Latest / TezTalks Radio - Tezos Ecosystem Podcast / 101: Kika Nicolela on Art, NFTs & Community on Tezos

Transcript

101: Kika Nicolela on Art, NFTs & Community on Tezos · TezTalks Radio - Tezos Ecosystem Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Tez Talks Radio.
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: I am your host, Marissa True, and today I am joined by Kika Nicolela, a Brazilian artist, filmmaker and independent curator based in Brussels.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: So welcome to the show.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: How are you today?
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: I'm fine.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: And you.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: I am excellent, so I've heard a lot about you through various other community members, but I would love to give you the platform to basically introduce yourself and not only give us a little insight into your journey into digital art, but also your journey into Web3 and Tezos.
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, I've been a full-time artist for the past 23 years, 22 years Since 2003,.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: I kind of put my beginning date around that because that's where I was.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: I went to film school and then, coming out of film school, I started making independent.
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: Well, at first I started working in the industry, in the film industry in Brazil, and then I realized it was really not what I wanted.
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: I wanted to not follow any type of.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: I really loved the moving image and I wanted to work with moving image in a way that was not formatted by any type of rules and ended up being curated in like exhibitions and some really great exhibitions, like being like the youngest one in like some amazing group shows, and kind of went with the flow and realized that what I was doing was really more fitting to the contemporary art, really more fitting to the contemporary art like milieu, like the this context, more than I was trying, I was still trying to understand if I was a filmmaker or an artist and then at some point and I would say around 2003-2004 I kind of decided, okay, I'm, I'm actually pursuing more of an artistic career or the artistic career is kind of pursuing me.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: So let's embrace that.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: And it went.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: It really went went in this journey of being really between filmmaking, contemporary art and the digital art communities, and especially later on when I started like making some live live performances using video and live live what we called it at the time live cinema and sometimes some interactive projects.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: Normally I don't code, but I would collaborate with artists that could code and then that could become something more interactive, but always with the moving images as a base.
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: So basically, the video is my main medium.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: You made one interesting statement, which is whether you wanted to pursue art as a career, but, more accurately, that it pursued you.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: Why did you feel like there was this calling that was in the other direction, versus you chasing it yourself?
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: in the other direction, versus you chasing it yourself, because I really had this filmmaker mind that you make a project and then you make another project.
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: And for me, the difference is that when you are an artist, it's all connected, like every project leads you to the next one, and it's part of a deeper research.
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: And that's not something that I was really familiar with and also it's a completely another community.
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: But I was just invited time after time to be part of exhibitions and then I fell in love with the idea of making video installations, which is something very different from having a film presented in a film festival in that kind of installation.
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: That is kind of out of your control and it's always the same thing, right?
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: Basically, cinema is an installation that really became the standard, but then with the installation within a museum or a gallery space, it's all, it's all side.
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: Okay, how, how big is the projection?
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: Is it a projection?
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: Is it a screen?
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: Should people be sitting or lying down or standing up?
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: Is it a loop?
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: Will I have credits in the end?
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: Which kind of cuts the loop?
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: Is it a seamless loop?
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: All of these things, Is it much screen?
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: You know and it's funny because I've been dealing with this for over 20 years and when I kind of find funny when people start, oh how do we show NFTs?
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: Like it's a big discussion, but it's been.
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: It's an old discussion.
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: I mean, everybody working with anybody working with video, and video has been around since the 60s.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: They have been facing problems, or problems just as like how to present that in a space in an interesting way.
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: So I've been doing that for for a long time and I also find kind of funny that, like screens became the norm.
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: But I my past I think I use more projection even than than screens, especially because in a museum it's much, much more interesting if you have.
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: It's not always case, it's not always the way they have the space and the good situation, the light situation etc.
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: But like a big projection there's nothing like it.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: You know, it's much more immersive and much more interesting for anything that is a moving image and it's interesting because I think often, as you know, as the viewers and not the producers of art, we take for granted the way the artist has to think about setting up the way that we're actually able to witness the works, versus seeing it in a cinema style format.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: Or, as you said, you know, are we sitting down, are we lying down, are we standing?
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: These are all elements that have been pre-considered that we often overlook and don't really factor in as part of the way that we consume the work.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: A lot of the NFT space has always been about, you know, how do we successfully convey these digital pieces in the way that we're able to sort of embrace them best?
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: But you're right, you know, this has been an ongoing conversation for decades.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: So what's the sort of progress we've made, and has Web3 accelerated it at all, or is it sort of just circled around the same problem?
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: Actually, I think what I feel is new with the NFT space is this idea of having galleries that are made just to show NFTs and so they are again a preconceived type of installation that is fixed.
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: It's almost like the cinema, but for, like, digital art.
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: So it's a fixed system that can rotate very easily so you can have one exhibition a day.
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: You can have even two exhibitions a day, and that's, for me, pretty new and quite weird, to be honest.
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: I mean, when I created a show for Superchief in September 2022, before I entered Object, but I was already like in the space and I remember I was very, very concerned with the fact that they had a lot of different screens with different aspect ratios and I wanted to have like one artist per screen and go like okay, so we have to make like a combination of okay, how many artists are going to do landscape projects?
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: How many are going to do like, like portrait projects?
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: And then fit each screen.
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: And they were like, no, don't worry, don't worry.
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: And I was like, how can I not where I'm the curator?
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: I mean, I have to make sure the piece is not gonna be cropped.
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: It's not gonna be.
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: And then I went through all this like I was really worried about this and really like assigning a screen for each one, and then I realized that during the exhibition they were rotating everything and make because they have like also all the screens are connected in an application that is easy also to rotate, and because they also do sometimes like a mosaic of several screens showing one work, but it's absolutely everything is cropped.
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: Showing one work, but it's absolutely everything is cropped.
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: You know, there's no way any work can be properly shown in that way, properly in the sense of seeing the piece, but it's kind, it has a wow effect, which is, I think, a kind of what they are looking for.
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: And also, I think, maybe because people have low attention span in this space and maybe also in these events, they were more interested, instead of having a fixed exhibition, in rotating the works, not all the time.
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: I wasn't there, but I saw videos of it and that was like I was kind of I wasn't sure I liked it, but it was interesting for sure and a new way of thinking exhibition that actually it's not one piece by screen, but it's just all these screens are like an installation that you inhabit with your creation.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: So it's a bit more like a slideshow format that keeps the viewer fixed, but then the art on rotation and I mean, do you think that kind of comes down to the fact that the NFT art space is still relatively young?
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: So there is a bit of an inexperience about, I guess, all of the considerations that come into displaying digital arts as effectively as possible.
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: It has a bit of that in some cases.
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: In other cases, it's just what is the concept of the gallery, what is the concept that they have of what a show is?
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: I think it's.
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: It's um, sometimes it's more to be more um, like I said, this wow effect and it's not like a slideshow in the sense.
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: Uh, that you know, slideshow is one thing after the other, but here is like a place with 20 no, I think they have like 40 screens, so it's more like using all of this to make something that is almost like a show, like a you know, like, um, something, like that's a bit more immersive, really too impressive and to be impressive.
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: But then I feel like often those situations, these galleries, all of these NFT galleries yes, by one hand, you can have shows in a much more fast way and with with a lower cost of production, because you don't need to install the show at every time, you know, you just put the files and you have it.
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: But I think it lacks, like every show looks the same.
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: After you go to a few of these exhibitions in the same nft gallery, they all kind of look the same because it's the same installation.
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: But I understand that it is what it is and what we try to do.
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: For example, we have different like already jumping to the fact that, yes, I'm a creator for object.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: Sometimes we do collaborations with such type of galleries, but also sometimes it's nice to do a show in a gallery that has a more traditional background and that they are going to install the work for you and then that we can decide, okay, which screen you're going to use, what's the size of the screen and and you know what, what's each ambience of the gallery, how it's going to look like, and then you have more control.
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: Also, it's a lot more work, so we cannot do that every time either, because it's just a lot of work and a lot of preparation for that.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: But we also saw, I guess, more conventional traditional art venues also wanting to display.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: So there was two sorts of things happening dedicated spaces and those that were adapting to be able to exhibit them at the same time, and it sounds like there are sort of pros and cons to both existing in terms of, you know, the wow factor versus the immersion of a new art medium of sorts being consumed in more traditional environments.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: Do you think there's been enough learning from both sides to kind of find a happy middle ground and make sure that we're still doing great justice to the work that we're actually trying to portray?
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: I think what is really truly amazing about NFTs is that they can be shown in many different situations, and those two are just two examples.
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: There are so many other examples.
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: So, for example, artcrush, that has been inhabiting all these screens you know this publicity screens that are in many of the big cities and specifically Artcrush, it's a company that is based in Belgium, so I'm based in Belgium too, and so I see those screens everywhere.
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: I go actually any town in Belgium and I see NFTs, and I almost crash my car every time because, oh, it's my friend, I want to take a picture, and I have also created for them, and it was great because I created only Belgian artists, and so it was fun because they could actually see the works you know like.
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: And, for example, in the main train station is impressive, because it's like I don't know how many more than 50 screens in the main train station showing NFTs.
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: So this is one way, and then there is sometimes like large LED panels, like huge totems, or even like on the whole facade of a building, and we have that in Sao Paulo, for example, and we have that, I think, for sure, in Japan and in other cities.
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: So it's also a great way to show digital art in the urban fabric.
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so there's so many different ways to present NFTs, and so this is what I love about it it's just very flexible.
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: Also like LED panels, new York, for example.
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: In Japan, they were taking this I don't know maybe 12 meters panels and putting in one neighborhood, and they had one month show with Emilio JP.
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: So it's also a way of showing NFTs.
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: So I think what is interesting is to not limit yourself to one idea of how you have to do it, but it can be anywhere.
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: I actually advocate that every hotel in the world, instead of having, like, fixed paintings, they should have screens and rotate the art you know, so they can be much more interesting.
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: They don't need to commit to one piece of art for a decade.
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: You can show every week different pieces of art.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: We dove quite deep into basically the actual displaying of artwork.
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: But I want to take our conversation back a few steps and I want to start at the beginning of your journey, which is, you know, how did you come to discover Tezos and what was your journey into where you are now?
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: you are now.
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: So let's say that, in 2008,.
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: So, just going back a bit more, I started.
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think when we look at all the artists who are successful in the Web3 space, they kind of have some type of experience with the online community.
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: So, either like Giphy or DeviantArt or I'm sorry, it's the door or Tumblr, a lot, a lot of the artists come from Tumblr.
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: So do you want me to start?
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: I don't know, but anyway.
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: So all of these artists, they have some type of experience with the online community.
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: And in 2008, I had an experience of my own with a community that kind of didn't last very long Art Review, which is this contemporary art magazine.
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: They started a social network, a social app before Facebook or just before Facebook, and I started a video art group there that became very kind of popular and in this video art group, we started creating a collaborative project that I initiated and that it just took.
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: It evolved during many, many years, so from 2008 to 2020.
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: And it evolved hundreds of artists from all over the world and we were doing like collaborative videos and showing literally in all types of spaces, so from very like independent spaces, underground spaces, to commercial galleries and museums, me as, and that's when I started to create, because then the spaces would see this project that I had put together and they will go like, okay, so love you to program and to create a video program for my festival, for my museum, whatever.
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: So that's in 2008,.
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: Then I started to create as well, but it was always kind of a fun project or next to my own art practice, but I think that, I think, kind of prepared me to Web3.
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: And I it took me actually some a couple of years to understand that.
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: That that's where that's why it was, when it was natural for me, in a way, to to engage with the community, although I was completely foreign to Twitter, for example.
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: So in 2021, like everybody else, we started hearing about NFTs and at first I thought, ok, that's a ridiculous idea, but I will look into it anyway.
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: And I started looking.
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: I mean, the first time, it was an assistant who told me oh, he was 18 years old and he told me about NFTs.
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: Oh, maybe that's how collectors will start to collect art.
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: And I was like no way a collector will collect JPEGs.
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: That will never happen.
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: He was like it's already happening.
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: So I started looking at it and, of course, the first thing I saw was like the theory unseen, I would Google and I remember seeing OpenSea for the first time.
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: I was like what is this?
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: Slightly understand a bit more, but I was still like puzzled by the prices.
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: And I was like you know, I know the art market and those prices are ridiculous, you know, for artists who have no CV, no historical of exhibitions whatsoever, and they were selling sometimes for 50,000.
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: Sounded for me very fake in a way, and I was concerned also with the ecological impact of the blockchain.
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: And at the time two friends started talking to me about Hiket Nung, one friend that actually never minted NFT, but he was interested about the whole thing.
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: He was the first one to tell me about it.
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: And then he's an artist from Belgium, and then the other one is Leston, who is a Brazilian artist who was very active on Hickenonk in the beginning and he was talking about it and I was like okay.
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: So one day I talked with him for 15 minutes on the phone and I remember that I was completely taken by just the idea that it was a community.
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: What he told me oh, this is a community that is very generous, that help each other that we are all artists are also collectors, and and that the amount of art and great art that is being created here is just, it's just crazy.
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: And so I that.
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: Then I was.
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: I was really interested First, so I decided to mint my own work, and the day I went to mint, I opened Hikidonk and it was off.
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: It was the day that it went off.
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: So I was like, ok, I thought I had understood everything, and now I don't know what's happening anymore, and so it took me still a few months again to just looking at what was happening and the whole confusion.
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: After the Rikenonka, rafael pulled the plug and I never met Rafael, by the way, although I'm Brazilian and so I was okay, this is weird.
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: But then I also saw the strength of the blockchain, seeing how right away, they created mirror websites, how all the NFTs were still there, and all of this.
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: I felt okay, this is very strong, this is very powerful.
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: And in January 2022, I saw the birth of Vorsum and I really fell in love with the website.
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: I thought it was beautiful and I had seen Object, and at first I was a bit overwhelmed by Object because there was a lot of information about, you know, it was a lot.
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: There was a lot of tools, a lot of things to do, and Versum was more simple and I understood it more easily and I wanted to start minting and then I couldn't, because Versum couldn't allow you to mint.
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: If you had a new wallet, you needed two weeks of collecting before or two weeks of having the wallet.
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: But what I did was for two weeks I just collected and it was very, very.
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: I really recommend everyone to start collecting, even if you're an artist, before you start minting, because you understand a lot of things and also you show the community that you are interested in it and not just trying to get something from it.
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: And I really fell in love, really very hard, with collecting and with the art that was there and I felt right away also very contaminated by it.
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: So when I started minting also I already kind of directed what I wanted to mint, because I had understood a bit what could work or not work in the space.
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: And yeah, for example, I can't mint my long format videos, which is my main type of work, because they're all like over 30 minutes and nobody has this type of attention span understand the strength of the draw and how immersed you become, because the people you encounter online very much become, you know, your go-to individuals, and so I think when people talk about like this, the addictive quality of when you start to collect NFTs and all the artists that you come to encounter and all the people whose works you want to support, that's something that's often lost on people.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: That click doesn't quite happen, but when you first started your collecting journey, you know what were the kinds of pieces that really drew you in, what were some of the artists that really captured your attention.
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: It's hard to say.
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: I mean, when I started Versum was doing an event, item for item, which is kind of object for object, I didn't even understand that was an event or what an event was I for object?
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: I didn't even understand that was an event or what an event was.
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: I didn't understand anything.
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: I just saw all this great art being sold for almost nothing.
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: I thought I didn't understand why exactly.
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: But so I collected a lot of things.
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: I was, I was drawn to at first.
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: Interactive pieces was something that really fascinated me, that you could mint interactive pieces, and I remember that I collected something, and my husband too, because we thought it was a romantic piece.
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: It's like a type of it's an interactive piece that, wherever you are in the world, is always going to show the same thing at the same time.
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: And we thought, okay, if you are like separated, because we travel a lot, always travel a lot and sometimes for work, and we are apart we could look at that piece and it would be like sinking us.
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: So I remember that piece was one of my first ones and I remember Sky Goodman was one of the first artists that I really fell in love with and I remember very clearly when I discovered certain collections.
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: That was my way of collecting in the beginning, like I found a collection of Nico Arbogast and the collection of Chris Coleman and those two collections were like my place to find treasure and slowly also those collectors started leading me and also the other artists in the art and started leading me to an object because I started to understand that object had a lot more pieces and that it was more easy to find older pieces because it had a lot of tools to search and also that I could as an artist I could.
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: After three months in it became my platform, my main platform.
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: I was still using a bit of Vursum and I used a bit and Theia was.
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: I kind of made one project in Theia, one series, but then on object, I could like separate all of my different projects in different collections and also it was easier for me to keep finding artists.
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: I now have almost 5,000 pieces, so for somebody who doesn't have a big bag of money, it just means that I collect basically every day for the past three years at least one piece a day.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: So, before we delve into your actual works, I want to look further into your role as a curator on objects.
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: How did that come to be?
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: You clearly started as a really avid collector, but how did you come into becoming a lot more active in the actual curation of the platform itself?
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so in July I mean in July 2022, there was this event that I don't know if you remember called One of One.
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: It was a community event.
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: I was one of the people behind the event and organizing that event, which really took us kind of two months of intense organization and et cetera.
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: It was a super intense experience and it was my first like community experience at large.
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: And Kablin and also Wise they are both from Object, wise is like the community person and Kablin was the object creator, the only object creator at the time.
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: They were part of this project, so we got to know each other really well and trust each other a lot and that was, and we still have, like a group discussion for that project.
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: We never done a lot.
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: The project was to do a one of one every year, but then we felt that actually our mission was done after the first time because making what we wanted was to advocate that Tezos was also a place to make unique pieces.
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: At the time everybody was just thinking about edition pieces or large edition pieces on Tezos and after that event I really feel that we had a.
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: We gave a strong push to.
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: A lot of artists were meeting unique pieces for the first time and it was super successful.
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: It had it raised a lot of money actually too.
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: So it was, and not only big artists were selling.
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: That was.
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: We were very, very happy with that event and so we never done a second one, but we kept this bond all of everybody who participated of that organization.
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: And beginning of 2023, kablin she had already invited me to like to create a front page like a guest curator and things like that, but then it became clear for her that she couldn't no longer be alone creating objects, also because she was chronically sick.
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: She had some health issues that she wanted.
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: Okay, I want to slow down and I want to bring somebody else to create with me.
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: So at first, when she invited me, then she introduced me to the team, who I had no idea who they were.
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: Like the founders, they're very discreet.
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: They still are, although I you know, we try to push them to be a bit more, yeah, less discreet, because they are very approachable, they're really nice, but they're just discreet and they and they and I really fell in love with the whole team.
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: Basically, they were yeah, they are amazing.
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, so they took me in.
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: At first, my idea was okay, I'm going to do part-time Kabli and she can do part-time too.
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: Together we mimic one person and I can continue my own practice as well, you know, as an artist, and that didn't really work very well, in the sense that I was basically, from the start, well, first of all, I fell in love with the job and I was working a lot, but you know, we have a lot of freedom and so, in a way, that's good and that's also dangerous, because you end up making work for yourself a lot.
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: I was just creating projects and making it my role bigger, but just because I was super excited, you know, to do things At the same time, it was the beginning of Object One and I kind of took that project under my wing and I was like OK, so there's Object, where we do the daily creation, which basically is a mini exhibition every day on the front page.
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: But also we were with Object One.
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: We were like doing actual exhibitions that were either just online, but still we are looking at every drop, every release as an exhibition.
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: We still do, and some of them became also physical.
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: So, and on top of all this, of course, when there is like events like I don't know, nfc, lisbon, or you know, when the events are in New York or in Valencia, or for all these events, we we were invited to to create something and then we had to, either through an open call or a thematic creation, and all of this is it's actually a lot of work.
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: And then I understood, okay, it's I have to dedicate my if I want to do this properly and also get compensated as such, because I was basically working a lot for a part-time job.
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: We kind of decided together okay, so it's a full-time job, let's face it.
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: Let's face it, this is that's going to become my whole life.
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: For now, at least you know, for a time, and in March 2023, so it's been no 2024, a bit more than a year I am, yeah, full-time and that was good because also last year we started making, also participating of art fairs and that's a huge, huge endeavor each time.
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: So you started off purely out of passion, and then it effectively snowballed into something with so much momentum that you ended up dedicating more and more and more time to it to create this full-time opportunity.
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: So how do you find, or how do you strike the balance between your role as a curator as well as your identity as an artist?
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: I haven't found the balance yet.
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: I respect the honesty.
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: I've been trying, that's what I've been saying since the beginning.
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: I have to find the balance.
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: I have to find the balance, and not only that, but the balance between this and everything else.
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: It's, you know, as you know, the nft space is a space that it's a global movement.
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: In my, you know, in my view, I look at it as a real global movement and and it translates into having meetings with people in japan, with people in la, and everything.
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: So it means that we, we are it, that we are.
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: It's a big commitment.
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's a big.
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: It's a lot of work, and a lot of the work is invisible as well.
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: So there's a lot of.
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: We talk with builders, with galleries, with curators, with artists, with collectors from all over the world all the time, and those conversations sometimes end up on becoming exhibitions or becoming certain events or becoming a project, and sometimes it doesn't happen anything, but still we are like, yeah, so it means that I work long hours, that sometimes, you know, I often work every day, sunday to Sunday, and so there's also the balance between all this and my family life.
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: Like, I have two children, two small children.
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: So it's, it's uh.
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: I travel a lot, also for the work, so all of this is kind of tough to find the balance.
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: And I had been.
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: I had never had a job in my life.
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: I was always a full-time artist, I could make my, I could live and survive as an artist for all this time, and so I'm not used either to not have this space for my art.
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: So basically, last year I really neglected a lot.
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: This year I'm trying to say yes to a few invitations and try to do my best to make the piece on time.
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: So, for example, annika Meyer she invited me to participate of the second guest and I really love Annika as a creator, I really admire her a lot, and she had this really incredible cyber feminist exhibition going on at the HEC Basel and I really wanted to be part.
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: So when she invited me, I said yes, and then I thought I could fit an older project.
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: But actually she was pushing me to make a new one and I was like I don't have the time, but I, you know, I did it, I survived, I did it and I we released it on object as well and it and I was very happy, it's um, it was a very nice piece.
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: So it was like a couple months ago, and now she invited me to participate of another second guest exhibition in Germany and basically I have a week to finish the piece and so, yeah, so, so it's.
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: I'm just so you know you're no stranger to pressure and like you're no stranger to basically embracing the pressure cooker that you know is coming and still generating something for it.
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: And I think I mean I think, you know, trying to find the balance in your work and your life isn't unique to just this realm.
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: I think everyone can sort of connect with that feeling.
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: But I think what's also interesting is just that, you know, within this space we often see the end result without really fully appreciating just how much preparation work goes into that to begin with.
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: That's entirely invisible to us.
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: We just see, you know, sort of the pieces that are displayed at the very end and that lasts like one percent of the process.
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: But it sounds like you're still incredibly active in terms of, you know, just pushing yourself to still pursue your own work while still supporting the works of others, especially as as it goes into worldwide exhibitions.
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: So what is the thing that you're really excited to work on next, or what's coming up on the horizon that is going to challenge you but you're sort of fully leaning into?
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: The first thing that I think is coming up that is quite.
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's always a challenge is the Digital Art Mile.
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: You know the art fair in Basel that Tezos is a big sponsor, by the way, and it's a big partner.
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: We object is going to have two big projects there.
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: One big project that is the paint box, which I'm not involved in the creation, but still it's something that objects are going to support a lot because it's going to have the sales on object.
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: But so we have also to do a lot of the connections with collectors and promote this project the best we can.
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: But then we also are going to have a booth that we are creating, and I still haven't announced who is the artist, but I'm creating one artist that is a very big OG in the space but she hasn't minted an object on Tezos for some time.
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: So it's going to be very special and I've been working already for a couple of months in this project and it's going to be a solo show, but also I'm preparing with Annika Meyer a group show.
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: So it's all of this going to be in Basel in June.
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: But we are really like getting ready for that and, yeah, I think that's the biggest thing that we're getting ready to, but there's many other events in FC Lisbon that we are also getting ready to.
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: But there's many other events nfc lisbon that we are also getting ready and other events that are more for for the second part of the year that we are still, you know, and we are preparing an exhibition in japan.
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: We're preparing an exhibition in berlin in like, in collaboration with certain galleries that that is more the case, what I was talking about before, like galleries that understand digital media really well and they have a nice space, but that every exhibition we prepare together and they make something special and specific to that exhibition.
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: It's not like a fixed space.
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: So one of them is Matt Gallery in Berlin and the other one is New Art in Japan, in Tokyo, and they've been, we've collaborated with them in the past and they're really great, great creators.
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: So we're going to have all this coming up later in the year, but we've been preparing for ready for a long time and just weekly, since the beginning of the year, we've been having like releases on object one and that has been very exciting and also, uh, a bit overwhelming.
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: But it's again my fault, I, I just I was already like since last year talking with a lot of artists to to make, uh, their their show on object one, and then suddenly I realized, okay, we're gonna have one show a week and you know, let's try that, because before we were like in a slower pace and so we've been like, since beginning of the year we've done like, uh, I don't know so many, I know you, yuri and rg and anna, malina and and I don't know, yeah, demon, ego and Eagle and Mac Michael Picasso last week, and this week we are going to have Little Cakes and next week we're going to have a big group show with a lot of artists created by Retro Money and Limbo, and it's about all artists are engaging with game art in a way, so like they're taking one decade of game art and engaging with that.
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: So it's super exciting.
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: I'm very excited for this drop which is next week, but all of those shows they're online, but still they take a lot of our energy and we try to, you know, make interviews with the artists or our creatory statements, but it's like every week.
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: I mean it sounds like because Object was always one of the sort of OG platforms that existed on Tezos.
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: It was one of the first places that art discovery was was the most intensive.
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: But it feels like, you know, we've had the ups and downs in the markets and then now we've hit 2025.
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: And it seems to feel like the momentum is just picking up and picking up and picking up.
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: And while you're saying you know there's a lot of work to be done and a lot of events are coming up on the horizon, it very much feels like Object is kind of having another big moment in the sun in terms of capturing all of this energy, capturing all this momentum and making the most of it, you know, as a means of supporting all of the artists that have minted on this platform.
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: Would you agree?
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree, I think there's, object is, it's, it's a great structure, both for for artists and for and for collectors and for creators.
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: I mean that's the idea to create this infrastructure, that it's easy to use and it highlights the art and it tries to push discoverability.
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: And we also try to combine this idea that humans are behind this daily creation.
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: But also we have now this tool called this little feature, called Creative for you, which is actually an AI that is analyzing your own activities on object and suggesting new pieces.
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: So we are working on all these different tools.
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: So I think it's just for me, what I see is that the space is made of trends and all this like hypes, but object is something that is stable and that is there, and artists they starting to or they already understood that a long time ago.
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: But some are starting to understand that even if they go to try some new trend, they end up coming back to object, and I love that.
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: I think that's super great to see, because we don't feel anxious when, oh, there's this new platform and it's attracting everybody, we just go like give it two months, you know people are going to try and they're going to come back, and it happens every single time, and so what we're really trying to do and doing and that's the mission is to build for the long term, and that's the vision that I really share with the founders and that's why I love working there is because they don't follow every single hype.
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: We might look at it, we might try to understand is there some lesson there to learn?
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: Is there something that some great idea that we can integrate?
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: But we just keep doing our thing and just building like block by block, and I think you know it's everybody sees that, so it ends up being the place to go, and this year I've been feeling a lot of also because there was a lot of platforms that went, you know, that either disappeared or that are pivoting way too much and everybody's kind of lost.
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: I've been seeing a lot of new artists coming, you know, artists who are more like in the Ethereum or in the Solana ecosystem, and they end up feeling a bit lost.
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: And a lot of the Tezos artists, or artists who are more active on Tezos, they go like why don't you try Object?
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: And so we see more and more of those coming, and so we try to embrace them, we try to help them also understand how to you know how to position themselves in the community, and this is yeah.
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: So that's what we are doing, and also the other part of the job, which is very big and that's very strong this year, is that we are going to make a lot of improvements to the website itself, to the platform itself, and so we are, like in the background, working since last year very strongly to think of where we want to go, what we want to change, of where we want to go, what we want to change and what we want to keep, what is the soul of it that we need to keep and where there's a space for improvement, especially thinking of yes, it's very easy to use, yes, it's probably the nicest platform to use and I know because I have minted in many other platforms but there's room to improve, especially in terms of if you are a person coming from Web2 that has no idea what anything is For these people, it's still hard.
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: You know just the fact that you need to open a wallet and then all these like steps to to to understand what a wallet is, how to put Tezos inside the wallet.
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: So we are trying to think of how to make all of this easier, and so this is a big part of of the job for all of us inside Object, not only me, of course.
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: It's as a heavy user and also because I'm very much in touch with the whole community.
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: I also know what you know, the feedback of what people are feeling, that they miss, and what they really love and what they think we could improve.
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: I think it's wonderful to come across a business that's so fixed on not only building a foundation but very much doing this for the long game and kind of keeping an open ear about how they need to evolve without necessarily straying too far from the core principles of their mission, which is why I think you know Object has been so relevant ever since the first wave of the NFT boom even began.
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: I think it's wonderful to see, and it's also amazing to sort of see, the diversity of voices that have been in the background, not only curating but seeking out partnerships, minting works, helping the discovery of artists or even the onboarding process.
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: I think it creates that enriching atmosphere that allows people to be creative, because you take away a lot of the headache of actually trying to get involved in the first place.
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: Kika, this has been a fantastic conversation in terms of not only understanding you know sort of the way you operate as a curator, but also just how much work is going into making sure Object sort of stays the test of time and continues to support artists, not only just in Tezos, but also, you know, newcomers that are coming into the community and also you know traditional art institutions who are looking to to continue to stay involved with the artists that are heavily involved in this space.
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: So you know, thank you so much for for sharing your perspective, and I wish we had a the opportunity for a longer conversation so we could have one just dedicated to your actual works, not just the ways in which you support others.
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: But you know, perhaps a future date thank you so much.
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: It's been.
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: It's been great, marissa, thank you.