The Center Pompidou is currently exhibiting its first collection of “non-fungible tokens” (NFT), a pioneering project in Europe but not without pitfalls, against a backdrop of turbulence in the world of digital art. Two rooms of the Parisian museum of modern art are thus devoted until January 2024 to 18 recently acquired digital works, presented on screens. Among them, a “cryptopunk”, a character with a crest which is one of the emblems of the world of crypto-art, or even Bitchcoin, an imaginary representation of a bitcoin (cryptocurrency), created by the artist Sarah Meyohas in 2015. It This is one of the first NFTs, those computer files attached to a digital work of art.
After several years of speculative fever, the market for these tokens collapsed last year, as the cryptocurrency ecosystem was rocked by scandals. Transactions fell 94% from $232.7 million in 2021 to $13.9 million in 2022, according to French analytics firm Artprice. About half of the works exhibited at Pompidou were donated by their authors, while others were acquired for only a few tens of euros at the current exchange rate of the cryptocurrency ethereum, according to the NFT market platform OpenSea. “For these artists, the idea is to enter the history of art and also to ensure the durability of their works, because the role of a museum is to preserve a heritage and therefore to ensure the longevity of the works”, justifies to AFP Marcella Lista, chief curator of the new media department of the Center Pompidou and curator of the exhibition.
Marriage of technology and creation, digital art very quickly created its own icons and myths, in the absence of regulation. Californian artist Robness gave the museum an imaginary 3D portrait of the alleged inventor of bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, whose identity has never been revealed. “I am very grateful to the Center Pompidou. It’s a very moving experience,” Robness told AFP during his visit to Paris. The price of NFTs has collapsed and their reputation has been tarnished by controversies linked to intellectual property, but this artist has no intention of abandoning this means of expression. “This technology is like email: it’s not going away,” according to Robness. “If you start worrying about market dynamics, you’re wasting your energy. (…) It does not help you to create». For the promoters of the project at the Center Pompidou, the first European institution to launch its collection of NFTs, the process was laborious. Transactions are usually carried out with cryptocurrencies. However, the Parisian museum cannot invest in this risky universe and have “double accounting”, underlined Marcella Lista. Purchases were therefore made in euros directly from the artists and, for each work, a contract was signed under French law. Like all NFT collectors, the Center Pompidou had to create an electronic wallet on OpenSea. This account, accessible to the public, is however only a showcase on the internet, specifies Philippe Bertinelli, one of the other curators of the exhibition. “We have a storage system on several servers, on several media, which allows us, in the event of loss, breakdown, fire, (…) to ensure the durability of the storage”, he said. explain.