, and record it on the Tezos blockchain. Each piece contributed to the archive will be made into an edition of non-profit NFTs.

It is easy, with the digital tools we already have, to create a public archive. With the advent of blockchain, the question is: what happens when we have the power to make it undeletable?

Learning Outcomes

- Learn the current landscape of blockchain applications
- Learn potential applications of blockchain for communities
- Mint an NFT on the Tezos blockchain

Expect to spend 1-2 hours per week on projects outside of class time.

3 Weeks
Fridays 1 – 3pm EST
July 15 – 29, 2022

Friday, July 15, 2022
1:00–1:40 — Introductions
1:40–2:20 — Lecture: Blockchain + Archives
2:20–2:30 — break
2:30–3:00 — Demo: crypto wallet

Friday, July 22, 2022
1:00–1:20 — Warm-up + short presentations
1:20–1:30 — Introduce objkt.com
1:30–3:00 — Guest speaker (tbc)

Friday, July 29, 2022
1:00–1:15 — Warm-up + short presentations
1:15–2:15 — Minting (our archive is on-chain)

Artists Re:thinking the Blockchain
“The implied ideal is that humans will not have to trust each other but rather encode every interaction and make the conditions self executing [...] They forget that most events in the world are indeed ambiguous and complex requiring interpretation and mediation.” (Jaya Klara Brekke & Elias Haase)

Community Memory by Mike Tully
Are.na Annual, 2022

Token Gesture by Tina Rivers Ryan
Artforum, May 2021

Sophie Auger is an interdisciplinary artist from Montreal and lecturer at Parsons The New School and Rutgers University. Her shifting, situation-specific practice has taken numerous forms: writing, performing for the radio, hacking, experimenting with the Ethereum blockchain community, photographing, publishing, building sculptural projectors. Her work has been recently shown at MUU Contemporary Art Center in Helsinki and ELEKTRA in Montreal (2022).