The conversation around crypto art has my head spinning. The world, the artists, are screaming for a new way. We get Dispo, which allows us to share photos socially in a new way. For some, they say it has them slowing down. For me, it seems the same, but with a smaller viewfinder which serves no other purpose than to manufacture nostalgia at the expense of function. For some, this value seems worth it. The socialization involves a lot of new people inviting me to share and collaborate, and I find myself saying no to all strangers. Why do I care about contributing to a roll with those I don’t know?
But NFTs and crypto art are insanely confusing. Barring the environmental convo, when I first caught wind of NFTs, it was confusing but then it felt like a wave of cool water flowing into my heart. Could it be? A way to share art that was more valuable to others than I ever conceived? Wealth seemed close. Not just money: a few thousand dollars that I had to make half-art to earn for some capitalist enterprise in order to have…but a way to make my full art, even fuller, and there was a market for it.
I sat here, just weeks after the worst mental breakdown I’ve ever had, where I braved sharing with my closest loved ones and my therapist that I didn’t know what constituted a mental health emergency but what I did know was that I was in an emergency and that I wanted to live but that I needed help to do that right now. However I was managing on my own was not working anymore.
This was prompted by a collection of things, but warned into a general cloud of: This is not what I was promised and I’m not sure how much longer I can stand it. Prompted by a year where an entire part of my identity that is crucial to my wellness has been almost completely shut down (the connection t omy body and being in physical flow, with myself or others), with the stresses of living through this moment of, like, wild uncertainty, which, to my daily life, actually started looking incredibly monotonous, a joyless monotony, partnered with the slow creep of watching the homeless multiply, sink deeper into addiction and madness, to have my life threatened daily by the ones who are prone to violence in their illness, but also by the months of delinquent rent and bills I’ve acquired as I’ve chosen to use the modest amount of money I’ve been able to earn for food, gas, art supplies to continue to do what I’m meant to and work and try to make the money I can in between lovely yet scarce client work. (How much of this is due to availability and how much because I have a harder time engaging with the abuse that often comes with this work? I can’t know. Like as badly as I need money, I can’t bring myself to ask an agency I know to be abusive for work.)
In my darkest moment, I told my therapist I was a warrior. I swore to her that I wanted to live and that I’d choose me. The month of February committed me to following my gut. I recently drunkenly told another artist on the internet I barely know that his survival is a matter of life and death. Artists, honest artists who care are absolutely everything. And I fight for them. So many of them are dedicated to not engaging with crypto for this reason, because they can’t reconcile the impact with the action. But while I respect and understand that, can they also respect and understand me? Can they fight for me as hard as I fight for them??
This isn’t the first time I’ve meditated on how to balance the work of being someone who wants a better world with someone who wants to live. But the conversation has always had a few more degrees of removal. Ultimately, I draw the line at silencing truth. The conversations happening around how we, as a community of artists, and as a community of early adopters (as designers often are), decide and manage new tech and trends. I appreciate the way that some are asking why we are not building equitable art systems for the tangible art world, and other really important big questions. However, as these subjects gain traction, emotions are running higher and higher and I fear for the polarization and division of a lot of artists and designers who care, who share the same goal but take differing approaches. I fear for judgements of actions and the crucifixion of individuals without knowing the whole story or simply because this issue is new and confusing and we are all destined to fuck up, or have to choose ourselves in moments of need, because a lot of us are in need. It’s not quick cash we’re talking about here, it’s quick wealth. Something not accessible to those of us in certain situations.
And maybe that’s okay to some, but I think I can do much more on this planet alive than I can dead and even so, I choose life.