A new set of experimental projects to reinvent the future of arts with blockchain.
The DAOWO Sessions: Artworld Prototypes is a series of online events running from 28th January to 4th March 2021. The series explores the possibilities for the future of the artworld with blockchain by investigating what can be learned from DAOs (Decentralised Autonomous Organisations) working with Others (-WO). Each session is an eye-opening presentation and conversation around active experimentation that aims to hack, deconstruct and reinvent the arts in the emerging crypto space in response to people and their local contexts. This is a unique opportunity for cultural practitioners, representatives of arts, technology organisations, communities, and anyone interested in blockchain’s potential to come together and question the future of art and society.
Curated by Ruth Catlow (artistic director Furtherfield), Penny Rafferty (writer and researcher) and Ben Vickers (CTO Serpentine Galleries) with the Goethe-Institut London, each event introduces one of five new progressive blockchain art prototypes created by DAO teams in Berlin, Hong Kong, Johannesburg and Minsk. Through live video conference, the teams introduce their prototypes and address key questions about blockchain systems’ potential to decentralise power structures and rewire the arts. The final session brings together the DAOWO curators in conversation with art critic Francesca Gavin.
REWATCH THE DAOWO SESSIONS
(Video Broadcast in English, BSL interpretation)
28 Jan 2021 | BLACK SWAN DAO (Berlin)
This first event introduced BLACK SWAN DAO, an experimental initiative which responds to the increasing precarisation of cultural labour by providing practitioners with tools to collaboratively organise and share resources. The project is managed by Laura Lotti and Calum Bowden from Trust, an interdisciplinary research and development lab in Berlin for artists, designers, technologists, and ecologists working with advanced technologies and experimental theories.
4 Feb 2021 | COVALENCE STUDIO (Johannesburg)
This session connects with Johannesburg’s DAO to introduce Covalence Studio, a network of resources, skills and support for artists and creative practitioners with the goal to rethink equitable artistic practices that can thrive under restricted movements and collapsing economic infrastructures. The project is managed by Bhavisha Panchia, Chad Cordeiro and Carly Whitaker.
11 Feb 2021 | DAO AS CHIMERA (Minsk)
A “science-fiction of the present-day”: this initiative is a network and a live action role play game that serves as a place to gather and preserve the speculative knowledge about 2020 blockchains – and speculate on future histories of blockchains, when all DAOs will have happened, and blockchains will have become “reptile” technologies. The project by eeefff aims to provide a view on the cultural, tech and start-up sphere in Belarus, to free the emancipatory potential of collectivity by experimenting with its inner logic, and to suspend the – apparent – neutrality and progressiveness of automated financial technologies.
25 Feb 2021 | ENSEMBL (Hong Kong)
An Ethereum-based platform for decentralised organising of artistic production. The project explores how can DAOs learn from improvised music about value and temporally dynamic collaborations? What’s the “Score”?
For full event information and tickets, please visit: goethe.de/daowo
4 Mar 2021 | The Machine to Eat the Artworld
A conversation with the curators of the Artworld DAO think tank and the DAOWO programme, Ruth Catlow and Penny Rafferty interviewed by curator and writer Francesca Gavin. Catlow brings 25 years of experience as a curator, artist, and researcher exploring the intersection of arts and technology, emerging practices in art, decentralised technologies and the blockchain, alongside Berlin-based writer and visual theorist Penny Rafferty.
The DAOWO Sessions: Artworld Prototypes 2021 are the DAOWO Global Initiative’s culmination forging a transnational network of arts and blockchain cooperation with leading international arts and technology institutions and communities in cities around the world.
Our ambition is to seed a new decentralised ecology of open source cultural organisations, built by artists embedded in distributed global communities. Designed to activate collaboration across communities, disciplines and sectors, DAOWO (Decentralised Autonomous Organisation With Others) events enable participants to interrogate the benefits and pitfalls of blockchain developments for arts, culture and wider society from local perspectives. Events connect visionary artists, cultural workers and blockchain entrepreneurs, together with local initiatives, communities, institutions and businesses to seek new transnational systems and approaches.
The DAOWO Global Initiative is a partnership between Goethe-Institut, Furtherfield@DECAL and Serpentine Galleries. It builds on the award winning 2017-18 DAOWO art and blockchain lab series and 2019 DAOWO Summits UK.
