NFTs production, distribution, recognition, ownership, and collection
2 December 2022 at 11:00:00 pm
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Session Convenors
Lydia Baxendell, University of Canterbury
Raewyn Martyn, University of Canterbury
Session Speakers
Nina Dyer, Depot Artspace
Iokapeta Magele-Suamasi, Creative NZ Pacific Arts NFT Pilot 2022
Elizabeth Harris, Leiden University
Lydia Baxendell, University of Canterbury
Raewyn Martyn, University of Canterbury
This panel invites short paper presentations as the springboard for a roundtable-like discussion focused on how NFTs provoke changes in existing production, distribution, recognition, ownership, and collection—and what this means for artists, curators, researchers, and for institutions with material collections. The panel topic responds to the exhibition Presentation Layer: NFT forms, platforms, and transference, at the University of Canterbury Ilam Campus Gallery in May 2022, and the subsequent publication launched later in 2022. This show brought together works by three established artists working with NFT forms, platforms and modes of transference, and work by two current Ilam School of Fine Arts students who are new to the medium. The premise for the show developed from an earlier roundtable discussion in April 2022, which introduced multiple histories of the NFT—artistic, economic, technical—and asked how our understanding of these histories might shape future behaviours within art practices and markets.
Between a rock and a hard place: Situating Local Uptake of NFTs Within the Wider Art Historical Context
Nina Dyer, Depot Artspace
Taking cues from the triumphs and failures of 20th century dematerialised art forms, digital artists have largely side-stepped market exploitation and institutional recuperation by undermining traditional market values such as scarcity, authenticity, transfer of ownership and permanence. In the past 30 odd years, this resistance to Capital’s logic has come at the cost of digital artists’ ability to sustain their practices.
Blockchain technology has widened the horizons of digital art-making in a drastically evolved cyberspace. Artists working in the digital age are subsequently adjusting their views on intellectual property and agency, faced with new alternatives to traditional market norms in the digital sphere. With a view to the current context in which the Labour Government of Aotearoa has announced the implementation of an Artist Resale Royalty Scheme, this paper surveys the enthusiasms and scepticisms of contemporary artists in Aotearoa towards the still-nascent NFT space.
A Moana Lens on NFTs: Observing a Pacific Arts NFT Pilot in Aotearoa
Iokapeta Magele-Suamasi, Creative NZ Pacific Arts NFT Pilot 2022
In 2021, Creative New Zealand Pacific Arts leadership launched an NFT pilot in response to rising speculation about NFTs. The output for the pilot was a recommendation report that was submitted as part of a wider discussion and exploration into new tools, capacity building and skills development for Pasifika artists traversing and navigating in the ‘Digital Moana’ and ‘Virtual Va’.
This pilot pioneered a Pasifika artist-led inquiry of robust NFT discussions as part of CNZs major five-year Pacific Arts Strategy (2018-2023) built on four key focus areas described as ‘Pou’. These key values centralise the Tagata Pasifika worldview as a research approach into NFTs and are ultimately aimed at supporting a creative inquiry into this digital infrastructure to explore potential for Pasifika artists to thrive.
This paper shares some observations about the Pilot with key learnings and discoveries, some synergies and discourse about NFTs and wider discussions about emergent disruptive technologies making an impact on artists, the global arts milieu and contemporary arts practice.
A token gesture: Trans-Tasman legal approaches to addressing art market inequality through NFTs and resale royalty rights
Elizabeth Harris, Leiden University
Australian artists are often motivated to experiment with NFTs by a desire to secure royalties upon resale in the secondary market. However, due to the way the Resale Royalty Right for Visual Artists Act 2009 (Cth) operates, these hopes may be misplaced.
Placing the NFT trend within the broader history of social and economic inequalities within the Australian art market, this paper uses plain language to explain legal concepts, allowing us to compare the valid expectations of artists as to how NFTs or the Act will secure royalties, and the legal reality which jeopardises their income.
Based on this understanding, it considers how we can advocate for legal reform in such a way as to facilitate NFT production by artists while avoiding commercial (and as a result, socio-economic) disadvantage.
In an ironic turn of events, the New Zealand Parliament’s long-term resistance to lobbyists’ calls for a resale royalty right now offers it the opportunity to design stronger legislative protections for artists. Spurred on by the execution of free trade agreements with the European Union and United Kingdom, Aotearoa New Zealand can specifically address the issue of NFTs and digital art in its legislation, learning from the Australian experience.
Lydia Baxendell and Raewyn Martyn: Curating and Collecting NFTs: a case study at University of Canterbury
Lydia Baxendell, University of Canterbury
Raewyn Martyn, University of Canterbury
The exhibition Presentation Layer: NFT forms, platforms and transference, curated by Nina Dyer, Anna Pendergrast, Kelly Pendergrast, and Raewyn Martyn at the University of Canterbury Ilam Campus Gallery in May 2022, is a useful case study for thinking about the impacts of NFTs on curating and collection. Lydia Baxendell, Art Collections Curator at University of Canterbury, and Raewyn Martyn, a lecturer in painting within the Ilam School of Fine Arts, will discuss how the exhibition prompted the university to work through the process of NFT acquisition and the associated collection management—a first for a university within Aotearoa. This paper will address some of the ethical and pedagogical implications considered along the way, through the curatorial and collection processes.
Biographies
Nina Dyer, Depot Artspace
Nina Dyer is an emerging curator with a BA (Hons) in Art History and Philosophy from Victoria University of Wellington. Dyer is the current Exhibition Curator and Manager at Depot Artspace and a member of the RM Gallery and Project Space collective (Tāmaki Makaurau, NZ), and has held positions at Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi and Enjoy Contemporary Art Space (Te Whanganui-a-Tara, NZ). Dyer curated FREE OF CHARGE (2020), a digital exhibition facilitated by MEANWHILE Gallery, and earlier this year co-curated ‘Presentation Layer: NFT forms, platforms and transference’ with Raewyn Martin and Antistatic (Kelly and Anna Predergrast) at Ilam Campus Gallery (University of Canterbury, Ōtautahi, NZ). In 2021 Dyer authored ‘Optimism has its precedents: situating the rise of NFTs’, commissioned by Aotearoa Digital Arts Network and published in 2022.
Iokapeta Magele-Suamasi, Creative NZ Pacific Arts NFT Pilot 2022
Iokapeta Magele-Suamasi is an Aotearoa born Samoan artist (Lufilufi | Satalo, Falealili) arts manager, consultant and technologist. Her background includes Management of Learning and Outreach programmes for Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki (2013-2020). She is a Trustee for the historical Hillary House Leadership Centre co-piloting ‘Ōtara 4.0’, their inaugural Creative Tech series in partnership with Media Design School and Ministry of Education. She is a member of Blockchain New Zealand and was included in the list of industry experts for CREATE2030; a 10 year plan to grow the creative economy in Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland. She holds two Masters degrees in Arts Management and in Technological Futures. Her interests include creative tech, digital preservation, ethical A.I., advanced manufacturing (Industry 4.0) and data sovereignty. In 2021, she was contracted by Creative New Zealand to co-ordinate the inaugural Pacific Arts Digital NFT pilot working with ten artists of Pacific heritage. Her art to date traverses between mediums such as installation works, digital art and archival prints, painting, sculpture, lenticular work and NFTs.
Elizabeth Harris, Leiden University
Elizabeth Harris holds a Bachelor of Laws (Hons 1) and Bachelor of Arts (Art History, French) from the Australian National University, and a Graduate Diploma of Legal Practice from the College of Law. She is admitted to the Supreme Court of the Australian Capital Territory and previously practised law at MinterEllison in Canberra. She has also worked as a commercial consultant and was on the board of Arts Capital Limited. She is currently completing a Masters of Arts and Culture (Art History) at Leiden University in the Netherlands. She is a frequent contributor to Agora Digital Art.
Lydia Baxendell, University of Canterbury
Lydia Baxendell is the Kaitiaki Kohinga Toi, Art Collections Curator at the University of Canterbury’s Macmillan Brown Cultural Heritage Library. In her current role she regularly provides lectures, tutorials and tours, as well as working on curatorial and research projects. A strong advocate for the arts in Ōtautahi, Lydia is chair of the UC Art Acquisitions Committee, and a selector for the Macmillan Brown Pacific Artist in Residency programme. Lydia has an MA in Art History (University of Otago) and is the author of numerous articles, catalogues and publications. She was a contributing writer in the 2019 Te Papa Press publication Crafting Aotearoa: A Cultural History of Making in New Zealand and the Wider Moana Oceania.
Raewyn Martyn, University of Canterbury
Raewyn Martyn is Pākehā, born at Waitaki Bridge, Ōamaru. In 2022 she moved from Te Whanganui-a-Tara to Ōtautahi Christchurch to begin as a lecturer of painting at Ilam School of Fine Arts. Exhibiting in Aotearoa and overseas, she has an MFA from VCUArts, Virginia (2013), was a visiting assistant professor at Antioch College in Ohio (2013-2016), and a research participant at the Jan van Eyck Academy in the Netherlands (2016-2017). She is due to complete her practice-based PhD in 2022. Raewyn’s work can be found online at walkerfalls.wordpress.com; on Instagram as @falling_walker, and she tweets as @fallingwalker.