re:publica 25
26th-28th May 2025
STATION Berlin
Ela Kagel, Alice Yuan Zhang, Calum Bowden, Elihu Ashong, Andrea Goetzke
What changes with applying web3 technologies in the cultural sphere? This session looks into some of the mechanics of how NFTs, tokens or DAOs may produce structural changes - in the ways cultural production is organized and funded, and also in cultural participation. We are curious to assess parameters like:
What changes if a digital art work becomes a financial asset? While this may be a consequential evolution in visual/fine arts, what happens if you transfer this mechanism to fields like music, with a traditionally more democratic market and organization?
Are new avenues of patronage for the arts opening up? And what will that change in terms of interdependence and relations with funders, collaborators and fans? Will more funds be available for previously marginalized artists? Can the tech assign value to something that has not been valorized much before?
And what is the potential for the technology to change structures IRL - for example will people engage more in collective cultural endeavors, because DAOs make certain processes easier to organize?
Do those techs hold yet again a potential to democratize and shift power structures, and what's different this time? And is it all worth it given the energy and environmental costs?