The explosion of interest in cryptocurrencies and distributed computing since Bitcoin’s emergence in 2009 has led to experiments in alternative governance structures, financing, and peer-to-peer networking. This shift has seeded a cultural conversation that has inspired great creative production on both sides of the traditional ars/techne divide.

Staged in the Schinkel Klause – the Schinkel Pavillon’s labyrinthine lower floor and a former GDR restaurant – this exhibition brings together works engaged with the culture around Bitcoin and blockchain, entertaining crypto as a possible new infrastructure for money, computing, and organizing. This includes artwork made by crypto builders, crypto experiments built by artists, and a small number of paintings and drawings that resonate with crypto, but predate Bitcoin. The organizers are also diverse, bringing to the show experience as technologists, artists, and curators – often in combination.

Rethinking decentralization, consensus, secrecy, privacy, religion, and societal and/or organizational structures has become popular in circles that discuss and explore the possibilities of blockchain-related systems. Berlin is a busy node in an international network of crypto-interested producers, gathering around amorphous discussion groups. The online group Crypto Circle  – who use the office chat platform Slack  to share ideas – various events, and collective »co-working« office spaces like Full Node  in Kreuzberg are examples of such self-selecting groups and spaces relevant to many of the positions featured in the exhibition.

A transparent curatorial structure was adopted for selecting the artworks in the exhibition and reflects an interest in distributed decision making. A series of creators-as-decision-making-nodes were invited to propose positions they felt resonated with blockchain, pushing back on the idea of curating as a singular point of centralized decisionmaking. The result is a partial picture of activity in this area that is formed by a pre-defined organizational protocol. An organizational diagram is produced and exhibited alongside the exhibition, a record of this structure. The exhibition aims to highlight a non-representative cross section of the artistic activity being done in the wake of blockchain‘s emergence.

»Proof of Work« takes its title from the decentralized process behind Bitcoin and other blockchain-based cryptocurrencies. It is the name of the consensus algorithm used to confirm transactions and produce new »blocks« on the »chain«, or ledger that makes up a blockchain. From the Bitcoin wiki: »A Proof of Work is a piece of data which is difficult (costly, time-consuming) to produce but easy for others to verify and which satisfies certain requirements.«

CryptoKitties
Aria Dean
Distributed Gallery
Harm van den Dorpel
FOAM (Ryan John King, Ekaterina Zavyalova, Nick Axel and Kristoffer Josefsson)
Sarah Hamerman and Sam Hart
Decentralized Autonomous Kunstverein (Nick Koppenhagen and Wesley Simon)
Kei Kreutler
left gallery (Harm van den Dorpel and Paloma Rodríguez Carrington)
Wayne Lloyd
Mark Lombardi
Jonas Lund
Rob Myers
Hayal Pozanti
Billy Rennekamp
Jason Rohrer
Miljohn Ruperto and Ulrik Heltoft
0xΩ (Avery Singer and Matt Liston)
terra0 (Paul Seidler, Paul Kolling and Max Hampshire) in collaboration with Georgia Hansford, Louis Center and Gregor Finger

With a conversation program by New Models – Caroline Busta, Lil Internet, Daniel Keller