In 2017, Rhea Myers wrote an essay called “Tokenization and its Discontents” about the relatively new use of cryptographic tokens to make digital artworks rare and collectible. To contextualize this phenomenon within art history, she cites McKenzie Wark’s essay “My Collectible Ass,” which discusses how the contemporary art market contrives to sell previously unsellable ephemera. Myers came to the topic through her own art; she made some of the earliest works on the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains, having recognized them as new mediums for exploring the ideas of Art + Language, Lawrence Weiner, and other conceptual artists she admired. Wark’s writing on art and property stems from her academic research and theoretical work, in which she extends and builds on Marxist thought to understand the power dynamics of the information age. In a metaphorical sense, Myers and Wark have been engaged in an intellectual conversation for some time. But they recently had their first face-to-face dialogue in a meeting organized by Outland. The two discussed art’s role in inventing new forms of property and ownership, as well as the of experience of making art while transitioning, and the contributions of other trans women to the field of art and technology.
