NFT EXHIBITION AT THE MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART IN ZAGREB: 

A unique opportunity to get acquainted with the works of internationally recognized artists as part of the Web3 Tales conference

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"Techno-Healing: Finding Resilience and Well-Being in a Digital World" is a group exhibition of NFTs held as part of the Web3 Tales conference at the beginning of June at the Museum of Contemporary Art, organized by the Alice in Blockchains association and partner Base58

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On June 1 and 2, 2023, the unique Web3 Tales conference will be held at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, Croatia, organized by the Alice in Blockchains association. There the future of the Internet will be discussed, as well as the potential and practical applications of blockchain technology, decentralized finance, NFTs, Web3 gaming and metaverse to our private and business everyday life.

As part of the conference, the NFT exhibition "Techno-Healing: Finding Resilience and Well-Being in a Digital World" will be held, which will remain open to the general public for several days after the end of the conference.

The goal of the conference is decentralization, greater inclusiveness and diversification in the world of new technologies, and in that spirit this group exhibition brings together a diverse group of digital artists who explore the topics of feminism, non-binary, health and self-care in the digital age.

"Techno-Healing: Finding Resilience and Well-Being in a Digital World" is curated by Petra Tomljanović, art historian, curator and author. She is interested in how digital technologies of the 21st century affect the production, perception and distribution of contemporary art. So far, she has curated over 50 exhibitions and published articles on the combination of information technology and art. She has a master's degree in art history and literature and MAS curatorial studies from Zhdk. She lives and works in Zurich, where she runs the art gallery Kulturfolger.

"The exhibition "Techno Healing - Finding Resilience and Wellbeing in the Digital World" gathers a group of female artists and non-binary persons whose work deals with the dominant male discourse of technology and blockchain. This exhibition highlights the themes of wellness and feminism, which are especially relevant in a world where capitalism exploits the promise of women's health and beauty through apps, trackers and meditation guides, where we are expected to become the best versions of ourselves. However, the question arises as to how much this is another way of exploitation, which gives us the appearance of control over our bodies, while we are actually exploiting ourselves in another way.

Within the digital world there are spaces where we can feel freer and more honest than in the "physical" world, which is made possible by web3. In this context, Rosa Braidotti's theoretical perspective provides useful insights into the importance of the body in the context of identity and technology, particularly in relation to the female body. The concept of the "posthuman body", found in Braidotti's work "The Posthuman" (2013), opens new perspectives for understanding the body in the digital age, especially in the context of feminist theories.

What makes this exhibition special is the fact that all the exhibitors are pioneers of digital creation, and some are even among the first to adopt blockchain as a storage method in their practice. Through their work, these artists have opened the discourse of "ownership" of digital work, creating new models where artists can own their digital works and control their distribution. Their innovative and brave practice opens the door to new ways of thinking about the role of technology in art and culture in general", said curator Petra Tomljanović.

Gretchen Andrew, Carla Gannis, Lauren Moffatt, Mieke Marple, Rory Scott, Sasha Stiles, Anna Fries, CROSSLUCID, and Claudia Hart will show their works. Through a variety of media, including digital art, poetry and interactive installations, these artists will offer new perspectives on the ways in which technology and social media can empower but also harm women, and will invite viewers to consider the role of feminism in fostering resilience and well-being in coping with these challenges. 

By showcasing their work through NFTs, we are creating a platform for these artists to reach a global audience and show innovative ways that are thought provoking and explore pressing social issues.

"I believe art and NFTs can play an incredibly important role in helping people navigate and find meaning in the digital age. As our lives become increasingly intertwined with technology, it can be easy to feel disconnected or overwhelmed by the overwhelming amount of information and stimuli we encounter every day. By creating art that explores themes of resilience, well-being and self-care, we can help counter these negative effects and give people the tools to cope and thrive in the digital age. Furthermore, by using NFTs to authenticate and distribute this art, we can help establish its value and importance in the art world, ensuring it reaches a wider audience and contributes to a wider conversation about the intersection of technology, art and the human experience," said artist Rory Scott .

The NFT exhibition "Techno-Healing: Finding Resilience and Well-Being in a Digital World" will be set up as part of the Web3 Tales conference organized by the Alice in Blockchains association, but the exhibition will be open to the general public after the end of the conference.

"We want the Web3 Tales conference to be a meeting place, an exchange of ideas, and an opportunity to create new partnerships and business opportunities for individuals and companies that will work together to build a better, more open and transparent digital future," concluded Magda Milas from Alice in Blockchains.

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About the Alice in Blockchains association

The Alice in Blockchains association aims to inspire women to explore their potential and actively get involved in the fintech and blockchain industries. Through training, creating new business opportunities through mentoring and networking, and building a community, the association creates a space where women feel welcome and continuously highlights successful women in the industry.

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CURATORIAL CONCEPT

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KEY TOPICS

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* Feminism: The exhibition will highlight the perspectives and experiences of female artists, and will explore themes of gender, power, and social justice.

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* Posthumanism: The exhibition will delve into the ways in which technology and artificial intelligence are shaping our understanding of what it means to be human, and will consider the implications as part of identity politics.

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* Identity: The exhibition will feature works that explore the complex and fluid nature of identity, particularly as it relates to gender, race, and cultural background.

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* Avatars: The exhibition will showcase how artists are using avatars and virtual spaces to express and explore their identities, and will consider the potential of these technologies to create new forms of artistic expression and community.

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* Poetry: The exhibition will feature works that incorporate poetry and spoken word, exploring the power of language and the written word to express and challenge dominant narratives

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DURATION AND PLACE

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01 - 11 June 2023
Muzej Suvremene Umjetnosti, Zagreb
Opening reception: 01. June 2023, 18 h

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ARTISTS

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Gretchen Andrew:

‍Gretchen Andrew is an artist who hacks systems of power with art, code, glitter and increasingly the written word. Known for her playful hacks on major art world and political institutions, including Frieze, The Whitney Biennial, Artforum, The Turner Prize, and auction record results and Google’s display of the 2020 presidential election results. In these digital performances she reimagines reality with art and desire. The feminine and trivialized materials of her Vision Boards, Affirmation Ads, and NFT Thirst Trap Glitch Gifs, purposefully clash with the male-dominated worlds of AI, programming, and political control they also operate within. Her new series, deGenerative Art will be released at Art Basel Miami 2023.  Gretchen trained in London with the artist Billy Childish from 2012-2017. In 2018 the V&A Museum released her book Search Engine Art. Gretchen’s work has been featured in Fast Company, Flash Art, CNN, The Washington Post, Fortune Magazine, Monopol, Wirtschaftswoche, The Los Angeles Times, and The Financial Times. She has had solo exhibitions at Francisco Carolinum Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, The Monterey Museum of Art, The Santa Monica Museum of art The National Gallery X London. Gretchen’s studio project Crypto Mermaids seeks to empower those who feel isolated from Web3 through technical and financial education. 

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Crosslucid:

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An embryo of pure potential, CROSSLUCID is an interdisciplinary collective and synthesis of Sylwana Zybura and Tomas C. Toth. Appearing in a transitional reality its aim is to instigate new associations and investigate the possibility of novel arrangements, interactions and physical / emotional tactilities. It generally prioritises ‘prototyping’ over ‘building’. Cross-disciplinary collaborations, chance operations and experience-led interventions is its method of operating. Its current practice spans moving image, photography, collage, installation, character design and creative direction. Crosslucid’s have been selected to exhibit internationally for group and solo shows that include #FIRSTDATE at ArtArea Gallery, Tbilisi, RAPID PROTOTYPING LANDSCAPES at Import Projects, Berlin, Istanbul Experimental Film Festival (best experimental short) lossless bodies at the wrong biennale, London, Kurzfilmtage Winterthur, CH, the future of beauty and body at meConvention, Frankfurt, Channels Biennial of Video Art, Melbourne, Fast Line at Google Arts&Culture at ARTNIGHT, London, NXS#4 Algorithmic Anxiety at Trust Berlin,Loom Festival, Barcelona, #FIRSTDATE x HERVISIONS at LNCC London heliogram at Nike Archive Room, Beijing REPLICA at Villa Vertua Masolo, Milan

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Anna Fries:

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Anna Fries is a performing artist and lives in Basel and Berlin. They is a founding member and longtime artistic director of the game theater collective machina eX, which specializes in interactive experiences based on game logic and whose games have toured Europe and the USA. In addition, Anna Fries is part of Henrike Iglesias, a feminist collective with a strong love for pop and politics. Henrike’s live porn OH MY was last seen at the FIBA Festival 2020 in Buenos Aires and the interactive performance show UNDER PRESSURE at the Stages Unboxed Showcase at the Theatertreffen 2021. In 2019/2020 Anna Fries was a participant in the postgraduate program DASTheatre at the AHK Amsterdam . They are currently working with Malu Peeters on VIRTUAL WOMBS, a project dedicated to the fusion of live performance and VR.

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Carla Gannis:

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Carla Gannis (b. 1970) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn, New York. She produces virtual and physical works that are darkly comical in their contemplation of human, earthly and cosmological conditions. Fascinated by digital semiotics and the lineage of hybrid identity, Gannis takes a horror vacui approach to her artistic practice, culling inspiration from networked communication, art and literary history, emerging technologies and speculative fiction. Gannis’s work has appeared in exhibitions, screenings and internet projects across the globe. Recent projects include “Portraits in Landscape,” Midnight Moment, Times Square Arts, NY and “Sunrise/Sunset,” Whitney Museum of American Art, Artport. Publications who have featured Gannis’s work include The Creators Project, Wired, FastCo, Hyperallergic, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, El PaÍs and The LA Times, among others.

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Claudia Hart:

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Claudia Hart (1955) emerged as part of a generation of ‘90s intermedia artists examining issues of identity and representation. Since the late ‘90s when she began working with 3D animation, Hart embraced these same concepts, but now focusing on the impact of computing and simulation technologies. She was an early adopter of virtual imaging, using 3D animation to make media installations and projections, and later as they were invented, other forms of VR, AR, and objects produced by computer-driven production machines. At the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she is a professor, she developed a pedagogic program based on her practice – Experimental 3D – the first dedicated solely to teaching simulations technologies in an art-school context. Hart’s works are widely exhibited and collected by galleries and museums including the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Metropolitan Museum. Her work has been shown at the New Museum, produced at the Eyebeam Center for Art + Technology, where she was an honorary fellow in 2013-14, at Pioneer Works, NY, where she a technology resident in 2018, and at the Center for New Music and Audio Technology, UC California, Berkeley where she is currently a Fellow.

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Mieke Marple:

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Mieke Marple is an artist, writer, and activist living in San Francisco. She received a B.A. in Fine Art from the University of California,
Los Angeles, in 2008. Recent solo exhibitions include Tarot Reckoning (2021); and Bad Feminist (2019-2020) at Ever Gold [Pro-jects], San Francisco; and God is an Audiobook at 1301PE, Los Angeles (2019). Select recent group exhibitions include Pantheon, Arts of Life, Chicago (2021); Twisted Dream, Los Angeles (2021), and Carbon Drop, on Nifty Gateway (2021). Marple has been written about by The New York Times, W Magazine, The Guardian, The Art Newspaper, Autre, among other publications. She has written essays for Zyzzyva, Artsy, and Matrons & Mistresses. Through various charity art auctions, she has helped raise over a million dollars for Planned Parenthood LA, a quarter million for prison abolitionist organization Critical Resistance, and most recently 6.6 million dollars for Open Earth Foundation. Marple was co-owner of Night Gallery, Los Angeles, from 2011-2016.

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Lauren Moffatt:

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Lauren Moffatt is an Australian artist working with immersive environments and experimental narrative practices. Her works, often
presented in hybrid and iterative forms, explore the paradoxical subjectivity of connected bodies and the indistinct boundaries between
digital and organic life. In 2021 she was awarded the DKB VR Art Prize (DE) and in 2022 she was awarded the I Certamen Internacional de Arte Digital (ES) and the Revista MAKMA Aquisition Prize (ES). Lauren completed her studies in painting, in theory and practice of new media art and in audiovisual creation at the College of FineArts (AU), Université Paris VIII (FR), and at Le Fresnoy Studi National des Arts Contemporains (FR) respectively. Lauren’s works have been exhibited at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (DE), Centre Pompidou (FR), La Gaïté Lyrique (FR), SXSW (US), Haus am Lützowplatz (DE), UNSW Galleries (AU), Daegu Art Museum (KOR), Le Grand Palais Ephémère (FR), SAVVY Contemporary (DE), FACT Liverpool (UK) The Sundance Film Festival (US) ZKM (DE), Q21 Freiraum (AT) and at Hartware MedienkunstVerein (DE). She lives and works in Berlin and Valencia.

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Sasha Stiles:

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Sasha Stiles is a poet, artist, and AI researcher who explores the intersection of text and technology through her cross-media work. Her
art, which has been honored in the Future Art Awards and exhibited at various events and institutions, seeks to decipher the hidden language of the Novacene and investigates themes of semiotics, translation, computer science, and visual poetry. Stiles’ binary-based series challenge reductive thinking by merging biological and mechanical, analog and digital, and historical and modern elements. She is also a mentor to one of the world’s most advanced humanoid AI robots and frequently speaks at events and institutions on topics related to art, literature, philosophy, and digital culture. Stiles is a graduate of Harvard and Oxford and co-founder of theVERSEverse, a crypto literary collective. She lives outside of New York City with her husband and studio partner, Kris Bones.

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Rory Scott:

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Rory Scott is a multidisciplinary artist whose work revolves around her lifelc A project, Impermanence, currently in its 12th year. Year.
Using digital and handcrafted means, Scott explores the ideas of impermanence, reality, the passage of time, and the impact of technology on human evolution. In her work, she primarily uses patterns to create visual parallels between the existence of patterns in nature and the rhythm of our thoughts and our lives. She illustrates that repetition over time creates form and ultimately the reality we exprrience. Using tools such as animation, projection, augmented/virtual reality, VQGAN+CLIPS, and handcrafted miniature sets, Scott attempts to create worlds that transport the viewer into environments that are tangible and dream-like and evoke a déjà vu experience. “What defines being human more than impermanence? It’s what we all have in common, but are reluctant to share. I hope that upon viewing my work, people will feel a sense of connection with me and our shared experience of time travel.” Rory Scott currently resides
in Chincago and. Detroit.

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Tanja Vujinovic:

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Tanja Vujinovic is an established artist who has appeared as a part of numerous festivals and shown artworks in museums, and galleries
worldwide. Her hybrid artworks consist of VR, digital/physical sculpture, game engines, and electronic music. Tanja is the founder of
Ultramono, a cybernetic art hub. As a passionate supporter of rave culture she has created a few techno albums and is also DJing herself. Her works have been shown in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Strasbourg, Kunst Palast Museum in Düsseldorf, Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver, Kunsthaus in Merano, Museum of Contemporary Art in Istanbul, Kapelica Gallery in Ljubljana, Museum Vasarely Foundation in Aix-en-Provence, and Künstlerhaus in Vienna. She has presented at festivals such as ISEA2009 in Belfast, Ars Electronica in Linz, Kinetica Art Fair in London, Spor Festival in Aarhus, FILE Festival in Sao Paulo, and FILE RIO in Rio de Janeiro. She graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, and in 2010, she obtained a PhD in Philosophy and Theory of Visual Culture.
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