Art
The crypto art community is having a sustainability reckoning – NBC News
Blockchain technology’s many features have made it a hit in the art world, most notably the ability to stop forgeries and give artists a cut of future sales.
But one of blockchain’s less heralded features has caused something of a rift in the art world: its carbon footprint.
Crypto art, which had been viewed as a space for artists seeking stronger resale rights and protections from copyright infringement, as well as a more inclusive scene than traditional art world institutions, is at the center of a fiery debate over its impact on the environment. And many in the community are heeding the call to abolish existing processes for greener alternatives.
“Every single artist that I’ve spoken to doesn’t want to destroy the environment,” said Stuart Campbell, an Australian artist who goes by Sutu. “That’s a great place to come to the conversation at.”
Sutu is the moderator of a group on the chat app Discord called Clean-NFTs, a channel that kicked off in the last few weeks to talk about the ecological impact of crypto art, which now has more than 1,000 members. Sutu said his investigation of crypto art’s environmental impact began when a fan of his artwork replied to one of his tweets by vowing to no longer follow anyone in the community because of the environmental toll of NFT art.
In simple terms, crypto art is digital art but on the blockchain. That crucial difference creates an incorruptible platform to sell and collect digital art. That’s because each work of art is minted with a unique nonfungible token, known as an NFT — a sort of digital certificate of authenticity, or “proof of work.”
The crypto art world has boomed in recent months, with a piece of art and its NFT recently selling at a Christie’s auction for $69 million. The artist Grimes sold $6 million of NFT-backed art.
But the physical processes many platforms use to encode the artwork onto the blockchain use electricity — and plenty of it. Artist and computer scientist Memo Akten wrote a blog post on Medium in December detailing “how ludicrously energy consuming and ecologically destructive some blockchain based activities are.”
The post took off online — not just in the art community, but also among environmentalists and technologists — pushing artists and consumers to re-evaluate how they approach the crypto art space. Akten followed up his posts and his carbon emissions calculator (which was recently taken offline because of abuse and harassment) with a guide to eco-friendly crypto art.
Akten said he thinks the community is split. Some artists and fans are disengaging entirely until sustainable solutions are created. And then there are those who deny the energy-consuming reality altogether.
“There is very strong misinformation-based propaganda in the crypto world in general to deny the ecological impact of proof-of-work-based blockchains,” Akten said. “It is reminiscent of the oil and tobacco industries.” Akten said there are also “many whataboutisms, comparing the figures to the carbon footprint of the banking industry, fast fashion, McDonald’s, etc.”
But there’s also a push to find more energy-efficient systems that preserve the upsides of crypto art.
Proof-of-work is the computing process that the crypto art marketplace has laid its foundation on, but the process uses a large amount of computing power. Sutu and others have instead pointed to proof-of-stake, a far more efficient process, as a better way forward.
Unlike proof-of-work, which guzzles electricity as computers crunch through extremely complex puzzles as “proofs” to verify transactions, proof-of-stake promotes reliability with a financial incentive — users deposit some of their cryptocurrency as proof that they own it and that they have a personal stake in the system’s accuracy.
While engineers work toward moving to proof-of-stake, “what the community itself needs is to take some ownership on what we can do in the short and medium term,” said Jason Bailey, who started the art analytics and digital art blog Artnome.
Bailey said he noticed that artists who have degrees or day jobs in tech were, in some cases, shaming artists who come from less privileged backgrounds and lean on the new crypto art marketplace to feed themselves and their families rather than as a side hustle.
“I don’t dislike either side of those groups, and it bothered me that I saw so much emotional energy and human energy being burnt up without a lot of progress being made,” he said.
And so Bailey launched Green NFTs, a bounty system for creating more eco-friendly NFT systems by encouraging people to donate money for a shared cause. For this bounty, some of the money will go to creating a consolidated body of research for artists and collectors and some will go to developers creating open-source solutions. The grant has raised more than $34,000.
Panels are also forming in response to the discourse. Sutu moderated the conversation “Eco-friendly NFTs: Are they bulls—?” on the social audio app Clubhouse last month and moderated a panel about the community response this month on Twitter Spaces.
It’s not uncommon for viral outrage to fade, but the discourse around NFTs’ environmental damage shows no signs of slowing. And it’s not inherently a doomerism mindset — it’s a turning point in which artists and gatekeepers can ask for and create more energy-efficient systems without stamping out the ethos of the decentralized creator economy.
Sutu said that while the art world might only be a small part of the broader blockchain community, it still has the opportunity to take responsibility and show a better way forward.
“We still can lead when we see an opportunity to lead within our industry,” he said. “We’ve seen alternatives available to be more energy-efficient. Why not jump on that now, why not lead the way, why not show how the art community can influence those other industries to follow suit, especially if they are interacting with the blockchain?”
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A Scottish artist who uses cars, worship bells and Irn-Bru in her work is among the nominees for this year’s Turner Prize.
Glasgow-born Jasleen Kaur’s work reflects her life growing up in the city’s Sikh community.
She is up for the prestigious art award, now in its 40th year, alongside Pio Abad, Claudette Johnson and Delaine Le Bas.
Turner Prize jury chairman Alex Farquharson described it as a “fantastic shortlist of artists”
Works by the nominated artists will go on show at London’s Tate Britain gallery from 25 September.
They will receive £10,000 each, while the winner, to be announced on 3 December, will get £25,000.
In a statement, Farquharson said: “All four make work that is full of life.
“They show how contemporary art can fascinate, surprise and move us, and how it can speak powerfully of complex identities and memories, often through the subtlest of details.
“In the Turner Prize’s 40th year, this shortlist proves that British artistic talent is as rich and vibrant as ever.”
The shortlisted artists are:
Pio Abad
Manila-born Abad’s solo exhibition To Those Sitting in Darkness at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford included drawings, etchings and sculptures that combined to “ask questions of museums”, according to the jury.
The 40-year-old, who works in London, reflects on colonial history and growing up in the Philippines, where his parents struggled against authoritarianism.
The title of his exhibit is a nod to Mark Twain’s 1901 essay To the Person Sitting In Darkness, which hit out at imperialism.
Jasleen Kaur
Kaur is on the list for Alter Altar at Tramway, Glasgow, which included family photos, an Axminster carpet, a classic Ford Escort covered in a giant doily, Irn-Bru and kinetic handbells.
The 37-year-old, who lives in London, had previously showcased her work at the Victoria and Albert Museum by looking at popular Indian cinema.
Delaine Le Bas
Worthing-born Le Bas is nominated for an exhibition titled Incipit Vita Nova. Here Begins The New Life/A New Life Is Beginning. Staged at the Secession art institute in Vienna, Austria, it saw painted fabrics hung, with theatrical costumes and sculptures also part of the exhibit.
The 58-year-old artist was inspired by the death of her grandmother and the history of the Roma people.
The jury said they “were impressed by the energy and immediacy present in this exhibition, and its powerful expression of making art in a time of chaos”.
Claudette Johnson
Manchester-born Johnson has been given the nod for her solo exhibition Presence at the Courtauld Gallery in London, and Drawn Out at Ortuzar Projects, New York.
She uses portraits of black women and men in a combination of pastels, gouache and watercolour, and was praised by the judges for her “sensitive and dramatic use of line, colour, space and scale to express empathy and intimacy with her subjects”.
Johnson, 65, was appointed an MBE in 2022 after being named on the New Year Honours list for her services to the arts.
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Turner Prize shortlist includes art showcasing Scottish Sikh community
A Scottish artist who uses cars, worship bells and Irn-Bru in her work is among the nominees for this year’s Turner Prize.
Glasgow-born Jasleen Kaur’s work reflects her life growing up in the city’s Sikh community.
She is up for the prestigious art award, now in its 40th year, alongside Pio Abad, Claudette Johnson and Delaine Le Bas.
Turner Prize jury chairman Alex Farquharson described it as a “fantastic shortlist of artists”
Works by the nominated artists will go on show at London’s Tate Britain gallery from 25 September.
They will receive £10,000 each, while the winner, to be announced on 3 December, will get £25,000.
In a statement, Farquharson said: “All four make work that is full of life.
“They show how contemporary art can fascinate, surprise and move us, and how it can speak powerfully of complex identities and memories, often through the subtlest of details.
“In the Turner Prize’s 40th year, this shortlist proves that British artistic talent is as rich and vibrant as ever.”
The shortlisted artists are:
Pio Abad
Manila-born Abad’s solo exhibition To Those Sitting in Darkness at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford included drawings, etchings and sculptures that combined to “ask questions of museums”, according to the jury.
The 40-year-old, who works in London, reflects on colonial history and growing up in the Philippines, where his parents struggled against authoritarianism.
The title of his exhibit is a nod to Mark Twain’s 1901 essay To the Person Sitting In Darkness, which hit out at imperialism.
Jasleen Kaur
Kaur is on the list for Alter Altar at Tramway, Glasgow, which included family photos, an Axminster carpet, a classic Ford Escort covered in a giant doily, Irn-Bru and kinetic handbells.
The 37-year-old, who lives in London, had previously showcased her work at the Victoria and Albert Museum by looking at popular Indian cinema.
Delaine Le Bas
Worthing-born Le Bas is nominated for an exhibition titled Incipit Vita Nova. Here Begins The New Life/A New Life Is Beginning. Staged at the Secession art institute in Vienna, Austria, it saw painted fabrics hung, with theatrical costumes and sculptures also part of the exhibit.
The 58-year-old artist was inspired by the death of her grandmother and the history of the Roma people.
The jury said they “were impressed by the energy and immediacy present in this exhibition, and its powerful expression of making art in a time of chaos”.
Claudette Johnson
Manchester-born Johnson has been given the nod for her solo exhibition Presence at the Courtauld Gallery in London, and Drawn Out at Ortuzar Projects, New York.
She uses portraits of black women and men in a combination of pastels, gouache and watercolour, and was praised by the judges for her “sensitive and dramatic use of line, colour, space and scale to express empathy and intimacy with her subjects”.
Johnson, 65, was appointed an MBE in 2022 after being named on the New Year Honours list for her services to the arts.
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Claudette Johnson has been nominated for this year’s Turner prize for her work, which includes a portrait of the African-American slavery abolitionist Sarah Parker Remond commissioned as part of the Guardian’s award-winning Cotton Capital series.
Pio Abad, Johnson, Jasleen Kaur and Delaine Le Bas will compete for the £25,000 prize, while the nominated artists will each collect £10,000 as the prize returns to Tate Britain for the first time in six years.
Colonialism, migration, nationalism and identity politics are the key themes running through the 40th edition of the Turner prize, which the jury described as showing contemporary British art “is appealing and dynamic as ever”.
Alex Farquharson, the director of Tate Britain and chair of the Turner prize jury, said this year’s nominees were exploring ideas of identity and would be exhibited from 25 September, before the jury’s final choice.
He said: “This year’s shortlisted artists can be broadly characterised as exploring questions of identity, autobiography, community and the self in relation to memory, or history or myth.”
The Turner prize, regarded as one of the art world’s most prestigious awards, is presented to an artist born or working in Britain for an outstanding exhibition or presentation of their work over the previous year.
Abad was nominated for his solo exhibition To Those Sitting in Darkness at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, with the jury commenting on the “precision and elegance” of his work, which takes its title from a Mark Twain poem of a similar name that critiques American imperialism the Philippines, his homeland.
The show also contains references to the Benin Bronzes, after Abad discovered that the punitive expedition of 1897 – during which British troops sacked Benin City and looted thousands of objects, of which about 900 are in the British Museum’ – set off from his home, Woolwich, in south London.
Johnson was nominated for her solo Presence exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery, which the Guardian said “brilliantly questions depictions of non-white figures by such revered painters as Gauguin and Picasso”. She was also recognised for her New York show, Drawn Out, at Ortuzar Projects, which included her Redmond portrait.
She is the latest black female artist who emerged in the Black Art Movement of the 1980s to be recognised by the Turner prize, following in the footsteps of Lubaina Himid (2017 winner) and Veronica Ryan (2022), while Ingrid Pollard and Barbara Walker have both been nominated.
The jury said Johnson had been nominated because of the “renewal of her practice”, after she stopped making work in the 1990s, and the fact she was still “taking risks and trying new forms of practice”.
Kaur’s work in the exhibition Alter Altar, which was shown at Tramway in Glasgow, features sculptures and soundscapes, including a red Ford Escort covered in a huge doily, which references her father’s first car and ideas of migration and belonging in Britain.
Kaur grew up in Glasgow’s Sikh community in Pollokshields, and the jury said the exhibition was a breakout show that was “generous, celebratory, moving and alive to timely issues, speaking imaginatively to how we might live together in a world increasingly marked by nationalism, division and social control”.
Le Bas’s work, shown at the Vienna Secession exhibition, was described as a “response to social and political turmoil” and includes immersive performance art with theatrical costumes and sculptures.
Farquharson said there was a chance the show may travel to Bradford during its City of Culture year, following the precedent set by Coventry, which hosted the awards in 2021, although that was still “to be confirmed”.
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