PROOF OF STAKE

Participating artists: Robert Alice, Mel Chin, Joshua Citarella, Simon Denny, Fang Di, Stephanie Dinkins, Disnovation, Sarah Friend, Isa Genzken, Holly Herndon / Mathew Dryhurst, Femke Herregraven, Mike Kelley, Josh Kline, Paul Kolling, Agnieszka Kurant, James Luna, Karamia Müller, New Red Order (NRO-Adam Khalil, Zack Khalil, and Jackson Polys), Yuri Pattison, Timur Si-Qin, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Krista Belle Stewart, Paul Thek, Prateek Vjian, Luke Willis Thompson & Beecoin, ein Kooperationsprojekt zwischen The Hiveeyes Project (Clemens Gruber, Karsten Harazim),, Nascent (Max Hampshire, Paul Seidler), Moabees (Bärbel Rothaar, Elisa Dierson, Katja Marie Voigt) und KUNSTrePUBLIK (Harry Sachs, Matthias Einhoff, Philip Horst) u.a.

Proof of Stake - Technological Claims, a group exhibition, symposium, educational project and publication initiated by the Kunstverein in Hamburg and artist Simon Denny. The exhibition will reflect on themes of technology, and ownership, which have also been central to a related seminar series and forthcoming pair of publications. The exhibition is named after an ownership-based blockchain protocol which has increased in visibility after competing systems were criticised for incentivising high energy consumption. Proof of Stake questions how the framing of processes or objects as ‘technological’ performs cultural work - from blockchain protocols to museum reification practices. It will foreground the question of who gets to claim the technical, which is often accompanied with a legitimacy or naturalization of what could otherwise read as political processes. In dialogue with some of the region’s most important institutions like the MARKK (Museum am Rothenbaum), Denny and collaborators such as artist Timur Si-Qin and Prof. Timon Beyes (Leuphana University) will unpack who and what plays a role in techology’s legitimation processes and how they interact with ownership and power.