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Carlo Zanni: e-commerce, identity, and the epic of our times

Pau Waelder

An early practitioner of net art, Carlo Zanni is among the first artists to explore the nascent opportunities for the online art market and reflect on how the web would impact on our sense of identity and privacy. With a painter’s vision, he has seen in the development of online platforms and graphical user interfaces a space of visual compositions in which the computer desktop becomes a landscape, and everything in it is a fiction. 

He has also developed new forms of storytelling through web-based projects such as the “data cinema” trilogy: The Possible Ties Between Illness and Success (2006), My Temporary Visiting Position from the Sunset Terrace Bar (2007), and The Fifth Day (2009). In these online films, he combined a pre-defined narrative with data collected in real time from the same users who were watching the film, or from a distant webcam, or from different sources describing the social and political conditions of Egypt. 

Carlo Zanni, The Fifth Day (2009)

Explore Zanni’s data cinema artworks

Open artcast

Embedded in his work as an artist, his research on alternative models to sell digital art has led to pioneering yet unrealized projects such as P€OPLE ¥ROM MAR$ (2012), an online platform dedicated to selling video art and fostering a community of creatives based on shared revenue, or ViBo (2014-2015), a “video book” aimed at facilitating the sale of video art at affordable prices in unlimited series. He collected his experiences with these models in the book Art in the Age of the Cloud (Diorama Editions, 2017).

Niio is proud to present two selections of artworks by Carlo Zanni: Data Cinema Anthology, which brings together the Data Cinema trilogy and an additional artwork, and Save Me for Later, a code-based artwork recently presented at Zanni’s solo exhibition Accept & Decline at OPR Gallery in Milan. In the following interview, the artist discusses the artworks presented in this exhibition, which can be visited until April 28th.

Carlo Zanni, Check Out Paintings, 2022. On view at OPR Gallery, Milan.

In this latest series you have come back to painting as a medium, after a long career focused on web-based art, but you keep exploring the same subjects. Can you take me through the main ideas in the Check-Out Paintings?

This cycle of paintings is part of a long-term investigation of the social and psychological role of eCommerce in our society. It stems from the memories of the eCommerce check-out pages: a final destination we all are funneled to, in every online buying process. The check-out pages of eCommerce sites represent a highly symbolic limbo that precedes the dopamine rush where we all hope to find shelter. A form of addiction, but as shown during the pandemic, also a lifeline. 

“Our identity bounces between the happiness for buying, and the sense of guilt for having bought.”

Buying online is both a sort of pursuit of happiness as we have been taught by our society, both a way to escape reality, procrastinating any possible confrontation with ourselves. Our identity bounces between the happiness for buying, and the sense of guilt for having bought. Between the satisfaction of an increasingly frictionless, user-friendly, fast, and on-time experience; and the anxiety, and also the shame, for what this transient fake happiness often entails on a social, work, and human level for thousands of people: directly (shifts and working conditions, small local businesses), and indirectly (tax evasion of mega-corporations and environmental impact).

Unlike early works such as DTP Icons Paintings (2000), here you do not look for a realistic representation of the interface, but rather create almost abstract compositions, why is that?

True, because here is more about inner feelings than simple representation. It’s not witnessing from the outside but feeling from the inside, then trying to show a glimpse of it, if possible, in the real world.  So the rationalist layout, typical of these pages, fades into memory, it turns into a dreamlike experience, into a psychological post-image, while some details of the transaction, such as measures, prices, and quantities, emerge from the background when one gets closer to the surface of the painting: they bring us back to reality.

The subtle color fields of these paintings make them very difficult to be mediated or “seen” online (e.g. on Instagram, or on a PDF), instead they open up and expand in front of the viewer when experienced for real. While our society continues to demand fast, easily communicable images, these paintings are slow, almost invisible, non-existent images, and they ask for something very precious: our time.

Carlo Zanni, Check Out Paintings, 2022. On view at OPR Gallery, Milan.

How did you achieve this faded effect in the canvases?

The color used in these works is acrylic mixed with water and in some cases acrylic medium. This way tones are soft and they mesh one into the other when seen from a certain distance, vaporizing the memory of the whole picture. I take advantage of the cutting plotter to write numbers and other “technical” details. I cut the letters in vinyl (negative) with a size that allows me to draw inside them with a sharp pencil without touching the vinyl edges. This way the sentences and the lettering look “straight” and “guided” from a distance, and handmade from a closer inspection.

“When you stick your nose onto the canvas, the work transforms from an abstract field into a condensed epic of our times.”

Formally speaking, the style of these paintings was born in response to a period of social isolation due to the pandemic, during which, as a balance, we have tried to mediate all the possible human activities: meetings, purchases, employment, leisure, study, culture… I felt the need to go the other way, working on something that could be only appreciated when seen in person.

If you want to find some roots, these works echo the mature practice of artist Agnes Martin, in the use of pencil and subtle water-based colors, but here all the “modernist” and “minimalist” values of the time are almost gone. So all the pencil details and most of the color fields are only visible when you stick your nose onto the canvas, and the work transforms from an abstract, almost white, field, into a condensed epic of our times touching themes such as anxiety, desire, happiness, fear, gender identity, pandemics, politics, tragedies, wars.

While the paintings look almost abstract, they also contain references to the present, as is frequently found in your web-based artworks, what role do these references play?

The paintings dig into our daily culture and politics, for instance by discreetly showing disclaimers referring to the current Ukraine war. (Since February 2022, many eCommerce added such disclaimers for multiple reasons: from giving updated shipping info to giving their support to the Ukrainians). I see these paintings as a vehicle for meditation, an attempt to temporarily alienate ourselves from this endless moment of upheaval and unrest; while being violently dragged back to reality when we get closer to the surface: they are a way to extract some time from our hectic lives to sense the delicacy and fragility of our body and the transience of happiness while diving into our time.

While they are very different artworks, I would point out to Average Shoveler (2004) as having a similar approach in terms of its meditative aspect and the connection to real life events. In that work, which was commissioned by Rhizome, I created an online video game in which the player controls a man who has to shovel the snow falling on the streets of New York. Each time he does, several images taken from CNN and other news outlets in real time pop up and disappear. Additionally, some non-player characters stop and speak out news headlines. The main character invariably ends up dying of exhaustion, unable to shovel the incessant amount of snow. But the game also includes some secret spaces meant for the player to relax and just observe the scene, distanced from the gameplay. In a way, these paintings also provide that distanced space of observation while having these subtle hooks to reality.

Carlo Zanni, Average Shoveler (2004)

Talking about hooks, you describe some elements in the paintings as “clickbait,” can you elaborate on that?

Yes, the dark dots and solid-colored shapes (lines, rectangles, circles) that appear in some of the paintings are what I call “clickbaits” for one’s eyes. Seen from afar these canvases look pretty white and empty, but these dots stand out and catch your attention. They work similarly to how advertising plays with colors, double meanings, and impressive images to stand out in a visually saturated landscape.

They also remind of the so-called “dark patterns”, which are interface design strategies quite common in e-commerce pages, that are meant to fool the user into doing what the vendor wants them to do, such as sign up for a newsletter, add an extra service, or choose the most expensive option among several choices. In my paintings, the shapes intend to lure you into looking closely at the painting and finding what it is actually about. However, I would say that while clickbait is content that over-promises and under-delivers, in my paintings I under-promise and over-deliver 🙂

Carlo Zanni, Save Me for Later (2022)

Save me for later (2022) is also an intriguing artwork in the sense that it is not what it appears to be, and it connects with a concept you have explored over the years, which is the computer screen as a landscape

“Save me for later” is actually a bot browsing Amazon.com, continuously adding products to the cart that is visible in the right sidebar. When the cart reaches its limit, it automatically moves products to the “saved for later list”, making room for the new freshly added ones. The bot embeds a floating window with the webcam stream framing me while performing. This repetitive and almost hypnotic performance, with apparently no beginning and no end, speaks of the type of procrastination we all carry out while browsing e-commerce sites, looking for products that will bring us happiness and make our lives better.

As with the paintings, the experience of isolation during the pandemic was key to conceiving this artwork, in which the computer screen becomes a landscape, a place of escapism and daydreaming. The performance is consciously slow and cryptic, and as it is playing out in real time, in the real Amazon website, the items that appear reflect our present time just as the subtle writings on the paintings take us back to the world we are living in. For instance, when I first ran the program, the bot frequently picked up COVID-19 self-tests, which at some point were very much in demand and right now are almost forgotten. 

“This repetitive and almost hypnotic performance speaks of the type of procrastination we all carry out while browsing e-commerce sites, looking for products that will bring us happiness and make our lives better”

I see this project also as a vehicle for meditation, an attempt to alienate ourselves momentarily from our daily lives and our anxieties (so the title “Save me for later”). And behind the activity itself, what you see on the screen that is apparently me browsing the Amazon site but is in fact an automated process carried out by a computer program, is an interesting exchange of data. Data collected by the Amazon site about this meaningless routine (constantly adding items to the cart without ever checking out), data displayed by Amazon about the articles on sale, data that is processed by Amazon’s algorithm to display new items related to previously selected products. 

See a two-hour excerpt of Zanni’s endless automated performance on Amazon

Open artcast

Data is for me what gravity probably was for Bas Jan Ader. “The artist’s body as gravity makes itself its master.” These mysterious words were used by Bas Jan Ader to describe his short films Falling I (Los Angeles) and Falling II (Amsterdam) when he showed them in Düsseldorf in 1971. He was playing with gravity, he was becoming gravity, accepting its outcome: failures, fragilities, spiritualism, poetry, meditation, ascension. 

I feel that I use data in a sort of similar way, accepting the fact that most of my works will cease to exist quite soon after their birth. By using data from media outlets such as CNN, tools from Google, data collected from users, and so on, I consciously open my work to a vulnerability as the price to pay for creating a work that is always connected to the present and fed by data that circulates online. Then, an API is changed, a tool is discontinued, and the artwork cannot exist anymore. Sometimes you can fix them, sometimes you just don’t want to do it. 

Other times you start again from scratch as recently I did with Cookie Portrait (2002-2022), a work about online identity and privacy that had to be rewritten when it was launched at OPR Gallery last year, 20 years after it was first created. This work is based on the same cookie technology that is used – for instance – for the internal session management of an eCommerce site and more generally for user profiling and marketing activities. This work reminds us that, in our online existence, we are made of data. The body is thus the sum total of your data, the artwork is a temporary and transient experience of something elusive, like our own existence is.

Is there gender equality in the digital art world?

Roxanne Vardi and Pau Waelder

Composite photo of the artists (left to right): Dagmar Schürrer, Snow Yunxue Fu, Marina Zurkow, Claudia Larcher, Alexandra Crouwers, Tamiko Thiel, Claudia Hart, Sasha Stiles, Yuge Zhou, and Chun Hua Catherine Dong.

It is a well-known fact, although not properly acknowledged, that over the course of history women artists have been underrepresented in the art world, and in general have been undervalued and underpaid at auction houses, galleries, and museums. As the art historian Katy Hessel, author of the celebrated book The Story of Art Without Men, points out: “it’s actually down to who has been able to tell the story of art history.” Women artists have been routinely erased from art history, or included in relation to male artists, their talent minimized as they were portrayed merely as lovers or muses. In the art market, women artists have not fared better. Traditionally, art galleries have represented far more white men than any other group combined, and as recent reports indicate, the situation hasn’t improved: the Burns-Halperin Report on equity and representation in US museums and the art market, presented in December 2022, indicates that auction sales of works by women artists represent only 3,3% of total sales worldwide, and that only 11% of acquisitions and 14,9% of exhibitions in US museums feature artworks created by women.

The introduction of the digital arts and the emergence of the new media art scene have given women artists the opportunity to become early adopters both of photography and of alternate digital technologies such as VR as these novel mediums also allowed for political and artistic provocation of the accepted norms. Today in general there is also greater awareness towards this unequal tendency, and so different organizations focus on balancing out the different groups of artists which they represent. At Niio we have made it our mission to focus on presenting and promoting the works of women artists whether through the content distributed on our apps or in our editorial section. In 2022, the gender balance of our artist solo shows amounted to a total of close to 60% by women artists. This month, we are honored to showcase the artworks and art practices created by the women artists, and to present this brief survey among ten outstanding artists who have generously answered our questions.

Would you say that the digital art community behaves differently than the contemporary art world in terms of gender balance and visibility of women artists?

Alexandra Crouwers: not really – although my personal field of view in the ‘digital space’ is taken up by a generally much, much more diverse constellation of artists than the ‘traditional’ contemporary art scene I’m embedded in. Likely, the global accessibility and distribution of digital art plays a role. I do suspect museums and other art institutions working with digital media are, perhaps because of the reason above, a bit more aware of adding more women artists in exhibitions compared to the ‘traditional’ art world.

Alexandra Crouwers is an artistic researcher working in the digital realm, and oscillating between escapism and activism.

Artist profile

Claudia Larcher: I don’t have numbers for that, but no, I think that the visibility of women in the art world in general is still unbalanced, be it in the art world or digital art. More attention is now being paid to the issue, but the big solo shows are almost always given to the men.

Claudia Hart: Yes, although strides have been made, I would have to say that the contemporary art world is still way out ahead of the digital space. The engine running digital is innovation culture. I would even go so far as to say that digital art culture functions more as beta testers for new products.  It’s a culture of next new things, so it suffers from extreme ageism. The lowest ranked players in the digital art world are older women – not news not now, not glamorous.  It’s a cute young world.   

“The lowest ranked players in the digital art world are older women. It’s a cute young world.”

Claudia Hart

Dagmar Schürrer: Talking from my own perspective I feel that female identifying artists are quite present in the digital art community. I am based in Berlin, and I am very lucky to be surrounded by a network of strong women creating and researching in the digital art scene. Digital and new media is still kind of uncoupled from the classical art market and rather conceptually driven. It often tackles issues that are closely linked to female politics – like embodiment, social hierarchies, identity, or bias of new technologies. For example, the scene working with XR technologies is very experimental and constantly developing, and is open for fresh and unusual perspectives, which might be resonating with a female experience of a changing society. Nevertheless, it is a sad fact that women in the cultural sector are still outrageously underpaid. Statistics of the German Künstlersozialkasse (artists’ social security fund) show that in 2022 female artists earned an average of 24% less than their male colleagues, the Gender Pay Gap is therefore significantly above the German national average! 

“I feel that female identifying artists are quite present in the digital art community. Nevertheless, it is a sad fact that women in the cultural sector are still outrageously underpaid.”

Dagmar Schürrer

Tamiko Thiel: Until recently, fame in the media art world was driven more by academic voices and the few institutions that showed media art, because the art market was not interested in media art at all. This was primarily Ars Electronica due to its prestigious Golden Nica award, the ZKM because it was the primary institution with an archive and collection of media art, the festivals Transmediale and ISEA and the art gallery at SIGGRAPH.

It was always my impression that these media art institutions however tended to focus very heavily on hardware technology, “boy toys” and a very male view of what is interesting in media art, rather than taking a wider view of the value of media art. I personally was told in a private conversation by a (male) member of the Ars jury, perhaps a decade after I had submitted my VR projection installation Beyond Manzanar (2000, with Zara Houshmand) to the Interactive Art category at Ars, that the others on the jury insisted it was not innovative because it only used a simple joystick as an input device. That is to say they focused exclusively on the hardware, without considering the complex interactive narrative of 13 scenes interweaving the historical Japanese American incarceration in WW2 and similar threats to intern Iranian Americans during the Iranian Hostage Crisis in 1979-1980, and how we had constructed an interactive structure in which the user’s agency led them to be complicit in their own incarceration.

Tamiko Thiel is a pioneering visual artist exploring the interplay of place, space, the body and cultural identity in works encompassing interactive 3d virtual worlds (VR), augmented reality (AR) and artificial intelligence art.

Artist profile

In 2016 Heather Dewey-Hagborg and Addie Wagenknecht started the “Kiss My Ars” hashtag after noticing that in the 37 year history of Ars Electronica, 9 out of 10 Golden Nicas had been awarded to men, putting a hard number on my more vague impression of an unconscious gender bias in values.

In 2012 the new director of the Transmediale, Kristoffer Gansing, shut me down when I responded to panelist Kathy Rae Huffman’s invitation to talk about my AR artwork during what was billed as “open conversation about video art and net culture, media collectives and counter-publics”. (See this webpage for a detailed description and audio recording). This was all the more odd because the festival’s theme “in/compatible” explicitly celebrated 25 years of art interventions and proclaimed in Gansing’s curatorial statement that: “Contrary to the fear of the incompatible, so prevalent in the age of cloud-computing, the festival raises the question of what happens when incompatibility is brought to the fore rather than hidden away in the dark underbelly of digital culture?” Kathy Rae and I of course asked ourselves, if a male curator on the panel had called on a male artist to describe their work, would Gansing have shut them down, as he did to us? It was painful for us as well that no one in the audience, not even the several famous feminist artists present, said anything at all during these encounters. Gansing had just taken over Berlin’s most prestigious media art venue, and I assume no one wanted to get on his bad side.

“In 2021 the art market became aware of digital art for the first time when Beeple sold a NFT for the equivalent of $69 million. The fact that this was roughly 35x the price of the highest selling work by a female artist, ixshells, speaks for itself.”

Tamiko Thiel

Chun Hua Catherine Dong: I think the digital art community and the contemporary art world are very similar in terms of gender balance. Gender imbalance exists within the digital art community, especially in technical and coding writing. Women also are underrepresented in the field of game development and software engineering.

Chun Hua Catherine Dong‘s artistic practice is based in performance art, photography, video, VR, AR, and 3D printing within the contemporary context of global feminism.

Artist profile

Do you work with code-based art? If so, do you write the code, or work with collaborators? What is your experience with the community of coders and engineers?

Sasha Stiles: I’m a lifelong poet who’s always been very interested in science and technology. Though I don’t have a computer science or coding background, I’ve been writing with AI-powered large language models since 2018, and have learned basic coding to fine-tune text generators and experiment with generative visual poetics. I’ve also had a hands-on role for many years now as poetry mentor to the AI android BINA48, built by Hanson Robotics and the Terasem Foundation. I’ve frequently been in the minority at meetings and conferences, but I’ve also found a lot of support for my work in places where I didn’t expect to.

Alexandra Crouwers: I AM A SUPERUSER! We’re being overlooked, but that’s another story: there’s such a focus on code and generative abstraction at the moment, people forget most of us use those techniques too, but then as part of more encompassing works (this does not answer your question at all, haha).

Marina Zurkow: I work with coders, usually as an equal collaboration (not with teams). In my intimate work world, at present, I have an even split between male and female identified technologist collaborators.

Sasha Stiles a first-generation Kalmyk-American poet, artist and AI researcher widely recognized as a pioneer of generative literature and language art.

Artist website

Claudia Larcher: I have limited skills in coding but try to do everything by myself, as I had some bad experiences with male coders. Which was also a kind of empowerment. Actually I don’t know any female identifying coders, which is a pity. The coding community as I know it, is a male-only community. Hopefully it will change in the near future.

“The coding community as I know it, is a male-only community. Hopefully it will change in the near future.”

Claudia Larcher

Claudia Hart: I’ve just produced my first Art Blocks. I was part of a group of women invited to develop a project.  I went to a meeting for the newbies, and I was the only woman present,  The rest were guy coders. I’ve also collaborated with my friend Andrew Blanton, a cute young coder, because I can’t do it for myself. Not sure I would ever do this again. 

Claudia Larcher’s work explores video animation, collage, photography and installation with a cinematic approach to storytelling, extracting narratives from nondescript, everyday spaces.

Artist profile

Dagmar Schürrer: I am working with XR technologies in my own artistic practice as well as a project assistant at the research group INKA at the HTW Berlin – University of Applied Sciences. INKA is an interdisciplinary group of computer scientists and cultural workers like me, producing and teaching XR projects in the cultural field at the Institute for Culture and Computer Science. In the group there are slightly more female developers, but I would say that is rather unusual and a conscious decision to support women in the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and mathematics), which is of course great! This is not reflected in most of those degree programs, where women are significantly underrepresented, so there is still a lot to do to make these fields more attractive for women. This is also similar in the freelance sector; I have the impression that here female developers are very rare.

“My VRML artworks are all code based, and I wrote all the code myself. I have had a lot of support and no problems from the community of coders and engineers.”

Tamiko Thiel

Tamiko Thiel: My VRML artworks (Beyond Manzanar, The Travels of Mariko Horo, Virtuelle Mauer/ReConstructing the Wall) are all code based, and I wrote all the code myself. I have had a lot of support and no problems from the community of coders and engineers in terms of gender inequalities. Since 2018 my husband, the software developer Peter Graf, collaborates with me on some but not all artworks. Since he is a professional coder, he can code much faster than I!

In your experience, has the NFT market benefited gender equality in any way? Do women artists get better chances at selling their work?

Alexandra Crouwers: Not sure yet. Although in the very conservative contemporary art context I’m geographically in, I’d say I had at least a couple of disadvantages: being a women artist and working with digital media. It often felt the combination was just too much for people to handle. For me, the NFT space has connected my practice to a whole network of nodes of amazing fellow women artists, with similar experiences. On the other hand: I’ve never sold so much work in my artist life before, so purely based on that I’d say ‘yes’.

“The NFT space has connected my practice to a whole network of nodes of amazing fellow women artists, with similar experiences.”

Alexandra Crouwers

Snow Yunxue Fu works with imaging technologies, such as 3D Simulation, AR, XR, and the Metaverse in interdisciplinary explorations into the universal aesthetic and definitive nature of the techno sublime.

Artist profile

Snow Yunxue Fu: I do think the NFT market has opened more opportunities for women artists and all artists in general, especially at the earlier stage of its developments and expansion. However, as the NFT market has a tendency to follow the historical art market, there are still many inequalities. It is quite important to have awareness for all parties involved and make efforts to give more support to women artists.

Marina Zurkow: Among niche digital art worlds, perhaps – but not at the high-price & high-profile level. Those “spots” are consistently and disproportionately going to men.

Claudia Larcher: I read that female artists are doing better in the NFT world than in the global art world but parity is still far away. I think that people see an investment when buying NFTs, and male artists still achieve higher re-sales. 

Tamiko Thiel: The NFT market has a specific aesthetic that sells well, and I consider that aesthetic to be a very male gaze shaped by fantasy/science fiction/video games. Perhaps women artists who hide their gender do better, but as a woman artist who uses her real name, I think it helps me for intermediaries to call attention to my work and to tell potential collectors that my work is valuable. THANK YOU FOR HELPING! 🙂

Chun Hua Catherine Dong: This is a good question. I don’t get involved much at the NFT at this moment so I cannot tell whether the NFT market benefits more women artists. But the NFT market definitely is easier to enter while the traditional market requires years to build up one’s reputation.

What is your opinion about female-led NFT projects? Can you mention some projects that you find interesting?

Sasha Stiles: I’m proud to be part of theVERSEverse, a women-led poetry gallery that seeks to empower writers by bringing poets into the art world. Co-founded by Kalen Iwamoto, Ana Maria Caballero and myself, with advisor Gisel Florez and community manager Elisabeth Sweet, theVERSEverse is trying to do something that has never really existed elsewhere, on or offline. I’m constantly astounded by the vision and tireless work ethic of women in web3 and adjacent spaces: Sofia Garcia, Jess Conaster, Micol Ap of Vertical Crypto Art, Danielle King, Diane Drubay, Valerie Whitacre, Ariel Hudes, Raina Mehler, Nicole Sales Giles, Lydia Chen, Mika Bar-On Nesher, Elena Zavalev, Eleanora Brizi, Fanny Lakoubay, to name just a few. I love the FEMGEN initiative from VCA and Right Click Save, and the Unsigned project by Operator and Anika Meier, and I’m represented by such women-owned galleries as Annka Kultys Gallery in London and Galerie Brigitte Schenk in Cologne.

Marina Zurkow is a media artist focused on near-impossible nature and fostering intimate connections between humans, other species, and planetary agents.

Artist profile

Marina Zurkow: Christiane Paul’s curated exhibition Chain Reaction on Feral File is a good example of highly rigorous, thoughtful NFT projects that are female-led or in collaboration. I think very highly of the works of Stephanie Dinkins, Amelia Winger-Bearskin, Sara Ludy, and the McCoys because their work has not only deep logic but they are concerned with what the blockchain can DO; it’s not just another white wall in a white cube gallery.

Claudia Larcher: I appreciate the work of the Austrian artist LIA, who is a pioneer of software and net art. I think that with producing NFTs she was really compensated for her artistic work in an appropriate monetary way.

Dagmar Schürrer: I want to mention the project Unsigned by Operator and Anika Meier. It is a collection of 100 signatures from women and non-binary artists to highlight the fact that a female signature on an artwork can devalue it. Turning the signatures themselves into artworks is a very clever and strong gesture, and I love the focused and minimal realization, both conceptually and aesthetically. It is positively simple, to the point and potentially iconic.

Tamiko Thiel: I find Auriea Harvey‘s and Nettrice Gaskin‘s work simply stunning, beautiful and meaningful. They create beautiful works of art like nothing I have ever seen before, and bring together incredible depths of art history and cultural history together from a very different viewpoint as the previous several thousands of years of art. All hail! I am delighted that ixshells‘ work is valued so highly, but such purely geometric abstractions are personally not so interesting for me.

Chun Hua Catherine Dong:  I appreciate projects that are not made specifically for any kind of markets, but rather for the artists themselves or for the sake of art itself. Maybe these kinds of projects will have the potential to go both into the traditional and the NFT markets eventually, but the idea of “art made for sale” doesn’t sound right for me. Artists such as Claudia Hart, Carla Gannis, and Frank Wang Yefeng are very interesting.

In the 1980’s the feminist art movement began working mainly with photography and the newly available technological tools of the time. Do you feel that with the introduction of video art this even more so allowed artists to question older social models?

Sasha Stiles: Both my practice and personal life are implicitly feminist in that I embody taboo concepts of womanhood, from engaging in male-dominated fields to eschewing many of the social and domestic expectations that are prescribed to women. So when a large language model fine-tuned on my own work, developed to write like me, expresses misogyny and disturbing stereotypes, for example, it’s powerful. Creative AI as a new medium demands that we go beyond questioning older social systems to infiltrating them, building ourselves into them.

Claudia Hart has worked since the 1990s examining issues of identity and representation with 3D animation.

Artist profile

Alexandra Crouwers: Yes, Pipilotti Rist for me was the one who opened artistic doors by unapologetically using the idea of music videos as an art form, and showing how projections including audio can transform a whole space. This, again, is a very personal example, of course, but, to me, Rist provided a role model in an art education that for 95% was taken up by men.

Marina Zurkow: The number of brilliant, inspiring feminist video artists is staggering. Please don’t forget pioneers Adrian Piper, Yoko Ono, Howardena Pindell, Shigeko Kubota, and the following waves of the likes of Laura Parnes, Elisabeth Subrin, Mika Rottenberg, tackling very different aspects of life through a feminist lens.

“Creative AI as a new medium demands that we go beyond questioning older social systems to infiltrating them, building ourselves into them.”

Sasha Stiles

Claudia Larcher: I believe that video as a medium was new at that time and not yet occupied by men, like painting or sculpture. There was this window of opportunity for many female artists.

Claudia Hart: I am not sure, there have always been women painters, but they were written out of history. I’ve been working with 3d animation and VR since ‘96.  I developed a program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago called Experimental 3D, and my young women students have been institutionalized and awarded. I actually have never had an institutional exhibit, neither group or solo, nor have gotten grants or any kind of award of status. So case in point.

Dagmar Schürrer assembles found footage, digitally generated objects and animations, text, drawing and sound to form intricate video-sound-montages, often extended by Augmented Reality, evocative of painting, collage or poetry.

Artist profile

Dagmar Schürrer: I have the feeling there is a tendency, when new tools or technologies become available, that female and non-binary artists are fast to integrate those in their own artistic practice, before the methodologies enter the mainstream. It may offer a certain freedom and field of experimentation, without the pressure of capitalist art markets, and therefore a progressive opportunity to negotiate and reflect the topics of underrepresented groups.

“I believe that video as a medium was new at that time and not yet occupied by men, like painting or sculpture. There was this window of opportunity for many female artists.”

Claudia Larcher

Tamiko Thiel: Yes, at the beginning of a new medium there is much more room for experimentation, when the market is not established yet and therefore artists can experiment without the pressure to think about the sales value of the work. Initially there is the problem of access to technology – during which women also usually have more difficulty. Then there is a short interval in which anyone can access the technology because it has become commercial enough to be widely available. This is the time in which most innovation occurs. Then when the art market picks up a medium, its values impact directly on the work that is made, as artists try to live from their work.

Chun Hua Catherine Dong: Using new media or incorporating technology in artwork has definitely changed the ways of how to make art. Video art offered artists the ability to create time-based works that could incorporate performance and documentation. The introduction of video art has provided a powerful tool for feminist artists to express their ideas related to gender and identity, and to create works that reflect their own experiences and perspectives.

“There is a female sensibility behind the lens. Even in subtle ways, this changes what the viewers see.”

Yuge Zhou

Yuge Zhou is a Chinese born, Chicago-based artist whose videos and installations address rootedness, isolation and longing within sites of shared dreams.

Artist profile


Yuge Zhou: Video art introduces the time element into social critique. In some way, video art has a huge landscape to mine and to reference with cinema and television and the internet videoscape. With a growing number of women behind the camera and in charge of the means of productions – what they shoot, how they shoot are opening up. There is a female sensibility behind the lens. Even in subtle ways, this changes what the viewers see. Nowadays, both men and women are going into the technological fields like editing and cinematography, and a lot of tools and venues are available to both make and show video art. But there’s still a long way to go in terms of equity both behind and in front of the camera.

Fabula, tales of possible futures by Diane Drubay

Pau Waelder

In her latest series Fabula. Micro Stories from Tomorrow’s World, artist Diane Drubay continues her exploration of a narrative that raises awareness about the effects of climate change, while keeping with the clean, balanced visual composition that has become a defining element of her work. Consisting of six 1-minute videos (at the time of this writing) distributed as NFTs on the Tezos blockchain, Fabula plays with our imagination by suggesting possible futures in which the environment would be radically altered due to the effects of human activity on the planet, particularly the violent and massive pollution produced by a handful of powerful companies. 

Diane Drubay, Fabula 4 – Micro Stories From Tomorrow’s World, 2023

Each story starts with a question that the artist aptly depicts as a query in a search engine, evoking how nowadays we seek immediate answers online, when we fail to understand what is happening around us. The imagined future appears in a circle at the center of the image, initially as an anomaly, its hues sharply contrasting the real image of the sky, a desert, a lake, or the sea. Slowly, the whole image changes its color to match the tones inside the circle, which finally blends into it and disappears. The circle becomes a metaphor for the possible futures described by scientific research: while they might seem outlandish at first, they can become real, at a slow but relentless pace that makes denial so much easier. 

A selection of works from Fabula is now available as an artcast on Niio. On the occasion of its launch, I asked Diane three questions about her current practice and the NFT scene, as a follow-up on a previous interview published in Niio Editorial.

Explore a selection of works from Fabula on Niio

Open artcast
Diane Drubay, Fabula 6 – Micro Stories From Tomorrow’s World, 2023

After the protests in different art museums, it seems that climate change has been out of the news cycle. How do you see creating art about climate change in the current situation?

Changing the discourse and actions around climate change and the future of our planet must be done in depth. The change must be individual as well as systemic. Of course, news has its cycles, but climate change is always a hot topic. Activist groups or unions of museum professionals have been active for years, and will be for some time to come (unfortunately) considering the current state of our societies. I particularly remember 2018 / 2019 when the COP21 had raised the crowds and inspired the creation of activist communities that demand climate action. 

Just as these activists continue to gather and denounce unsustainable behaviors, the creation of art with an activist vocation for the environment must continue. It is by maintaining the same clear, coherent and strong message for years, that it can begin to be heard, understood and shared. My art calls for slowness, but above all, for sustainability. The notion of time and cycles always comes back in my works in order to position them within an infinite space of time that can easily be assimilated to that of nature. 

“Just as environmental activists continue to gather and denounce unsustainable behaviors, the creation of art with an activist vocation for the environment must continue.”

How was your experience at the recent NFT Paris event? How do you see the NFT scene evolving at present?

I traveled to NFT Paris to meet my friends, those people I have evolved with, and I felt shaken and fulfilled since March 2021. Artists, collectors, developers, curators, galleries, and many others have come together (almost) exactly two years after the birth of our beloved community around hic et nunc. What is enchanting about this group is their desire to focus on what makes sense, their desire to do things together and to make things happen, in a global and collective way. 

This aside, NFT Paris has become a major event of the NFT scene with 18K visitors in two days in the most iconic venue in Paris: Le Grand Palais Éphémère. In the aisles, one could feel the growing entrepreneurship of this new generation of founders and creatives.

“In the NFT scene, I see a lot of respect and exchange, knowledge being shared and collaborations being born.” 

To be honest, I’m in a bubble within this community of Tezos artists and it’s very difficult to have an objective look at the rest of the NFT scene. On our side, we see players consolidating, new platforms, curators, and galleries trying out new things while trying to understand and respect the culture already established. I see a lot of respect and exchange, knowledge being shared and collaborations being born. 

Diane Drubay, Fabula 6 – Micro Stories From Tomorrow’s World, 2023

You are donating the sales of one of the artworks from Fabula to support the victims of the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria in February 2023. The NFT scene has been quite active in supporting humanitarian and environmental causes, do you think this will be a permanent aspect of this sector of the digital art market?

The act of creating and donating art for social and environmental charities is part of the DNA of the creative community using the Tezos blockchain. It started early on, back in March 2021, when DiverseNFT launched the OBJKT4OBJKT weekend to call for more diversity within the NFT art market. Then, this habit took hold and it became part of the culture: call for community support via NFT art donations and support the NGOs who need it most. 

In February 2023, the Tezos art community joined forces to support the victims of the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria under the initiative #TezQuakeAid. Since then, more than 110K xtz (around $109,000) have been raised through the donation of +720 artworks. 

“The Tezos art community has raised around $109,000 to support the victims of the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria under the initiative #TezQuakeAid.”

Find out more about Diane Drubay’s work in a longer interview published in 2022.

Read interview

Claudia Hart on Machiavelli, politics, and NFTs

New York-based artist Claudia Hart’s background in art and architectural history and publishing has defined an artistic practice developed since the late 1980s and focused on bridging the physical and digital worlds. An art critic and curator as well as an artist, her production is infused with literary and art historical references, using the words of male philosophers, poets, and painters such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Lord Byron, Lewis Carroll, Thomas Jefferson, Henry Ford, or Walter Gropius to apply a feminist approach to the representation of women in art and the influence of digital technologies in our patriarchal society.

An early work that she has come back to regularly, A Child’s Machiavelli combines many of Hart’s interests, from literature to analog and digital image making, performance, and a satirical view of society. 

Claudia Hart. LittleGuys, 1994.

A Child’s Machiavelli is a series that started in 1995 and has seen many different versions over a span of almost three decades. Hart was living in Berlin at the time the city was reinventing itself after the fall of the infamous wall. As the artist recalls, despite the spirit of newly regained freedom and the reunification of its people, the emerging art scene was fiercely competitive. She told a friend, sarcastically, that what was needed in that context was a revision of Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince (1532). The oft-quoted treatise on politics, known for its pragmatism and lack of morality, seemed particularly apt for a young society that was plunging deep and fast into capitalism. Hart’s version of The Prince, however, was not meant to be a guide for ambitious and reckless artists, but rather a fable about a time in which innocence would be lost to self-interest. She chose to create a primer to teach bad manners to children, aiming to spark a reflection on contemporary politics through the obvious contradiction between the childlike illustrations and the shockingly expedient advice.

Claudia Hart. A Child’s Machiavelli. Exhibition at bitforms (New York), 2020.

The initial version of A Child’s Machiavelli counted 31 small oil paintings, each one combining an illustration taken from a classic children’s book and the text that Hart had written, updating Machiavelli’s dictums in a more informal language. The paintings were exhibited in 1995 at the Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst in Berlin, accompanied by a small catalog produced by the Realismus Studio. From the beginning, the artist saw her Machiavelli as an imaginary book, with the paintings representing its pages, and quickly the project morphed into different formats, such as the first printed edition (Machiavelli für Kids. Hamburg: Edition Nautilus, 1995), or the hip-hop track Babyrap (1996), performed by Hart and produced in collaboration with the French band Assassin. The artist then imagined the next iteration of A Child’s Machiavelli as an animated series (intended to be aired in the popular MTV music video channel), which became her first 3D work, setting a turning point in her artistic production.

Hart’s version of The Prince is a fable about a time in which innocence would be lost to self-interest.

The series saw three more printed editions, one in French (Le Petit Machiavel illustré. Paris: Abbeville Press, 1998), and two in English. The first English version was published by Penguin Books in New York in 1998, and a decade later a second edition was published by Beatrice Books in a redesigned version. This latter edition, that came out in 2019, proved how relevant Machiavelli is to this day, and how aptly Hart’s satirical guide for infantile and selfish rulers reflects actual politics: in 2020, the results of  the United States presidential election were contested by Donald J. Trump, who refused to concede defeat and led his supporters to attack the US Capitol. The way in which Trump’s foolhardy self-interest and childish narcissism almost ended democracy seems right out of Machiavelli’s playbook and even more outlandish than Hart’s mordacious fairy tale.

Claudia Hart. A Child’s Machiavelli. New York: Beatrice Books, 2019

In 2021, as the NFT market boomed, Claudia Hart saw in this form of distribution and commercialization of digital art something akin to her experience with publishing books and magazines. The possibility of both widely distributing her artworks while retaining a sense of ownership (as is the case with printed books) appealed to her. So, the next version of A Child’s Machiavelli consists of 20 animated short films distributed as NFTs and presented in an exclusive artcast on Niio. On the occasion of this new phase in the Machiavelli project, I had a long conversation with the artist, in which we focused particularly on the latest iteration of the book as a series of NFTs.

Claudia Hart. DonDontThrowYourMoneyAround, 1994.

Continuing A Child’s Machiavelli as a series of NFTs seems a logical next step in the project, but what has been your experience with the NFT market so far?

When I first entered the NFT market, I was participating in auctions but I pulled out because they were taking what was intended to be a one-of-a-kind painting, a unique artwork, and then turning it into an edition. It seemed to me that this would hurt me. I always had a very ambivalent relationship with digital, but when NFTs came along, I realized that they are a hybrid of publishing, and digital, which is interesting to me. I’ve also had a very good experience with the community, it is very supportive. 

What is happening in the NFT space now that the crash happened, is that NFTs are being developed as a medium, not just as a register on the blockchain. If I take my earlier work, where for instance I do a movie that is 12 to 20 minutes long and it took me a year to make, and then I sell it as an NFT, I am giving the collector a guarantee of provenance and ownership. But the artwork is not “an NFT,” it’s a movie. As a medium, NFTs are serial, not sequential, because you can’t put things in order, like a baseball card is serial, but not sequential.

“NFTs are far from being anti-capitalist, as some people may want to describe them. They are pure neoliberalism.”

Claudia Hart

Since the original drawings are inspired by 1920s children’s books and the text was written in the 1990s, have you considered creating a new version using other references from children’s literature and updating the language to how kids talk today?

The illustrations I use in this series (the potter, the rabbit, Alice, and so forth), are all in the public domain. I have a collection of these illustrations from out-of-print books from the olden days, which I used to create the paintings and drawings for A Child’s Machiavelli. This is relevant in terms of copyright in relation to NFTs, because these are also about rights ownership. I think the issue of ownership, certified on the blockchain, coupled with distribution everywhere, is mainly the radical part of the production. The rights of the artwork usually remain with the artist, but lately several NFT projects have been offering the copyright of the image to the owner of the NFT, so some NFT collectors expect to have full rights over the artwork they bought. 

Claudia Hart. YoureNoGood, 1994.

Therefore, it can be said that NFTs are far from being anti-capitalist, as some people may want to describe them. They are pure neoliberalism. I believe that by selling NFTs I am not helping, but that is also part of why I want to make all my NFTs very dark and perverse, and about power. I have done another series about the Art of War, which has not been released yet. I also have handmade illustrations that I will turn ultimately into animations as well. Those have vocalizations, where I process the sound and I do interesting things with it. 

Claudia Hart. GivingThingsAway, 1994

The NFT market has been quite wild over the last two years, maybe as fiercely competitive as the art scene of the mid-1990s in Berlin. Do you see Machiavellian tactics in it?

The crypto winter cleared the ground of the pure, speculative designer ethos. It cleared the ground for artists, because now that there’s not so much money and attention we can focus on exploring NFTs as an artistic form. Some artists are bringing back generative art in new forms, and then there’s what I said about it being a serial but not sequential type of medium. Also, the NFT marketplaces are now looking for new blood, because those that were there in the first place are a bit contaminated right now. So they need a whole bunch of newbies like me, because they can sell us for cheaper. It’s the same thing in the art world: after a fiscal crash, the speculators like to bring in new “undiscovered artists,” because we’re cheaper.

Explore Claudia Hart’s work on Niio

Artist profile

Disordinary Beauty, a work in progress (part 1)

Domenico Barra and Pau Waelder

DISØRDINARY BƏAUTY is an ongoing art project by Domenico Barra that explores ugliness through glitch art. The project has been developed as a series of NFTs, with a new phase taking place on Niio as a work in progress, in which the artist will periodically upload new artworks and accompanying documentation. Here in the Editorial section, we’ll publish email exchanges bringing light into Domenico’s creative process and the ideas and influences behind this project.

Follow Domenico Barra’s work in progress on your screen in DISØRDINARY BƏAUTY: art canon

Open artcast

Domenico Barra is an Italian artist, educator, and curator whose work delves into the aesthetics of glitch art, “dirty” digital media and Internet cultures. He creates images, gifs, videos, and installations through a variety of techniques aimed at generating errors in the processes carried out by hardware and software to create the contents we experience on screens. In 2017, he adopted the nickname Altered_Data, inspired by the realization that online data is gradually shaping and manipulating our identity and behavior, and the fact that he was born with an immune system disorder.

He is the creator and art director of the online project White Page Gallery/s. a distributed and decentralized art network and community. In 2021, he started minting his works as NFTs and is now an active member of the NFT art community, selling his work on Ethereum and Tezos. He teaches glitch art and dirty new media at RUFA – Rome University of Fine Art. His work has been exhibited, among others, at DAM Gallery (Berlin), Galerie Charlot (Paris), Digital Art Center (Taipei), online at the Wrong Biennale and with Arebyte, and in many other galleries and cultural art events worldwide, on the internet and the metaverse.

Domenico Barra, DB a̶r̶t̶ ̶c̶a̶n̶o̶n̶ | a̶ ̶b̶e̶a̶u̶t̶y̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶v̶i̶o̶l̶e̶t̶, 2023

First ɛʍǟɨʟ exchange

from: Pau Waelder
to: Domenico Barra
date: Feb 19, 2023, 12:23 PM
subject: Re: Disordinary Beauty Work In Progress launch

Hi, Domenico!
I’d like to start publishing our series of exchanges in the Editorial section this week. For the first exchange, I’d like to shoot this question:

I have read several interviews in which you describe how you got into Glitch Art and the artists that inspired you. We’ll get into that later, but I’d like to ask you: what does glitch mean to you now, in the midst of growing AI creativity, after the NFT boom, and in relation to this particular project about beauty?

from: Domenico Barra 
to: Pau Waelder 
date: Feb 20, 2023, 6:47 PM
subject: Re: Disordinary Beauty Work In Progress launch

Hello Pau, 

Ten years ago, I began making glitch art, and since then, glitching has evolved and taken on different meanings that are all related to our imperfect nature. I’m enthusiastic about AI and have been exploring with other glitch artists what a glitch within AI means and how to trigger it. However, since AI networks and ƧYƧƬΣMƧ are vast, closed, and not very transparent, most discussions are about finding vulnerabilities to exploit. A glitch within AI may not look like the digital glitches we’re accustomed to for sure, but Nick Briz advanced the suggestion that a glitch within AI could still be considered as something unexpected. For instance, AI’s inability to accurately depict hands can be considered a glitch.

A glitch within AI may not look like the digital glitches we’re accustomed to. For instance, AI’s inability to accurately depict hands can be considered a glitch.

My personal approach takes inspiration from Databending, precisely incorrect editing. I started inducing short circuits in AI’s word-based processing by using prompts inspired by L33T SP34K language. The results are interesting and absurd images that could resemble some sort of twisted memes. In databending, by injecting random values or deleting/substituting some data values in image files using hex editing, the software organizes the data according to the standard file format. I played with altering prompt word input and influencing AI’s interpretation to create random “glitchy” image associations, resulting in unexpected and interesting outcomes.

NFTs offer an opportunity for experimentation in the imperfect art market, but the vision of doing things differently is gradually fading as they are becoming more “traditional”. Decentralization requires a cultural shift in personal and community values, and Web3 still heavily relies on Web2 social media, hindering social value and the ways value is created and artists promoted and glorified. Glitch art emerged in crypto art thanks in part to X-Copy‘s market success and leadership. There is also a marketplace called Glitch Forge that is entirely dedicated to glitch works of all sorts. Glitch art and styles are popular online and in NFT/crypto art, with artists reclaiming their space through the #postglitch aesthetic, especially in response to the status quo. The most famous probably is “Trash Art”, a movement of artists using glitch apps and filters excessively and with a strong amateur style in response to the anonymous artist PAK who declared that artists using glitch effects for their art were not real artists, leading to the creation of the trash art movement.

Confused? Try this quick intro to Glitch Art:

What the ¶b≠ôÆ is Glitch Art?

NFTs offer an opportunity for experimentation in the imperfect art market, but the vision of doing things differently is gradually fading as they are becoming more “traditional”.

Disordinary Beauty was born in the midst of the NFT boom and the emergence of new creative apps. Specifically, there was a growing interest in generative art among NFT collectors. It started as a personal experiment when I decided to try out some new generative glitch scripts. While browsing Instagram, I came across a selfie by one of the many influencers on the platform. As someone who has always struggled with the cult of image, beauty, and success perpetuated by Instagram, I decided to use the glitch scripts to slice up the selfie, surely inspired by The Blade Artist by Irvine Welsh that I had just finished reading. I continued this practice by creating one glitch portrait per day, every day, using a different influencer’s selfie each time.

As I continued to select selfies to glitch, I noticed that there were many common features among them such as the lighting, saturation, head position, and gaze. It was as though there was a programmed formula for shooting the perfect selfie. Through further reading, I discovered that the pose and formula adopted by influencers were not just for the sake of appearance, but also to make their photos easily recognizable by Instagram algorithms, thereby gaining more priority in the platform’s feed. This led me to see the glitch scripts as a way to reprogram and decode the selfies, ultimately erasing the image itself. This became a sort of redemption of the atypical, the imperfect, and the weird.

The pose and formula adopted by influencers in their selfies were not just for the sake of appearance, but also to make their photos easily recognizable by Instagram algorithms.

My interest in the concept of beauty on Instagram led me to read ʊʍɮɛʀȶօ Eco‘s On Ugliness and expand my exploration into the meaning of beauty and ugliness in art, and how it has been used to create new biases towards individuals who do not fit societal standards. I wanted to push things a bit further and delve into these concepts in the realm of AI as a sort of social consciousness, prompting image-based conversations with AI using ChatGPT so far and then also disrupting the perception and formatting of beauty in classical art.

Disordinary Beauty is now divided into three stages. The first stage, “BÆUTY IZ CH∆ØZ,” involves glitch erasure actions on influencers’ selfies. The second stage is “Conversation between AI and I” on topics related to beauty, ugliness, art, and society. The third stage called “art canon” will happen on Niio and involves bringing chaos into the harmony and beauty of classical artworks, and the experience of the viewers.”

Sincerely,
d0/\/\!

Robert LeBlanc: Trust is Everything

Pau Waelder

LA-based photographer Robert LeBlanc is known for documenting the lives of communities on the fringes of American society in photographic projects that usually take years, as he gains the trust of its members as is allowed to portray them at close distance. Since the publication of his first book, Unlawful Conduct, in 2016, his work has been increasingly on demand, leading to collaborations with mainstream firms and large companies, while also developing his own projects with funding that also comes from launching NFT drops and building a community of collectors around his work.

Fahey-Klein gallery is hosting an exhibition of Robert LeBlanc’s latest project, Gloryland, which is also available as an NFT drop on SuperRare and a limited-time artcast curated by Nicholas Fahey on Niio.

Robert LeBlanc. A New America #1 (2014-2022)

You have mentioned skateboarding as the reason why you got into photography. How would you say this experience contributed to shaping the photographer you are today?

I have always said skateboarding saved my life. I grew up in rural Montana, where I had no access to much art or culture, so as a youngster, I would see the world and experience art and culture through the pages of skateboard magazines and skate videos. Then, I started to use a camera when I would go out and skateboard with my friends and document what I would see in the streets when we would be out late skating around. I look back at those times and realize it was my “schooling” on how to navigate the streets, and that really helped develop the skills that honed my ability to access worlds I wouldn’t have normally seen. I firmly believe that skating gave me all the tools I needed to do what I do today. 

Robert LeBlanc. A New America #64(2014-2022)

Your photography projects span several years. What is the process of developing these projects? Do you work on several projects simultaneously? Do the experiences in one project lead to another?

When working on long-term projects, it is a slow burn. You have to gain trust and spend a lot of time with whom I’m photographing to really get to the good stuff. Eventually, the subject’s walls slowly go down, and that’s when you get the opportunity to witness the real magic. I work on several projects at once, and sometimes one project will open the door to another project. You never know when the right opportunity will present itself, and you have to be ready for that; sometimes, you get one shot to gain that trust or access, and being prepared for those opportunities is a must.

“When working on long-term projects, it is a slow burn. You have to gain trust and spend a lot of time with whom I’m photographing to really get to the good stuff.”

In your projects, you use different types of cameras. What do each of them bring to the final output? Is the choice of camera driven by a specific type of image you want to create, do other factors affect this decision?

Yes, I like to use different cameras; sometimes, a particular camera is perfect for that specific project. Cameras are the ultimate tool that connects how I see the world into a visual story to tell a wider audience. For me, not only how the camera shoots but the size plays a huge factor. Sometimes I need something small and very discrete, and sometimes medium format is the only way to create the image I need. I’ve recently been using a monochrome-only digital camera, which is such an inspiring tool. Something about being able only to see the world in Black&White will steer my attention to things I wouldn’t have ever noticed in color. I also love what a cell phone can accomplish, and we all walk around with quite a powerful tool in our pockets every day, and its normality can be a mighty thing. 

Robert LeBlanc. Gloryland. Untitled #35 (2018-2021)

Steve Schapiro, who was known for being able to blend in with the communities he portrayed, once said: “basically, if you’re just matter of fact photographing people in terms of who they are and what they’re doing, you don’t have any trouble.” Do you agree with this statement? How has your experience been when entering a community and gaining their trust?

Absolutely! When you leave your biases at the door and come into any situation with an open mind, you will learn something fundamental about the human experience. How you interact with whomever you photograph will be much more rewarding, at least in my experience. Trust is everything, and there is a responsibility within it too. These are real people with real lives and feelings; abusing that trust to me is the ultimate disrespect in my eyes. I have always played by those rules, and that has gotten me to the places I have been because of the respect I give to anyone on the other side of the lens, and I believe that’s the only reason I’m able to continue to tell their stories.

“Trust is everything, and there is a responsibility within it too. These are real people with real lives and feelings; abusing that trust to me is the ultimate disrespect in my eyes.”

In your description of the community of The House of The Lord Jesus in Squire you emphasize the need to look deeper and “sift through all the coal dust” to understand who they are and what they do. Considering that you intend to do this through your photographs, how do you develop the project with this aim?

I didn’t initially have that objective. I just wanted to witness a community that I found fascinating and widely misunderstood. But when I started to spend more time understanding who they were and the environment they lived in, I began to put those pieces together. It’s a tough part of the country that involves a lot of suffering; I not only wanted to show what they did but also show that they are kind, loving, and compassionate people. Mainstream media is at fault for turning what they do into such a spectacle and, in return, pushing a false narrative that talks about crazy folks who handle snakes, and honestly, that is so far from the truth. I watch people do things in the city every day that seems crazier and more stupid than what they do. This is a rich history of tradition on the verge of excision.

Robert LeBlanc. A New America #29 (2014-2022)

In your recent projects you have had sponsorships and collaborations with big brands, how has that affected the development of your work as compared to earlier projects? 

Luckily for me, it hasn’t at all. Large brands can be beneficial with funding and getting the word out there, and I’m incredibly grateful for brands who have supported my projects and ideas. But it’s important to know where the line needs to be drawn and remind yourself you are doing this because you are passionate about the project and not to be a PR firm that pushes a brand’s message. It comes down to finding a brand or company that shares the same message or beliefs, and if they start to push back or try to reshape what you, the artist, are doing, then they’re not the right fit. But it would be best if you were conscious of that, so you are not wasting each other’s time and money.

Robert LeBlanc. Gloryland. Untitled #39 (2018-2021)

What has the NFT market brought to the dissemination of your work? 

I have opened many doors through collectors or funding. I’m incredibly grateful for all the folks who have supported my NFT drops; most of those funds help to continue developing work or the release of works and books. There is a lot of power within the NFT community, and I’ve met many people I have looked up to for years who are passionate about supporting artists and the art community. It’s been such a fantastic ride so far. The biggest struggle as a creative is how do you continue to finance and survive while creating. I think before NFT came about, we as creatives were held captive by large brands with budgets, making us all fight for scraps, but NFTs have changed the game entirely. Now I can give collectors a more personal experience one on one, and they know that their support will be significant in developing these bodies of work.

“Before NFT came about, we as creatives were held captive by large brands with budgets, making us all fight for scraps, but NFTs have changed the game entirely.”

Tin Lizards is a project that involves collectors in the process of creating the photographs, using blockchain technology to create a system of voting and rewards. How was that experience? Are you interested in further developing this type of project?

I’ve been loving it and hopefully to do many more projects like this. I love being involved with those who support my work, and I hope Tin Lizards is a perfect case study on how collectors can play a very involved role in creating a project

Robert LeBlanc. Gloryland. Untitled #9 (2018-2021)

On SuperRare, your photographs are sold as NFTs and also available for download at 9k pixels. Why is the image available at such high resolution? Are you concerned that it might be used or printed without your permission or control?

No, not at all. Technology constantly changes, and so do the screens that are used to display art. I want to make sure that the collectors can use these images no matter what size screen they are displayed on. I obviously don’t want collectors printing my work because there is a level of quality control that needs to be intact, but if they have a 98″ screen, I want them to be able to enjoy the art on a large scale without the art looking like a pixel mess. Plus the files I use to print photos are much larger than what is available on SuperRare.