Red Scare - Non Fungible Podcast w/ Dean Kissick

Episode Date: March 19, 2021

Art writer and Spike columnist Dean Kissick stops by the pod to talk about the rise of NFTs and the future of art. Read Dean's column

Okay. I'm recording now. We're back. We're back. We have a special guest. I'm really excited to have him on the show. A friend of the pod, Spike Magazine columnist, our writer, Mr. Dean Kisek. Hello. Hi, Dean. Oh, welcome, Dean. Did we short change you in any way? I just read in the Spike column that you're the US editor of Spike Magazine. Is that correct? You are? I have the title, New York editor. Oh, great. It's just a title on a master. Okay. Nice. But still. That's how all titles are. Sorry, I should have said that. It's not, it's honorary. But no, I just, I just write a monthly column. Which I, I love and has been one of my favorite things over the course of the pandemic. Honestly,

I always looked forward to your, to your insights, because you seem as very well integrated as a writer. And I like to hear about your experiences and then your takeaways I found kind of comforting when like the lockdown measures and all of that was happening. Yeah, slightly less retarded than most art critics. The column is called Downward Spiral, which is also a great title. I'm a fan. And you just wrote one about NFTs, the latest installment, which we will be talking about. Maybe like for the benefit of our listeners, meaning me and Dasha, you could explain what an NFT is and why anyone should care. We definitely know, but we want to hear you, you say it.

You're smooth British to make sure you're. Yep. Yep. Qualified. Okay. So we've had a pandemic, which is maybe, maybe over now. Yes. And what? Everyone's people have been locked down, sheltering in place. We don't really know what people have been doing. So you might wonder what guys, guys have been up to. You know, what have men been doing? Yeah, last year. Yeah. What have we been doing with all this time? What have we been working on? So what we've been doing is making NFTs. So yeah, do you hear rock here to talk about NFTs?

And what? Okay. So what what NFTs stand for is non fungible tokens. It's a sort of, it's a form of cryptocurrency and non fungible just means unique, essentially. So a fungible thing can be exchanged for something that is exactly the same. So if I have a dollar, you have a dollar, we can exchange it. We still have the same thing to all extents and purposes. And cryptocurrency can be exchanged like that. It's fungible. But the non fungible token is a form of cryptocurrency that is unique. Okay, it just means it's a unique digital object, essentially, and it can't be exchanged for something exactly the same as it. And that could be used for all sorts of things. But at the moment, it's really been used for art and

collectibles, trading cards and stuff that's halfway between arts and collectibles. Like memes. Yeah. I think it's kind of, it's like Etsy for guys. Like you make your unique little thing. Yeah. And it gets assigned some arbitrary value. Yeah. And then, yeah, someone can purchase it and make it their own. So has anybody ever bartered NFTs? Like you trade NFTs instead of paying in dollars? Like, could I trade you an NFT for a different NFT? Or maybe even a couple NFTs? Yeah, definitely. You can definitely do that. And they do sort of function as a sort of currency. And they might be being used for money laundering and that sort of thing.

Like almost certainly when people are paying millions for these, you know, JPEGs. This reminds me a lot of like the net art slash post internet art craze of like 2015, 2016 of like the Beverly's days. There was a lot of talk of democratizing the art world. And I think it was like exclusively like Deanna Havas banging the drum on Twitter, being like you idiots. This is a man made, like a human made system. There's no democracy on the internet. But I feel like Deanna Havas vindicated once again. Deanna said something good this week. But basically what I just said, like I'm basically just stealing Deanna's take there. But she said, she said something like she hopes all of this NFT investment

is a form of money laundering and not like a genuine appreciation for these sorts of images and objects. Yeah, that's so good. I want to get back to that take because it's a really good one because I have some thoughts on that. But like, you know, like what ended up happening with the net art post internet art stuff is that all the smartest, most sophisticated artists, Scott wise, the fact and basically started making internet inspired objects for like the gallery or whatever. But this seems to be kind of like the inverse in that it's de democratizing our right by assigning a discrete unique value to like gifts and memes. I think it's, it's, it's very financially driven in its current incarnation. Like it's really

turning artworks into like you said, like into literally a currency. Right. And it's creating a system where like the image and capital become the exact same thing. It doesn't have to be like that. But that's a lot of what's going on now. But in terms of de democratization, I won't talk about net art too long. But I'm like, I'm of the net art generation. And a lot of my friends were in our net artists. And when that thing started, there was a lot of utopian ideals, you know, we're going to create a new art system, or we're going to leave the art system. And pretty much all of those artists, as soon as they got the opportunity to kind of be embraced by the traditional system, they jumped at it. Like they, they really sold out essentially, and doing exactly

what you say, like starting to make these sellable internet art objects, physical commodities, is is just selling out. And so the kind of NFT model, it is actually, it's already far more radical, because it has, it does just exist outside of the art system. Right. But it's it's also totally hideous. Yeah, yeah, it's really, it's just the more mortifyingly ugly. Well, you kind of get you kind of get at that point when you talk about like people and cause, I'm just embarrassed to even say those names allowed from your column and spike or you say the people and cause haven't dominated this year's artistic discourse. They're outsiders who made it to the top, but it's a very boring sort of outsider art made by nerds for other nerds.

And like all the fantastic outsider art made by the unknown and institutionalized by visionary borderline pedophile hermaphrodite fetishists working at hospital custodians, painting water colors through the night. But yeah, it is it's like kind of autistic male nerd are for the benefit of other people like that. Yeah, I think so. I think so. And that's nothing inherent in the technology or the medium of an NFT, which could be anything. Right. But that is what's that is what's blowing up and causes something different because he's not, he's not selling his work as NFTs. But I think it's also parallel. I think the two sides are the same. And that aesthetic is consistent. Yeah. And but don't you think I understand that NFTs

could have some kind of potential to not be manifested in this way? But don't you think it is a little bit inherent the dismalness on like being able to even use blockchain and stuff like that tech maybe is kind of like fernards and yeah, maybe, maybe. But it's also people, people are rushing into it who don't need, who don't know how to use that tech because it is just like a gold rush now, right? You know, it's the new Wild West now is do you think I should do one? Yeah, we can talk about it. I have some JPEGs that I think are pretty cool. To be honest, I think the short answer is yes, you know, and I, you remind me, I meant to search kind of Red Scare NFTs before I came out because it's possible someone's already,

you know, people, you have some good fan art and that sort of thing. Don't give them any ideas. No, it's true. It's true. It's true. I want all those tokens for myself. Well, I actually Googled, I Googled our merch because I was like trying to, because we have kind of SEO problems with our website. And people ask us all the time, like, where do I actually get it? But there are so many like countless knockoffs of Red Scare merch that are not just limited to the ISIS shirt. Like I saw a shirt that said like whammin' hater. And I was like, what kind of a loser would buy this? This is like very obscure and inside baseball. I understand buying like the ISIS shirt off of Red Bubble or something. Yeah, because that's a great design.

Yeah. So I think that there is, it might make sense for one or both of us to get into the NFT game. But what is this thing? Okay, can you clarify this other aspect of NFTs, which is that that I've heard and read that actually, if you're, for example, like a kind of reputable blue chip artist, it might actually hurt you or it won't help you at least to have an or issue one because it's a tacky. Is that all that it that is? Or just like a bad look? Yeah, I think for a blue chip artist, it's difficult, but some people will do it. You know, it really depends on the kind of, the kind of artist you are. But what are, you know, what are a friend of ours, a good artist said to me, is that artists really,

really don't want to be seen to be shilling themselves, right? You know, they, they, they want to make the money generally, like they want to make the sales. But it kind of goes against, goes against the nature of the beast at this moment to be seen, to be selling yourself. And the artists who are, who are doing it, they're having to kind of promote themselves online on their social media. And it's very undignified. It's very unbecoming of how we see a fine artist, but they have to show themself because among other reasons, there's sort of people who buy NFTs generally just do not give a fuck about the art world, kind of old hierarchies or who's perceived values. Who buys NFTs in a nutshell? Crypto, crypto millionaires, I think. Yeah.

So not, not, yeah. And for them, it's just like, they're already doing so much like virtual stuff. So they don't feel like they're just marks. Yeah, right? Yeah, I think you have a combination of they do. They think that their NFTs are going to accrue value. Well, yeah, you can also make a lot of money from doing it. If you get an early, which some of my friends have been doing, we're, you know, we're in a real crazy bubble of mania right now, which, which probably won't last. But I think you have all these guys, all these fellows, all these guys, and they've all been pretty indoors for the last year or so. And they've been extremely online, extremely online people. And they've made a lot of money, like last few months,

they've made a lot of money. I think when you make a lot of money, when you're extremely online, maybe you're like taking a lot of Adderall and staying for days like trading. And like, really, that gives you that kind of euphoria. And then you're like, I want to buy some fucking I want to buy some fucking art. Yeah, they sold the, the Nyan Cat meme, you know, the Nyan Cat. Yeah, yeah, totally. They sold that for $590,000. I can kind of see it, like I kind of get that, you know, this cat meme has been like a bane of my existence. I don't know, like the mid aught, because I was always working in some capacity for some or other like media company that was like, had that really kind of like post Kanye shutterglasses gift aesthetic. And they were really into it. And somehow this annoying and pathetic cat keeps resurfacing, like hacking at my spleen. And like, what's the other thing? The scumbag Steve NFT sold, the Pepe creator, Mike Fury is getting in on the action. So basically, all the kind of OG memes are getting like NFT'd. I mean, people are monetizing there. Matt Fury had Pepe really stolen from him. Yeah, you know, so he should make the entitled to some kind of compensation for everything that he's contributed to the culture. But so, so people are then mad at people like Matt Fury, and other artists who are using NFTs because they say, and this seems crazy and laughable to me that NFTs are really bad for the environment, because mid the process of minting them requires all this energy. Yeah, yeah. Again, I'll try to talk about this without being too boring or going on too long. But it's it takes a lot of computing power to run the blockchain. So Bitcoin has the same carbon emissions a year as New Zealand, which is, you know, quite a lot.

Probably it's just New Zealand, though. And Ethereum, which is what most of the NFTs run on is not that much, but it creates a lot of carbon. But the Ethereum blockchain. It runs like it's always running. And regardless of whether people are minting thousands of NFTs, or zero NFTs, that blockchain will be running. And it's going to be generating that emissions. So it's, it's sort of, it's kind of like a bad faith argument. Though it does, it makes kind of, you could argue it logically, both ways. But it's something people really, it's, it's the current kind of stick that people like to beat NFTs and cryptocurrency with. And I think Matt Fury, he hasn't launched his Pepe yet, like he might be bullied out of doing it before it even happens. The backlash seemed particularly hysterical. But there is an unofficial Pepe. There are sets of unofficial Pepe. I saw the Homer Pepe, which I actually think is a nice image, but I can just screenshot it and look at it on my phone. But no, I get it. I get that. I get that it's about markets, which men famously love. But if the problem is that we're using energy to produce things that have arbitrary value, then aren't we just talking about, like, everything? Yeah.

That's what makes me feel insane is that I don't understand what, like, what reality people are referring to. Yeah, it seems, it seems like a selective opportunistic argument to get angry at people who are, who were kind of like early adopters and were exploiting this market. Because what are they, they can't possibly be advocating for like the physical art market because that also uses tons of fuel and emissions to like fly all this art around and have all these great parties. Yeah, and like make Astro Turf Hills in like Basel art spaces that you can recline on them. I mean, it's like exorbitant expense to keep it going in the art world. The other thing I was talking to an expert who full disclosure is my sister's boyfriend and he knows a lot about like crypto and online gambling and stuff. Cool. I thought I would go out to him, but he, he made the point that the the environmental kind of suck aspect is being resolved. Anyway, it's like kind of first on the menu of items that.

Yeah, it's it. Well, why it's not first on the menu. Okay. People are working on finding ways of fixing it. And I'm sure, at least for Ethereum, probably not for Bitcoin. And I'm sure when that happens, people will find new things, new kind of attack factors. Why are they so mad about NFTs? I mean, you know, like it's kind of, it's kind of understandable. I think kind of everyone hates NFTs don't they? Yeah, because it's annoying. People can agree upon people, people don't want to see those letters on their timeline. And like, um, yeah, because, because it's bad, because people are making so much money out of it, that's particularly annoying.

And people, people are making millions and millions just for like doing nothing. That annoys me because, because they look bad because they're horrible. Yeah. Because it's just like, yeah, it's just like, I mean, I get it. Yeah. I mean, we're making bad things. They're making bad things that they're making money off it. One thing I'd say about the environment, though, is I think I kind of think there's it's missing the point, because I think like having really bad art poses a bigger existential factor to humanity than a kind of zero point something percent of carbon emissions, like in my opinion. And I think if you have the third most expensive artwork by a living artist ever, just behind Jeff Koons and David Hockney, and it's this guy, people, and it's just like, you know, 5000 image collage of images of like, naked Trump with tits or like the Joe Biden city or, you know, whatever. I think that is a much bigger problem or something we should be more worried about in terms of like civilization or where we're at as humans than the environmental issues, which has your sister's boyfriend says will will be resolved. Yeah, or at least they're making some effort to resolve them. But okay, I have a question about that because, you know, I read your spectator piece, which you sort of gloss on in the spike piece.

And the ending of the spectator piece was very like, I, you know, it was very, very nice and reassuring to read. Because I agree with you on principle, you say we're served Instagram friendly cultural objects that anyone could come up with. And anyone can understand without thinking it's zombie entertainment. It's let people enjoy things culture. Don't let people enjoy things enjoying things has brought us to the edge of the abyss what we could do with instead is more challenging and unconventional painting. But I have my own kind of cynical gloss on this and I'm curious what your thoughts are because I think art has always been this way. And I think people have always pretended that it's been about higher values like beauty and like erudition and stuff like that. The difference now and why people are so mad about NFTs is that nobody's pretending anymore. It feels like, you know, it's the only kind of like adaptation or it's on an improvement, but development is that you've added like a contemporary twist, you know, we've gone from artwork to meme to NFT. Like, do you see what I'm saying? And like, you know, we've removed the aesthetic value kind of the intellectual sophistication, anything that propped up this myth that art was inherent or the form of art was inherently valuable.

Which is like, you know, and now it's just like a naked commodity through which people can like hold or hide assets and leave them to like accrue value, if that makes sense. Yeah. So it's not it's not so much the form that was lost, but the myth that was lost through degrading the form. But the myth is important. Well, it's valuable. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it depends how far back we want to go. Like, I think I think the art of the last 10 years has been has been pretty bad. Yeah, all around.

But but but I do I do think good stuff is being made. Like, that's the maybe I can read a quote. Yeah. Oh, where's my quote? Okay, well, I can just kind of paraphrase it. I had a quote from Caroline Buster of the new models podcast. Yeah. And she and she said it's, you know, it's very silly for like, art people to be saying like, all this NFT art is so bad, because all the art is bad as well.

But but she says at the moment, you know, you have like 100% of NFT art is bad and 99.9% of what's called fine art is bad. But that 0.1% does make a difference because there's there is some like great stuff in there, which, which I think, you know, can can fulfill the role, whether it's going for some sort of radical avant garde approach, or some like more traditional reactionary ideas of beauty. I think art, I think art can good art can fulfill that role. Right. And certainly, if we go back into the past, I think there was there was great art being made. But one thing I read the other night is that money kind of came out of the black death, like the idea of money. Suddenly there was a shortage of laborers.

Suddenly they had to start paying the laborers so they had to work more with currency. And then if you have Florence, kind of the, the blossoming of the Renaissance, that was all funded by the Medici's. Right. Who are money lenders. So, yeah, like the whole at least post antiquity. Yeah, I think exactly. A lot is is going to be forms of commodity forms of. Well, so I have like a kind of even more abstracted question to my notes.

It's a two parter. I wanted to ask you who you think art is for and follow up question, who should pay for it? Like, do you think that art is for everybody? I don't think, I don't think it has to be for everybody. But I think like everybody should have the opportunity to enjoy it. You know, like most, most people don't care about art. And, and why should they? Yeah.

And I think it's the wrong, I think it's the wrong approach to try to force out down people's throats, try to force people to like it. But I think the job of say a curator or a museum director, you know, I think they should find out they really like. They really believe in and they should advocate it, advocate for it to the public. Which isn't really what happens now. I don't think like it's more about it seems museums are more trying to just please as please people somehow trying to please as many people rather than just finding something really good and trying to say to people, this is what I like. This is what I think you should give it a chance. Maybe you'll, maybe you'll like it. Maybe you'll dislike it.

Who is art for? You know, I mean, I still have a very romantic, romantic idea of art. I still, I still believe in it. I just don't have anything better. You know, we need something to believe in. And I think this is a big problem with where we're at as a civilization or something like maybe you can believe in a religion. Maybe you can believe in art, you know, need something. I think it's one of the better options on the table.

Yeah. And but yeah, we are a very impoverished culture in that regard. Definitely. Yeah. And it's, it's like the loss, the loss of the myth is so bad because it's a loss of enchantment. It's very hard to sustain the myth when you, I think this era more than any other has pulled back the cart and like laid bare the fact that the form itself does not have any inherent meaning or value, which is sad because that form takes a lot of effort and resources. But I thought your answer to Dasha's first part of the question was really brilliant because I think when people talk a lot about democratizing art, this is like consistently a big discourse in the art world. And I think like, you kind of nailed it with what that means, it means everyone should have the option but not everyone should participate, you should be able to opt in or out. And I think the kind of the art gatekeepers have lost sight of that and they're again, yeah, just trying to shoehorn it down everybody's throats.

Yeah. Like I was thinking of that like very corny scene in Bosque out the movie where he like goes to museums, you know, and he's like the one black kid from the inner city who's like really into art. But it's, you know, it's kind of like an uplifting inspirational scene because it's there and it's available to him. Right. Yeah. And this, I think art offers more than the kind of mass pop culture we're mostly fed today. Well, no, maybe that's not true, but but in theory, it should have like, if there was more good art, I think it would offer more than the kind of, I don't know, Netflix matrix or this this kind of. You think everything would be improved if we had a more kind of vibrant.

I think it, I think it could give more than like the Marvel Cinematic Universe can give, for instance. Yeah. And the problem or what I don't like about say people is it's really like it's really part of that Marvel Cinematic Universe kind of aesthetic and interests like it's made by people who believe that the cable news political spectacle and kind of these comic book superhero characters. I like a good thing to base a culture around, but but I don't think those are good things to build base a culture around. But on the other hand, like it's very, it's fine. Like it's very funny that he's selling for 69 million and all the old art world is kind of completely so jealous and so kind of they they're so like shocked and they want that money. It's it's it's good to it's good to shake things up and as you know, people have been saying like the the art world really just really did not farewell in the Trump years. It really it really didn't know how to respond. It didn't respond well to the black light to the pandemic and it didn't respond to the black lives matter uprising like at every stage, everything that happens.

Art just doesn't know what to do doesn't know how to respond can't come up with any kind of new forms and suddenly like something new has come and it's just come from like a bunch of crypto nerds. It's funny. Why? Why? Why do you think that is? I mean, you make the point that this is the first big story. The first big art story like definitely since the beginning of the pandemic probably before that I don't know what you dated it back to but like a lot of us had really like again forgotten that the art world existed and we're content to go about our lives without it. Yeah. Hmm. It just it's it's felt very exhausted for for a good few years. I'd say at the beginning of the last decade the 10s, I think art was contemporary art was a dominant cultural form. That's that's how it felt to me like at the beginning of the decade it was everyone wanted to be an artist you'd have like rappers would be like collecting talking to artists and they're like it was a really different time. But I think it it exhausted itself in terms of maybe going after the money too much but also just running out of ideas because I think art is inherently a sense since the beginning of modernism maybe since way before then like it's it's really about change. It's really about coming up with new ideas and it changed so much in the 20th century and into the 21st.

I don't think there's any cultural form or any form of anything on this on the earth really that managed to change as much as I did it just kind of came to embody the very idea of change and to suck everything into it because it's got the money. So if you're a avant-garde dancer or you're a poet or you're any of these things you kind of you try to become an artist somehow or you get you get sucked into the world of art and and at some point it just it just ran out. It doesn't mean it's over forever. You know this could be a good the beginning of shaking things up but at some point in the last five years. Well if you hurry one last thing you know if you think in Manhattan there's probably about like 400 galleries or something. I'd imagine there are there are there are hundreds of galleries certainly and they're supposed to have a new show every month and like what are what are they going to put in there. Like just just walk in here 20 minutes and half an hour to you know the amount of shows I walked past by galleries I've never heard of with just this terrible stuff in there. There's too much.

She walked down orchard. Yeah. No I think there's an excess and an over saturation that is sort of feels mirrored and in other institutions like the film industry and my alma mater just closed down today like academia also kind of like feels like it kind of over extended itself and is in this period of decline by. There's too many colleges and universities. Yeah liberal arts is like a sham. Yeah and and art is part of that for sure and like it's part of the elite over production. Also based in like you know principles of the humanities which I believe in and is like an education that I'm glad I got but it was like also shoehorned everybody's throat over extended itself and collapsed but are you optimistic about NFTs. Am I as like a potential form or it just seems to do. Yeah sure sure. Yeah you think because they can they can be anything really does it's just like a new technology.

Yeah and I would say a new medium and and it could really be anything so there's all sorts of. Interesting stuff you could you could do with it at the moment all they're doing they're literally just like. Linking a JPEG to a token on a blockchain yeah and saying that's an artwork but it's it doesn't have to be like that it's also. It's kind of you can write contracts in them because it's a sort of programmable digital token so you can do all sorts of things that wouldn't be possible before. Like what so. One example is you can you can write artist royalties into the into the contract so when you make your NFTs you sell them and you get a percentage and then if if the person resells. Dash and an NFT you get a percentage of the resale and so on like you can it kind of in the more idealistic utopian version. It just allows people to be independent it allows people to be their own gallery for instance so it just allows people.

It could be a way to just like cutting out the middleman whether it's like the publishing house or the gallery or something. Exactly like a patreon patreon still taking a percentage of your earnings and like yeah what are they doing for that do they deserve that. But I feel like yeah all of these industries there there well yeah I wouldn't know how to process a platform to host our podcast they make it really easy. Yeah but they take a small ish percentage I'm okay with handing over it's not like 30% or something yeah but yeah but I feel like with this kind of stuff the middleman always finds a way to warm himself in it. But it's in some I was thinking about in some sense how this is like not to sound gay and pretentious but this is like you know how much responsibility does does are itself have to bear for its own like exponential decline like you know this is in some sense very much like the completion of Duchamp's project right and that is very much kind of like capitalist realism and the difference I was thinking you mentioned so socialist realism and I was thinking about like the difference between capitalist and socialist realism is that the latter at least rhetorically claims to have utopian motives.

The former is pretty kind of open and frank about the fact that it's like a foreclosure of the future I mean this is like Mark Fisher's whole thing right. So in in those two like between those two things like this idea of a collapsing art and life etc it means different things in between socialist and capitalist realism. But like I feel like art did this to itself you know yeah 100% yeah so I don't know how you can rebound from that and if you can rebound from that. Well, I have a lot of hope. I think there's always there's always new things you can do and there's always talented people but you know I'm often I'm often wrong about things so I'm always I always tell my friends I'm always like cancel culture is over. It's done it's over it's toast and I say like you know this year is going to be really good for literature like novels are going to be great like we're and same with art same with. You know digital art is about to get amazing like I believe this but. But you should.

That's why I enjoy it. Good to have hope. And well you were just telling me COVID is over so. COVID is over. No but you know still still take precautions of course. I have hope on the individual level like I think that like individual artists filmmakers musicians whatever can can and will make good works but. As far as like an institutional grand myth or narrative that's what I don't necessarily have hope for because you have to like really. We've attained such a level of self consciousness self awareness that you can't I think go back to kind of naive idealism is what I'm saying I think we're going to break break on through to the other side.

Honestly I can't describe exactly what it is but there's going to be some kind of paradigm shit like consciousness is going to evolve into something else and there will be. Interesting forms that follow it I really not to sound like Marianne Williams something but I'm yeah I also have a kind of optimism but I can't couldn't really articulate why. But that's why when I asked who is art for and then I've also asked like who should pay for it. Yes. Yeah I want to know if temporary art is like. This sort of. Husk that might be resuscitated or not but that was sort of like the model right was that there was the gallery system and then. Or like a museum curatorial system that like funded the arts.

Yeah. And if like it's tricky I grew up in England where there's in Britain where there's a fair amount of funding for the arts and museums are free. As like which I think they should be if possible I think museums museum should be free to the public. At the very least things like the 9 11 museum should be free like it's crazy. 9 11. What not if not if you're a family of a survivor. Well I hope funny if they were charging them a discount. Yeah like pay what you wish.

But so. So I grew up in a country where there's a lot of funding. And I thought that was good but you can make a strong argument that there are better things to spend that money on you know. So it's it's it's a difficult it's a difficult one. And here. I would also maybe make the argument I do believe of course that there should be funding for the arts but you go to like. Like Germany or something and a lot of the art there really sucks and it's all financed by the government. So it's like sometimes that doesn't also contribute to necessarily a good art culture because it's people get kind of or Switzerland for example.

Whatever I'm not going to get in. No but this is a common refrain because it's not it's not like aggressive and competitive enough because everybody gets like a little bit of a pile to do their little plays and stuff. I like I like a bit of Swiss art bit bit of the German art scene. But my friend was telling me like some of these Swiss institutions don't are running out of money. I seem to cry. I thought how do they not have money. Why don't they just dig up some more knots of gold. How do the how do the Swiss.

That's where all the banks are. Well the the other option is you know you have kind of corporate corporate money private money. But then you have you're getting into like the Sacklers and Black Rock and that sort of thing which is that's that's not going to fly at least not in New York in this decade. So I'm not sure how these you know big city institutions are going to function when they start getting big protests against all the people they have their money from. I think the rich should pay for it if they want to. You think who should pay for the rich the wealthy. I don't think the patronage model is so bad. Yeah. No it's not. Well except in the case of NFTs.

Unfortunately. Thus far it seems it's been embraced by rich people with very bad days. Yeah. You talk about this concept of like a premium mediocrity which is like a Venkatesh row. Neologism or whatever which I liked it's like you know elites without any taste. Everyone like cashmere became widely available to the public and it was just like you know a synthetic mixture or whatever. And I was like OK this is really bad. But it's like I think I'm wearing a Uniqlo cashmere.

It's quite pilly. Well it's like Mark Jacobs now looks like his pre pilled distressed cashmere. But yeah it seems like the new kind of elites are like strictly financial elites and that they don't have any tastes or aspirations to acquire any tastes. It's like people like Elon Musk who make like cool cars. But I mean he sent us that tweet of his or he like he wrote a song about NFTs or. He's selling as an NFT. He made like a techno song. He tweeted it out.

It's not that bad actually. The song is not that bad. The lyrics aren't very good. What are the lyrics? Does he say NFT in this? It says NFT and it says vanity. It's like a female vocalist though. Oh Grimes. I mean she probably writes all the songs.

Yeah I don't know what they are. I don't know why he's producing techno. Yeah I always struggle to understand the psychology of people who are like high millionaires and billionaires. And they like want to be something else like a techno producer or an artist. Like why dude you're rich. Like just read books in private. One other salute. You know I think I think cause has quite good taste apparently.

He's got a tasteful collection and he's on the board of the folk museum and things like that. So maybe artists can get money. Can sell for a lot of money and then can reinvest it into their more like esoteric niche concerns. Well maybe if these NFTs take off and we can do that the kind of residual thing. An artist could just kind of like sell them amongst themselves and all get royalties and kind of incorporate them into some kind of redistributive model. Yeah. Just an idea for any tech heads out there that are listening. Yeah that's that you could also do all sorts of kind of collective stuff or redistributive stuff.

And you could code it into the contract or the token. Yeah exactly. I mean like I think the coolest thing or like the most curious thing that can come of this is like if the technology becomes a medium. Because it's unclear whether it's a technology or medium. But like I think there's a lot of experimentation that's possible there. Like I can't think of any myself because I'm stupid and also not creative or an artist. But yeah like turning NFTs into kind of a medium unto themselves could be interesting and productive I guess at least like intellectually curious. Yeah.

Yeah I have friends who talk about it like that because it's at heart it's a contract. Yeah. And so there is a lineage of conceptual art. Yeah. Conceptual art was contract based. Well it's like a new institutional critique basically. It could also be new institutional critique. I hate that for you.

I don't know if we need more institutional critique but there's so much of it now. Wait still because I actually forgot that institutional critique. I forgot that institutions existed. Yeah I'm like very impressed with myself that I even remembered that phrase because I was like what does this sound like? Because I forgot that that existed as like an art movement or genre. I kind of spiritually feel like a net artist but I have very low computer literacy so I don't generate net art but I kind of have like a net art spirit if that makes sense. Why do you why do you spiritually feel like a net artist? Because of my like age demographic and kind of the time that I you know I like conceptually kind of also I probably you're a little older than me but that was the last time I think I felt kind of like hopeful about things happening in art you know.

Yeah it was very exciting. Yeah exactly. Do you think memes are over? Oh yeah let's talk about that Balaji tweet. The monetizing memes. Oh yeah so the Balaji tweet. Balaji what's his surname? Srinivasan.

Balaji Srinivasan. Yeah. Who's a crypto evangelist I think. He was also one of the first people over here to really take COVID seriously apparently. So he's very like. Acoraphobic. Well just like he was prescient in that sense. So he tweeted out the meme economy will become real.

Meme creators will make NFTs. Time stamps give proof of first. Meme gen partially goes on chain. Mimetic spread is more traceable. Meme has become millionaires. Risky art becomes uncensorable and monetizable. Art moves outside regime control. So.

So yeah. Well there's a couple things there. He's talking about monetizing memes. Yeah. Which we maybe don't think is a good idea. And he's talking about ways that you can publish things that are completely uncensorable. That's more interesting. Right.

It's kind of. Like beheading videos. Or child pornography. Like what are we talking about here? I guess my instinct with collage because he also sent the new great art is like Epstein's cache of snuff films. You also sent us this collage tweet. Virtual realities that want to stand out from their competitors may license verified art. Visualize a high value NFT with a verified check mark in a virtual city square.

Serving as both beauty and proof of the city's solvency. This tweet made me feel sick. It makes me. Yeah. It makes me feel like I'm like in a sanatorium like flinging shit at the wall. I feel like I'm in a cave hole. But I guess my issue with Bellagy is that he's like I guess very smart and forward thinking in some way. But he.

His. What he thinks is good is unanimously horrifying and dystopian to me like virtual realities. That are non fungible or whatever. That's a horrible and frightening idea. Right. Yeah. Yeah. At heart I think it's very bad for the.

For our souls. Yeah. Kind of what it is to be a human going forward. And I think the last the last year of lockdown has kind of accelerated this like. Yeah. Dark vision of a life just lived digitally or virtually. Which is bad. You know I think I think it's I think it's bad.

I think. Well right but I want to understand I guess I want to get in his headspace and understand his thought process like how could he possibly think these things that we all find totally like. Psychotic and dystopian are good and positive. He has different values. Yeah. Yeah. I mean. I guess he doesn't.

It's inhuman value. Yeah. I was going to say. Yeah. Yeah. Transhuman is that what they were calling it. Remember. Transhumanism.

It is. It is very transhumanist. Yeah. It's very my friend who sent me this quote said it's very dark enlightenment. Yeah. And it is very dark enlightenment and a lot of a lot of these things people used to kind of talk about people on the left would really be warning about a few years ago are kind of coming true in this way like there was a neo reactionary idea of. A kind of that we should all live in like a Singapore type place in the future like these feudal city states where. Migrant workers come in at dawn and then leave before dusk and this sort of and the I think the people who bought people the kind of anonymous avatars company are based in Singapore.

And there are these like crazed Singaporean crypto traders interesting people but who really like are obsessed with. René Girard obsessed with like Girardian ideas of mimesis and scapegoats and believe that memes create reality and that the kind of the virtual. The meme idea is more important than any that that is reality and more and that's more important than whatever we see as physical reality. Right. This is should should we read Girard because that I was advised to do so by my funders and the Peter Teal financial empire. It's asking if you should read Girard is a little bit. The Girard Wikipedia. Sure.

It's just like a little less problematic than asking if you should read Ernst Younger which to which people will respond yes but do it in private and do not notify anybody. I think I think we do. So yeah Teal was taught by Girard wasn't he and he says it was Girard's ideas that convinced him to invest in Facebook which is how he made his fortune one of the ways he made his fortune. But you know Girard's ideas. I haven't read him I haven't read any any philosophy really. He I've heard two podcasts by him. Those are those are good I recommend them because he used to teach at Stanford. There's a good podcast from Stanford called entitled opinions.

Yeah. Which is like this really unashamedly elitist podcast one of the professors. I forget his name. I've seen Stanley something I've listened to that podcast. It's it's pretty good actually it's a it's a pretty good podcast he has a two parts where he's talking to René Girard. Now dad I think it's yeah it's very good. Yeah. He did.

I'm not sure if there's anything inherently. Bad about his ideas even if even if people have used them for questionable purposes but but he does he did kind of really seem to predict our reality in some way. Yeah. Okay. So I'm going to take that as a yes I was like very excited to have you on today because I really want to talk about art and I'm like excited by it but I'm also I dread it because like you know I think I'm all of us are pretty fluent when it comes to like psychological or sociological ideas but when you start talking about philosophy I completely lose the plot and zone out because it's like way over my head and art demands so much like philosophical like I'm trying to like math lady meme the way that NFTs will kind of morph in the future. Yeah. And mapping them a medic desire is a.

Yeah it's all very like. Big brain speculative. Yeah. Yeah. You know it's not you know like. There aren't a lot of clever people. Well yeah. With like a deep philosophical understanding.

No there aren't. Well that's for sure. Yeah. Well they all pretend to be into philosophy but they haven't read anything so I like I feel safe in the art world like at openings and after parties because I know that these people haven't read anything either but I mean just like in general like on a podcast for example. Yeah it's. The Balaji tweet. It's a bad idea. Surely to kind of monetize all memes or turn them into kind of these unique objects because surely the whole point is that a meme is something you share.

Wildly for free and that you change like you adjust it you change it well do you remember when the Bloomberg campaign was allegedly like paying people to make me. I do remember that. Yeah that was when I first kind of had this. In this feeling sort of that means might be over. Even though like the medic concepts would prevail but that was that kind of felt like a little bit of a turning point to me. And then I had this insight I guess into. Memes. Never you're never really able to buy a meme because the only real memes have a kind of like purity to them.

And in that way I don't think real memes could ever be like minted because I think sort of spiritually the idea of memes is kind of an egalitarian one. Yeah. And so they kind of like but there haven't been really new memes I think you're right. I don't think since since Biden took office. I don't think there have been any big new meme formats. Not that I can think of. There have been a couple things. One was Bernie sitting down.

Yeah. The other was maybe the aerobics instructor in Myanmar with rolling in. But they're not they're not really memes. They're just like picture. They're just things that happen. And to kind of like tethered or pegged to the event to really take off. Bernie Mittens was a meme because it was at least kind of recontextualized as was the Bernie like asking for money. Like once again asking you for there was some yeah there was some decent memes last year that I liked. Yeah. It's what was was Bernie Mittens is that the same as when he's sitting down.

Yeah. Yeah. So that but that kind of seemed like the logical endpoint in a way to me because that got people were making it into like people are weak pasting it over downtown Manhattan like the same day. Yeah. I kind of took the image and turned it into this terrible street art and pretty much like I think the day it happened or the next day. My mother sent me. My mother doesn't send me memes.

But she just like out of nowhere just texted me an image of like Bernie sat down on his mittens outside of the house. I grew up and thought like how the hell where did she get this from. You know like how did she do that. It felt like something's up here like something's. Yeah. And I think for a while they almost become meaningless because they're just used for too much stuff like every mean is instantly repurposed for every niche every niche group so I do some copywriting for a wholesale office furniture supply company. They make me read some like office some office furniture blog and they're all these like kind of like office furniture

employee memes memes we have but like they've changed the text too. Right. It's so bad. Crypto has some of the worst memes you'll ever see when they're putting in like different technical aspects of different tokens like levels of Belcher or something like that. I mean I remember that moment not too long ago when there was like the black girl Wojak. Yeah. Oh God.

Yeah. I forgot about that was the thing. That was amazing actually. And they got more and more detailed and kind of. Yeah. Specific and more mixed race and with like details and completely like the notion of the Wojak as like. I didn't even realize Wojak was white honestly. Yeah.

I thought he was like a line drawing which he is. Well yeah. I mean he had a kind of like omniracial quality to me. Yeah me too. He's been Italian or Polish or Arab. I mean it's like kind of like the phone emoji thing where like I thought the yellow face and the yellow hand was like a cartoon not a racial category and then you know you don't have to introduce a spate of like skin colors or whatever. They probably should have made it something less white adjacent.

Yeah. The emojis come from Japan I think. Oh OK. That makes sense. Yeah. Wait you're right. Yeah. Yeah.

And then with the you know the kind of like one of the ideas of the Biden project for some people is that we just roll back to 2015. Right. 2014. So it's a simpler time a time before like complex meme structures when memes were just jokes. You know just a picture some text. Yeah. This is part of the Biden project. There's like the idea of rolling back five years rolling back to like a simpler to the Obama days.

But we can't go back. Maybe we can go back. OK. So I have another question then. So we know that art sucked under Trump. It was probably one of the most embarrassing periods for art. And street art actually probably because of the pandemic seems to have declined a little in visibility and prestige. But do you have any hope for art under Biden.

Well I mean I don't know. I don't know what it would even be. Well it wouldn't be anything. It wouldn't be. No one really seems to do they. Yeah. Not really. I don't know.

You talk about street art. There was just this like crazy spate of like the worst street art across Manhattan. Yeah. Basically when George Floyd protests started happening when everyone boarded up and then they started painting on things. Right. And then they reboarded up through for the election. You know I was out there.

I went out to Soho first couple days. We saw you and there were just all these. But I went away. I went out in the daytime and there were just all these kind of like Gen X people kind of there are all these like Gen Xers in Soho painting like hearts and rainbows and just words like love. Care. It was the craziest thing. I spoke to some of them and they said they'd been like they'd been kind of invited by some landlord to do it. They were allowed to be here.

It was this just this crazy wave and then banks started doing it. You know it started just city city banks painting like clouds and hearts in their windows. He just wondered like what the hell is going on. It makes and actually the Jill Biden's Valentine's Day decorations on the White House lawn had almost exactly the same aesthetic of what we've been seeing all over the city. Like just she just put all these big pink hearts there. Yeah. It's kind of like a woke capital Casper mattress aesthetic like that sort of thing. Yeah, the most egregious example that that's probably like too obscure to interest anybody was like this Canadian fast fashion retailer or Ritzia that boarded up its store far far longer than any of the other stores.

And they had like a kind of quirky twee street art homage to mom and pop shops when they're just you know there. I saw that one of the most like there you know they're like Zara for Canadians. There was some crazy stuff wasn't there. God it's been a weird year. Yeah, there was. It used to be the idea of broken window theory, which I think came from Malcolm Gladwell and and maybe Rudy Giuliani when he was mayor, which is the like a building is in a state of disrepair that decline will follow. Yeah, yeah, that you shouldn't have that you shouldn't allow any graffiti or broken windows because that encourages crime or more to the point that it kind of encourages the perception that crime is high. And if you get rid of those things, the people who live in your city will feel safer, even if they're not safer.

And now it's kind of the opposite where like you you paint graffiti to like protect your business to like it's some crazy turnaround. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what the art of the. The Biden years will even be if they give it if you know if they start giving us like $2,000 a month like they should be then it could be like a great kind of golden age. Yeah, for artists. If he does like an FDR thing. Yeah, that's how England used to be in the 80s. I just imagine it like a Mike Lee film.

Yeah, I think so. I think so. I mean, I don't I don't remember it, but I used to work for a style magazine in London and endlessly being be made like interview or edit interviews with people from time. They did make it sound like quite dreamy. Well, they make New York sound quite dreamy to when it really wasn't. I mean, you look at like kind of like Harlem in the 1980s, like the Lower East Side in the 1980s. It was but a lot of people were kind of speculating that we will be returning to that and that might also yield a boom and good art. I don't know that that's necessarily going to pan out like at all.

I wanted to ask you about the civilization magazine map of the hookup chart. Yeah, yeah. How many people have you had sex with on that list? You don't have to answer that. Yeah. But that I don't know in a way that kind of makes me feel like when you watch like for example, like a boss. And people are talking about like the downtown 200 or there were 200 people downtown and everyone knew each other. It was so great. And it's like it feels like drunken canal and civilization and this kind of like new media print stuff that's been happening. That's kind of based around the scene of the Lower East Side.

Yeah. Feels like it's tapping into that kind of nostalgia. Yeah, people are just kind of making a scene happen. Which is good. Is that how they always happen? Yeah, I guess. Yeah. Or maybe civilization is more like kind of covering a scene.

Right. Richard's really interested in the scene. Richard Turley, Lucas Mascatello is maybe creating it, but drunken canal is just some like pure hyperstition. You know, they just they just put out a newspaper and no one can read it. A few months later, you're in New York magazine at the time. Talk of the town. It's really good. I really liked what you both said about it, like an episode or two back. We're pro.

Yeah. I mean, ordinarily, I like what Connor Kilpatrick said about it, which is sort of what I feel about it, which is that ordinarily, I would kind of sneer roll my eyes at this. But I think like young people banding together and doing stuff is probably it's probably good. At the very least, it's harmless. So, you know, let them something cool might come of it. Yeah, it's good. Yeah. It's good to just have people having fun.

Yeah. Just just being positive. Yeah. We have such a I want to know so much gloom. Yeah, no, there is. I want to know who compiled the civilization. I haven't even seen it actually in its entirety. Yeah, I haven't.

I've seen like snippets of like, it seems very free associated, like kind of like someone started listing names and then just disperse them is that's how I would have done it. I guess. Yeah. I'll get the I'll get the file for you. Okay. You know, I helped to compile this thing, but I came in a quite a late stage, I think. So I like added to this list of names and things, but most of the names were all down by the time I got to it, but I added some things, some places. Well, people think I'm a couple of people think I made it.

I feel did some complaints, some like some praise. Did anybody feel snubbed? You don't have to name names, but feel snubbed. Yeah. I don't know. It's not that I've not that I've heard back, but I don't. It's a pretty exhaustive list. Yeah.

I was wondering myself who made it because I don't who made like the list because I don't understand. Yeah. How they had such a kind of thorough understanding yet. I have to admit that my heart sank a little because I was I felt like one of them, you know, whichever Marx Brothers said that I don't want to be part of any club that'll have me and also I'm old and a boring loser. I don't belong on any scene list and Eli, my boyfriend certainly does not because he's even older and more boring than I know. Well, you know, well, I didn't put any of your names down. No, I know. Right, right up, right up some of the first ones down.

What can you do? Yeah, you have to like accept it. Yeah, I'm just I'm just happy to be involved. You know, I'm just happy to be in the in the conversation. If I can give a quote to the New York Times or if I can be on Red Scare. It's very good for me. But I feel very excited about New York. I feel very excited about this year.

I think this year is going to be great. It's maybe not super positive on Biden. That's made in North America. But who knows? Yeah, we want to be surprised. That's the thing I'm saying. I'm not positive at all about the major trends and developments in the culture at large. But I do think that certain individuals, I know, or give me a lot of hope, you know,

for the future and certain things that are happening personally give me hope for the future. So it's like on a very like granular level. It's almost like feudalism or something. Yeah, cultural feudalism. Yeah. Yeah, maybe we all have a big spiritual rebirth. You know, that's what I've been hoping from the beginning since kind of post-pandemic. I can feel it, honestly.

We're all going to reconsider what matters in life. There's been a shift. Yeah. Well, I think COVID is just going to be blatantly over come summer. Yeah. Like it can't go on that there are no like... I want to be free. Yeah.

There's no like, you know, you can't go... By the way, are openings happening? Because I've been, you know, the total recluse, but you have to wear a mask to the art opening. And... Yeah, it's not... It's not that fun. Yeah. I went to our friend Hedgie Shin's opening like last fall.

Yeah. Kind of like end of summer. And that was fantastic. So kind of the masks came off at some point in the night and Machu was just playing piano and singing songs, singing Coldplay songs. And it had a real... It was like a... Like a Toulouse La Trek painting.

No real joy ever was drinking cheap red wine. And it was so much fun. Oh, that sounds lovely. But I haven't been to anything good since then. Yeah. Fun opening, I mean. Yeah. I've seen you.

I've been to some fun parties. But they were not in a gallery setting. Though we did go to a gallery the first night of the, not for an opening, but when I saw you at the... Yeah. George Floyd protest. Oh, right, yeah. That's what we're just calling.

Calling. Yeah. And we did end up at a gallery. Yeah. At Kai Matsumiya Gallery. Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly. That was a fun night.

That was the first night of summer. That was like a George Floyd walking tour of Soho. Making people like breaking into the journeys. Yeah. How long ago was that? Like almost. That was beginning of June. Oh, God.

Okay. Well, all right. I was just trying to, I was trying to remember if I was pregnant and therefore drinking. You were drinking. I was not pregnant. You were drinking marbles. I felt momentarily panicked as I go, shit. Anyway.

I think the art world is definitely trying to make openings happen and trying to make art happen. And suddenly like this, I feel like invites are really going out now. I'm starting to get invited to things. I'm not getting invited to things. You know what? I really am sad that I missed your band that performed last Valentine's Day. I tried to go, but it was at capacity.

Wait, what? Wait, Dean, you're in a band? No, I was helping a friend, Irina Hayduk, a Serbian conceptual artist. She was doing two nights of cabaret performances at the Swiss Institute. And it sounded great. I was one of her performers. It was good actually. As parts of it, we formed a band.

I think we'll do some more dates. I hope there's maybe a date in Chicago in 2022 or something like that. Maybe there'll be one around the world. Well, I look forward to your world tour. But even then, you know, that was Valentine's Day. I remember, excuse me, I had to go around the audience like tickling them all in the face with his feather duster. And I remember even on Valentine's Day thinking, like, this really isn't very COVID.

We're just like brushing. I mean, what a time to be alive when like the two things that one most dreads, which is art openings and live shows, you now like crave to come back into existence. I would like be overjoyed to stand in a crowd of people holding a beer for 45 minutes, listening to some like long ass set that should have been 20 minutes shorter. Well, maybe this summer, we can wrap it up right in hour 20. Oh, nice. Do you have anything you want to plug?

My column, The Downward Spiral, comes out on Spike Art Magazine second Wednesday of every month. Okay, so second, please read it every month. Please read it. I've, I've read it every, it's really fantastic. Yeah. Well, see you in hell, Dean. Bye.

Thank you.