In 2019, artists Casey Reas, Rick Silva, Addie Wagenknecht, and the duo exonemo embarked on a venture, inviting about 75 of their fellow artists to post and swap editioned blockchain-primarily based functions about the study course of a 7 days. “This experiment,” wrote the curators, “is a way for us to trade operates to produce a collection.” They dubbed the project a2p, or Artist-to-Peer, and in both equally spirit and format, it would lay the groundwork for Feral File.
Today, Feral File has cemented by itself as a electronic art platform by and for artists, that carries on to champion the edition design. Given that its founding in 2020 by Reas and blockchain startup Bitmark, it has hosted 33 online offering exhibitions, featuring 26 curators and 178 artists. Choices range from the group display “Peer to Peer,” curated by Buffalo AKG‘s Tina Rivers Ryan, to “LeeMullican.PCX,” curated by Anika Meier and accumulating the oil painter’s early laptop or computer artworks from 1987. Most a short while ago, “In/Seen” observed curator Linda Dounia Rebeiz bring together A.I. will work by Black creators which emphasize the technology’s created-in biases.
“It’s just this sort of a extensive selection of artists, with various ideas and techniques to techniques in digital art,” Reas explained to Artnet News of the platform’s programming. “People coming from the outside could perspective electronic artwork as quite slim, but for me, Feral File shows that it is these a various and eclectic apply.”
Lu Yang, Materials Earth Knight – Traveling Method (2023). Courtesy of Feral File.
On June 28, Feral File will be commemorating its next anniversary (not counting the to start with 9 months soon after its founding, which were being involved with improvement) with a retrospective titled “Feral File 1..” The demonstrate functions 33 artworks by artists such as as Dmitri Cherniak, Refik Anadol, Sofia Crespo, Tyler Hobbs, 0xDEAFBEEF, LaTurbo Avedon, Helena Sarin, and John Gerrard. All the pieces had been chosen by Reas from each individual of Feral File’s earlier demonstrates (and the unique curators’ texts for these prior demonstrates will be bundled).
“I really truly feel that Feral File is at its main [a place for] displaying electronic sculpture and in code,” said Reas. “But in accomplishing ‘Feral File 1.,’ I attempted to get a mix of each medium, every single kind of work—just seriously seeking to make that array in the display.”
Refik Anadol, Unsupervised — Equipment Hallucinations — MoMA Generative Analyze 1 (2021). Courtesy of Feral File.
“Feral File 1.0” will also mark a turning point for the platform, closing out its initially chapter. Moving ahead, Feral File 2. will proceed to target on artists’ rights (the platform’s good contracts make certain creators royalties via resales and cross-blockchain transactions), even though homing in on editioned sequence and team exhibitions. With the latter, participating artists will acquire an version of every work in the display and collectors can obtain sets made up of, once more, just about every do the job in the demonstrate.
It’s a structure, Reas mentioned, inspired by Feral File’s 2021 “–GRAPH” demonstrate of plotter-based mostly artwork, which was sold as a set.
“We consider that when the perform is gathered, the collector should have just one operate from just about every artist. When one thing is gathered as a total established, the cash flow from that is also break up evenly. That is a person way that we’re functioning from conventional art world gathering dynamics,” Reas described, including that the structure further enabled the contributing artists to connect and form a local community.
Feral File 2. will be inaugurated on July 13 by a generative art exhibition, “N=12,” curated by artist Aaron Penne.
Auriea Harvey, Haristory (2022). Courtesy of Feral File.
The platform’s second anniversary festivities are rounded out by a more compact, although no less sizeable, present that revisits Feral File’s roots. “The Experiment” provides a curated variety from the 2019 a2p assortment (a second version of the experiment took position in the spring of 2020), showcasing creators such as Kim Asendorf, Auriea Harvey, Tabor Robak, Yoshi Sodeoka, and Alan Butler, amid other people.
The display is non-collectible, but symbolic to Feral File, as it revisits the seed for the platform as well as a minute that preceded the NFT boom—”Right just before we had this bifurcation, ahead of this new strength and society emerged,” Reas mentioned.
A lot more so, Feral File’s abiding experimental ethos, he extra, is bottled within.
“The authentic intention of Feral File was to experiment with different methods of functioning with curators, with group and solo demonstrates, with distinctive methods to allow for people today to accumulate. Can we consider this? Can we attempt that?” said Reas. “We’ve tried using a large amount of factors, and this is what we imagined Feral File can be or what we truly feel it really must be. That’s genuinely what Feral File 2. signifies.”
“Feral File 1.0” and “The Experiment” are on look at at Feral File from June 28 through July 13.
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