Supported by the Goethe-Institut
The Last Question: How can we design the blockchain towards systems that encourage equity, ecological integrity, and living within the planet’s carrying capacity?
Event Series as part of 221A Gallery’s Blockchains & Cultural Padlocks Research Initiative
Isaac Asimov’s short story The Last Question (1956) is a canonical sci-fi parable about technological innovation, that infers humanity is both the creator and created. 221A’s Research Initiative Blockchain & Cultural Padlocks (2019-22) aligns with The Last Question’s paradoxical message by looking at the ways that a relatively new and widely speculated technology, the blockchain, has the potential to develop new systems that will allow us to “re-common” land, data and objects.
How can we design better social, cultural and ecological value on the blockchain in ways that incentivize us to seek out new collective ideals? and, Are there ways to perform our work, and our lives in ways that puts humanity and the planet on a survival path amid the collapsing climate?
January 19, 2020
Sugar Contemporary, Toronto/Treaty 13
2–4 PM Panel
The panel will be moderated by the Research Initiative’s Editorial Director, Rosemary Heather with a presentation by Goethe-Institut guest Matthias Einhoff, artist and director of Z/KU, Berlin (Centre for Art and Urbanistics). Einhoff will present the ongoing Bee Coin Project which assembles human and non-human actors in a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO), with the ultimate goal of caring for bees, by incentivizing us to encourage qualities of our ecosystem which keep the most important pollinators healthy. Respondents will include Ala Roushan, Co-Curator/Director of Sugar Contemporary, whose current research navigates the implications of digital technologies as it reveals the depth of space beyond the limits of human perception; Dr. Alexis Morris, assistant professor in the Digital Futures program at OCAD University, and the Canada Research Chair (Tier II) in the Internet of Things; and a representative from Our Networks, an annual conference on all aspects of the distributed web.
January 22, 2020
Emily Carr University of Art + Design, Vancouver/Unceded Territories
3–5 PM Workshop,
RSVP
7–8:30 PM Talk, Room B2160
Join Matthias Einhoff for a workshop that will share his learning from the development of The Bee Coin Project along with ChinookX and artist Julian Hou. ChinookX, a partner of 221A on the Blockchains & Cultural Padlocks Research Initiative, is an Indigenous-led nonprofit organization that is seeking ways for the blockchain to be programmed with Indigneous consensus protocols in order to enable responsive resource management for traditional territories and data-sovereignty for First Nations communities. Julian Hou is an Artist Researcher working with 221A and is leading the development of a feasibility study for an artist-led community which draws from the notion of anoesis, a state of mind consisting of pure sensation or emotion without cognitive content.
The workshop is intended for students, designers, artists, planners, urbanists and developers engaged with the blockchain and will be followed by a public roundtable with the workshop leaders, introduced and moderated by Jesse McKee, 221A Head of Strategy.
Matthias Einhoff is the co-founder and director of the
Center for Arts and Urbanistics, an interdisciplinary hub for urban research and artistic practice located in Berlin. Next to his managing and curatorial responsibilities he is heading the development of research-based projects at the interface of urban discourses and local practices with outcomes such as
City Tool Box,
Wasteland Twinning and
Hacking Urban Furniture. As a founding member of the artist collectives
KUNSTrePUBLIK and Superschool he has been working in the public sphere exploring the potentials of art to (re)activate the social and spatial relationships of individuals and groups. As co-initiator and board member of
Haus der Statistik, an inclusive 60,000sqm development project, he co-moderated the process and co-directed the and for public arts section. He has been teaching at UdK-Berlin, DigitalArtsLab-Tel Aviv and as a visiting professor at Art Academy Kassel.
Supported by the Goethe-Institut, Matthias Einhoff also participates in a series of public events in Montreal / Tiohtià:ke tsi ionhwéntsare earlier in the month, with a seminar on the commons organized by the Observatoire des médiations culturelles at l’institut national de la recherche scientifique, and a workshop convened by les Entrepreneurs du commun at the Phi Centre. He will be at the Phi Centre on Friday, January 17.
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