DEAR MOCA: Why Isn't There, like, Any Writing in Crypto Art?
In so many words...
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Dear MOCA,
I feel like you’d have an opinion on this. Why are there so few crypto art writers? How can crypto art ever evolve into a more legitimate/mainstream art movement if there isn’t all that much writing or criticism of it? Seems like the rest of the art world relies on this criticism really heavily, so why doesn’t it exist so much in crypto art (except your writing!).
Sincerely,
Curious and Critical
Dear Curious and Critical,
Thank you very much for asking a question about writing. As you must know, there’s nothing writers love to write about more than writing itself, which is why so many novels take place at university writing workshops, or follow the trevails of some novelist/journalist, or focus on some forlorn social-isolate with a penchant for reading books alone in a nook somewhere. Anyways, know that I approach this question with great reverence and much appreciation.
*Cracks knuckles*
But first we must dwell onto some less appetizing content.
Because while I appreciate your kind words, I’m only one of a multitude of crypto art writers, for wordsmiths also bask in this movement’s overall brilliance. I’m talking about people who write primarily. And they aren’t all that hidden either, if you know where to look. Of course, there is RightClickSave at the very forefront, run by Alex Estorick (who often contributes as well) and Danielle King and Artnome, which in my opinion is an absolute foundational part of this current crypto art iteration; nowhere is doing a better job at fomenting written conversations about crypto art. I know some of you are probably going to spit at me for this, but even NFTNow has some good crypto art writing here and there, stuff that’s critical and interesting beyond just regurgitating whatever news Yuga Labs tells them to focus on. I should know this because I wrote an article for them once upon a time. There are gems to be found even in, shall we say, otherwise unprosperous mines. I should also talk about Judy Mam, the cofounder of DADA.art, whose series of essays on “The Invisible Economy” (written with fellow DADA cofounder, Beatriz Ramos) is perhaps the single most important pillar upon which crypto art’s understanding of self rests (and who is releasing an NFT version of her novel Serves You Right in the coming days. We podcasted about it; check out both!).
I probably should go on, but if you know anything about me, you know I’m not very good at this part: The listing of qualified parties. I have a terrible memory to begin, and I will feel guilty about every deserving person I inevitably leave off my list. So let’s open this topic up more broadly.
Because my point is that I don’t think, in actuality, there are so few crypto art writers. It’s just that crypto artists outnumber writers by a magnitude of hundreds, and so we writers appear miniscule by comparison. That’s the simple fact of the thing. Even if every single crypto art writer churned out a detailed, thoughtful, critical analysis of some artist’s work each week, two more would only appear to take their place, and then two more, and two more, and on and on and on.
And it’s not just our comparatively small number, but the nature of our work. Writing as a practice requires more preparation than visual art, and it does not have the benefit really of coming together spontaneously. If we writers are visited by the muse, our gift is only a strand, a fleshed-out idea if we’re lucky, a keyhole-sized glimpse of something through a very thick wall. Following the muse is labor-intensive and requires much trial and error. And besides that, you’ll never see a written work-in-progress publicized the way you might see a visual artwork in its developmental stages floating around Twitter. Writing must be finished, completely finalized, before it can claim the adjectives —beautiful, intelligent, clarifying— it sets out to invoke. Until then, it speaks a bastard tongue. Unfinished writing, or imperfect writing, carries no appeal. It is certain to be scattered, ineffective, or nonsensical. And because we writers are neurotic as a rule, the process of getting something to that finished place —especially a critical analysis, say, that may require a pitch, an outline, a lot of research, many sets of notes and revisions— is a tall task.
Ipso facto, writers will never be able to conquer the mountain of stories which crypto art contains. We will always be like very small children sitting at a very large desk covered in towering stacks of paper.
There aren’t enough of us, nor can we work fast enough, to sufficiently bolster crypto art in the ways that writers have bolstered art movements. Writers help to build and solidify narratives, clarify themes, paint through-lines, curate. Writers let artists understand themselves better, understand their milieu better; we go door-to-door with one very long piece of rope and say “Grab on.” We’re trying very hard to do so, but we just don’t have that much rope.
But maybe I’m misleading you. Because that’s not the real reason there is so little writing in crypto art, and you know that, and I know that, and so let’s just cut the crap and shoot straight, shall we?
The real reason there is so little writing in crypto art is because very few people give a shit about reading anything. Full stop. So you have a population of people that won’t read in the first place, and you want them to get into art writing, with all its verbose, research-heavy, referential, and lengthy connotation.
It’s just not going to happen.
This isn’t even the writers’ fault either, creating these kinds of abstract, often boring, deeply academic essays. The capital-I Institution has for many decades demanded that art writers borrow arguments from peers and cite them ad-nauseum, ground their assertions in theories and ism’s, name-drop as much as possible, because this creates the illusion of prestige for the publisher, and since nobody is reading these things to begin with, ergo they aren’t generating revenue in the classic attention-economy type of way, the only metric of success that institutions —be they art magazines, academic journals, universities or what-have-you— care about is that prestige. So that means more eight-syllable words! More name-drops! More 19th-century, quasi-Marxist ideologues to quote.
Nobody who values actual readership would ever write something like this. And a publication that needed to, like, actually attract viewership to keep the lights on, they aren’t interested in this kind of thing either. Because if you’re reliant on the public, you have to go where the public is.
And the public-at-large isn’t reading anything anywhere ever at any time. Especially not the kind of traditionalist art writing I discussed above. We watch, we listen, we skim, but we don’t dive deep on 5000+-word documents. And if we ain’t reading it, writers won’t be writing it. Because everything in crypto art is economically motivated. If it isn’t getting clicks, it isn’t sticking around for long.
That’s just the way it seems to be right now.
Which all ties into your second question, about the legitimizing of crypto art through this kind of old-fashioned criticism. I should say up-front: It’s not going to happen. That is not our path forward. Writing is a powerful tool within crypto art, but it will not be our savior nor our shepherd, and, yes, I say that sadly. Crypto art will need to find narrative and legitimization through other means. Because crypto art is a product of the internet, and it goes where internet culture goes. And unless internet culture tumbles backwards into the laps of us bookworms, we’re likely well past the place where writers are going to make/break careers, let alone redirect crypto art culture.
Don’t get it twisted, crypto art does need intelligent discourse and analysis, but the kind of long-form, ultra-wordy kind of cultural/aesthetic criticism we’ve discussed today is a relic of the past. It —and perhaps writing in general— doesn’t have a place in the hairtrigger, warp-speed internet world within which crypto art lives. I see writing as a sort of transitional device, a way for the outside world to find something semi-recognizable in this place before the full indoctrination happens. Those of us in crypto art, though, generally need something quicker, more reactive, quicker.
The paradigm is changing, and I’m not sure how yet.
I do know that many of the people doing intensive analytical work today are doing so a bit differently. Interviewers abound —like MontyReport or MLow, for instance, who have turned towards interviews and newsletters, and collaborative artworks with artists, respectively— or podcasts like we do as MOCA. Others have fully embraced the “I write Twitter threads” thing, which is not long for this world, mark my words. But nothing is really seeming to move the cultural needle, in my estimation. And that means less platforms releasing less tools for writers, less publications, less writers able to survive here, and a feedback loop that continues to diminish crypto art scholarship from within.
I should note, by the way, that I reject outright your assertion that crypto art requires criticism to legitimize it. Art movements of the past couldn’t escape criticism; what a burden that must have been. Art criticism today is more-or-less masturbation: It either lasts too long or not nearly long enough, it only captures ever a sliver of the much more interesting thing I’m really after, and you’ve got to wash your hands afterwards. It just doesn’t belong in this day and age.
As far as I know, the Secret For Interesting Art Writing still has not yet been discovered, which means that writing remains in a tenuous place. We don’t yet collectively know how to make critical discourse or cultural analysis interesting to the crypto art masses, and if it isn’t interesting, it won’t be viable, and if it isn’t viable, it soon enough won’t exist. I’m well past putting up pointless prayers calling for more people to read more things. Folks don’t want to read in 2023, that’s just the way of things. My only hope is that there will be some random ecstatic mind-merge between those who want to create cultural content and those who want to consume it, and in that collision something new and altogether more enriching will emerge.
But I’m not holding my breath.
As for the notion that crypto art’s lack of criticism somehow lessens it as compared to the old art world (I don’t think you insinuated this kind of connotation, but it’s important to make this point), understand that we all exist in our own little universes. Crypto art prides itself on challenging every ingrained customs the traditional art world has for so long maintained. This one is no different. We need to discover new ways to critique ourselves, and if that includes writing, great, and if it bypasses writing altogether, then that would reflect the needs of our ever-changing culture.
Which would make me very sad, certainly.
And I’ve been trying to think of a better, snarkier way of ending this newsletter for 25 minutes now, but I don’t have one. I’ll just be sad to see the writing go away.
- Your Friendly, Neighborhood, Digital Art Museum,
MOCA