Crypto Coffer: an Investigation into the Autonomy and Value of Art
by Fabio Gnassi
João Enxuto and Erica Love collaborate on projects that examine the dynamics of value and labor in creative economies. Enxuto received an MFA in Photography from RISD and Love holds BAs from Brown University in Economics and Visual Arts and an MFA from UCLA. Together they were fellows at the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program and were awarded a New York Foundation for the Arts Artist Fellowship (2023 & 2017) and a Creative Capital Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant. They have given talks and exhibited work at the Whitney Museum of Art, New Museum, Anthology Film Archives, Carriage Trade, Walker Art Center, Centre Pompidou, Edith-Russ-Haus, Louisiana Museum in Denmark, Museo Tamayo, and other venues worldwide. Enxuto and Love’s writing has been published by Verso Books, MIT Press, Sternberg Press, Mousse Magazine, Art in America, Walker Artist Op-Eds, Wired Magazine, X-TRA Contemporary Art Quarterly, and elsewhere. Their teaching appointments include the Cooper Union, New York University, City College New York, The New Centre for Research and Practice, and the Maumaus in Lisbon. They are on the Board of Advisors for Weird Economies and fellows at Berlin University of the Arts (UdK).
Your work, Crypto Coffer, focuses on one of the world’s most famous blockchain, Ethereum. To fully appreciate the piece, it’s important to understand some technical details. Could you explain what Ethereum is and how it works?
Ethereum is a decentralized blockchain network that has been active since 2015. It allows for the creation and execution of smart contracts, self-executing contracts with the terms directly written into code. Its native cryptocurrency, Ether (ETH), is used to pay for transactions and computational services on the network. Unlike Bitcoin, Ethereum’s blockchain is designed to be programmable, enabling developers to build decentralized applications (DApps) that run without centralized control. In September 2022 Ethereum transitioned from a “proof-of-work” (PoW) to a “proof-of-stake” (PoS) consensus mechanism. This Ethereum 2.0 upgrade was implemented to improve scalability and reduce energy consumption by as much as 99%.
In our working lives as artists we have come to recognize a paradox in which new digital technologies have intensified the market power of speculation and reputation networks in the art field without developing an infrastructure to counteract the growing inequality among cultural producers
What is Crypto Coffer and what is its meaning?
Our collaborative practice has always examined the political dynamics of creative economies. We’ve tried to operate beyond critical investigation to imagine what real agency for artists and art workers could look like. Crypto Coffer, and the series it is a part of, evolved from the developing scenarios to building prototypes that actively yield derivative value while we participate in creative labor. The series includes (in the order they were made) The Mining Museum, Crypto Coffer, and Final Miner: all three computational sculptures parallel the energy expenditure of “proof-of-work” cryptocurrency mining with the overflow of unremunerated creative work. Each sculpture is a context-specific tool to redirect value (symbolic & material) in the art field.
The dimensions for the Crypto Coffer conform to international flight carry-on luggage size regulations. Upon arrival at an exhibition destination, art fair, panel, or symposium, the Crypto Coffer is easily assembled and put to verify proof of work. Ethereum tokens hashed synchronously with a work engagement are stored in our virtual wallet (coffer). Host institutions need only provide a power outlet and a consistent Wifi connection.
As mentioned earlier, in September 2022 Ethereum underwent an update that permanently removed the “proof of work” (PoW) mechanism in favor of “proof of stake” (PoS). This change rendered your tool obsolete, transforming it into an artifact of digital archaeology. Could you discuss this event and the new value your work has gained?
The third iteration of the series, Final Miner, was installed just before “The Merge”, as Ethereum’s proof-of-work protocols transitioned to a proof-of-stake. The Final Miner is a black acrylic enclosure for a computer that mines ETH. This sculpture was installed and activated in late August 2022 to run proof-of-work verifications on the ETH network in the final weeks of this computationally and energy intensive process. The writing of blocks to a decentralized ledger shown on the computer’s display tracks the proof-of-work process, rewarded in cryptocurrency tokens. In the case of Final Miner the proceeds went directly to our virtual wallet.
Final Miner was conceived as a scheme to financially compensate us throughout the artwork’s installation at Banner Repeater, an artist-run space located on a platform on the London Overground train system. The mining came to an end on September 15, 2022 with the ceasing of the proof-of-work (PoW) protocol. With this new proof-of-stake (PoS) system, validators must hold or “stake” 32 ETH tokens (currently $88,000 USD) to participate. While the long anticipated merge to (PoS) stands to cut carbon emissions in the ETH network, it does so by excluding all but the largest holders of cryptocurrency from pursuing validation rewards.Final Miner is the last in a trio of cryptocurrency mining sculptures that we have made since 2018.
Since “The Merge”, Final Miner has become an inert object on a shelf at Banner Repeater. The computer display which streamed a sequence of mining hashes has gone dark and the black acrylic enclosure serves as a casket. Now that the artwork no longer functions as intended, its value shifts from practical to purely symbolic. It has yet to be determined if the functional obsolescence of Final Miner will increase or decrease its market value.
Crypto Coffer serves as a tool to explore the value system that defines artistic activity. What is your perspective on the current state of this economy?
In our working lives as artists we have come to recognize a paradox in which new digital technologies have intensified the market power of speculation and reputation networks in the art field without developing an infrastructure to counteract the growing inequality among cultural producers. In fact, it turned out that the internet could not democratize the art field despite its mass effect. For this reason we are focusing our future work on remedying intractable problems in the art field, such as opacity and scarcity. Recent technologies like blockchain and artificial intelligence offer many possibilities along with new sets of complications. The deployment of potentially emancipatory technologies is often spurred by hype cycles and market volatility.
At the time we were working on our series of proof-of-work mining sculptures, the art market was interfacing with cryptocurrency primarily through “non-fungible tokens” (NFTs). While the NFT phenomenon briefly made a few individuals large amounts of cryptocurrency, these new marketplaces tended to reward novelty and speculation, while bypassing established norms of aesthetic judgment. In the end, the NFT bubble failed to harness the transformative powers of the blockchain, instead it served to uphold contemporary art’s economic exceptionalism. The NFT was collectable because it was designed to encode singularity and scarcity. These are bugs, not features for a just, more equitable art economy. Our engagement with Ethereum was with the means of production – mining not minting. Our three mining sculptures operated with the limits of technology protocols, and the given horizon of obsolescence. The Ethereum network continues to grow under proof-of-stake, as the contemporary art market struggles to grab hold of the next speculative instrument to keep it from sliding deeper into recession.
