Nothing is a line. Everything, everywhere is always moving. Forever. Get used to it.
We’ve all been in crypto long enough to know this quote by Logan Roy from Succession is one of the most important mantras in order to cope correctly.
During FWBfest, I reminded my friend Shumon about this quote. We had been watching a bunch of talks, including the incredible Josh Citarella one, where he showed how people on the internet, mostly in their late teenage years, would fluctuate in their political, religious and economic beliefs, among other stuff.
We had also observed, along with others (actually, a very vocal and pink haired David Rudnick), how the critic and curator Dean Kissick had shifted his position on AI as a tool for creation - when before, AI was a danger to authorship.
I think adaptable people that are open to changing their positions are the smartest. I think holding beliefs for the sake of maintaining a brand is not good for business. If I learned something in the past several entrepreneurial years, it is to stay light on our feet and always be ready for changes. This is also true for life in general, of course.
This morning, I found this tweet by Kain - very timely and telling as usual:
In crypto we can never be static. Or stable. There’s always something new to invent. Now onchain doesn’t mean onchain anymore, or does it? Friend.tech, a new social network based on owning shares of your friends, launched yesterday. It took me back to Burak’s drop with JPG, Social Contracts - where lots of people discovered the broadness of their social graph based on their NFT activity.
I did semi-onboard to the platform, signed up via apple (lol), then verified X (also lol) and now I need to get Base ETH to play. My ledger is actually far away and then I have to plug it in and I can’t be bothered, so it’s gonna have to wait. I hope you are all having fun though.
In the wise words of Matt Condon, we’re looking at a serious case of Irritable Blockchain Syndrome.
And while we’re at it, this one:
What a time to be onchain.
Less than a week after FWBfest, and it’s already old news. But either way, I’m gonna tell you about it because it was really fun.
I landed in LAX on Thursday evening, having had 0 hours of sleep in all three of my flights, mainly because my slides for the talk I was doing at FWB were unfinished but I also couldn't just finish them because I was out of ideas. So I watched Cocaine Bear which I thought would be healing but it was so bad that it just made the whole thing worse.
Either way, I did finish my slides on Friday morning, 4 hours before my presentation. I think it went well - I wanted to give an overview of cultural institutions that were using the blockchain in one way or another. In case you are interested, the video is online (link below), and I made sure the slides had good memes in it so that it wasn’t so painful. General feedback is that I was “so real” and that “I said what everyone wanted to say out loud but couldn’t”. Oh dear.
Anyways - on the links below you’ll find my mature Fest review for Forbes including quotes by awesome people, but here’s are my immature bullet points about it which are much more interesting:
THE PEOPLE: really, the people, meeting my internet friends and legends IRL was what really sold it for me. Nowhere else could I have gotten to meet Godmin, Pixlpa, Duane, Steve K, Bloomy, Phones (I forgot to add Phones and I am right now amending this post because HOW COULD I?) Maya Man, Miles, etc. and re-meet all the rest of the lot of degenerates I love to hang out with (you know who you are - how good it is to see you every time) and just chill in the woods.
Talks by Shumon Basar, Josh Citarella, Eileen and Ruby Thelot were brilliant. Link to Friday livestream. Link to Saturday Livestream.
USB transfer was interesting, but potentially not very opsec conscious. I would not come near it with a 10 foot pole but maybe it worked.
Contrary to popular belief, web3 people are sporty. The Idyllwild Invitational tennis tournament hosted by Party was extremely popular.
Big trends in the talks - rough notes: AI and artistic authorship and authenticity. The philosophical side of being online. Online-ness and radicalization. A critique of the tech-world promoted creator economy, with Taylor Lorenz arguing it started with mommy bloggers - I beg to differ, but that’s her opinion.
Shoutout to the mushroom tea guy that single-handedly provided vibes via samples to every person in the festival.
My big critique is accessibility: a DAO is global, so in the middle of a bear market, a gathering in the middle of the mountains in California isn’t really accessible. I took 3 flights and carpooled for 2 hours to get there, and I’m a lucky one. Isn't “internet culture” global and somewhat heterogeneous and decentralized?
HOWEVER, the livestream worked wonderfully. I received real-time feedback on my talk from people that were watching online.
I HAVE TO CONFESS: having listened to Caroline Polachek for the first time during fest, I actually did not like her music. She does know how to perform, no shade, she’s really good at that. But the music is quite meh, and you just haven’t listened to The Cranberries enough to know what’s good in that “chick genre”.
Finally: if you are reading this, and are working at OpenSea, and approved the gallery at Fest, who hurt you? Call us next time, we have a community of curators at the ready.
We also visited LACMA with Nic Hamilton, Sten, Godmin, Raster Eyes and TV. Now that we have been to a real museum, we’re happy to announce that we are entitled to at least 3 15-part threads on X on why Polymorphs are the next Georgia O’Keefe.
Next week - hot boy summer! (by Mitchell F. Chan, of course)
Very excited about Mitch’s Boys of Summer on Wild.xyz - head over to our Discord to get access to the allowlist, presale starts on Monday August 14th, and normies sale on Wednesday 16th. Mitch will also be hosting a preview on the 15th, you can find access to it again on the JPG discord, under #allowlists.
I had the chance to preview a few months ago since together with Stina Gustafsson and Office Impart we’re curating Mitch into a show for Art Week in September in Berlin, and I truly think it is a revolution. I love the narrative, the title, the visuals, and the Mitch-ness of the whole thing. It’s truly a banger.
Other links to note:
This week we announced our upcoming IRL exhibition happening in October in Berlin, Market Makers, commissioned by… a bank. We’re really excited about it and finalizing the selected NFT artists. You are welcomed to suggest pieces to curate on the Discord, channel #market-makers
I’ve started contributing to Forbes. I’m stoked to have the opportunity to share JPG’s and our community’s artists and what we love with a wider audience, as wide as it gets I believe! FWBfest article here and on artists experimenting with cool stuff here.
Black Hole by Miragenesi is one of the most exciting things on the NFT sphere at the moment.
(sorry for the grammar mistakes, I’m late for a dinner reservation)
Happy Friday 🙂