Stewarding the Potential of NFTs—
A dialogue with artists Ian Cheng and Kevin Heisner and artistic directors Christopher Y. Lew and Masako Shiba

ONLINE ZOOM PROGRAM

Web 3 affords a range of possibilities, opening an overwhelming number of options to pursue. We are at a moment in which artists, artistic directors, curators, and community organizers are looking at NFTs and DAO communities as alternative possibilities for support, financing projects, and building creative worlds, possible futures, and gathering and giving back to community.

The field is open for interpretation and the stewarding of this potential is at a major juncture in which we can and should be critical and discussing what potential benefits and pitfalls these opportunities may afford our communities’ and artists’ agency. Two major artistic directors within the field will be in discussion with two artists they are working closely with for this public dialogue in relation to how artists and their visions might be supported in turn in their pursuits to create within Web 3.

The panel will feature artists Kevin Heisner and Ian Cheng with Co-founder of ONBD LLC, J-Collabo Executive Director and Chief Artistic Director for Spacetainment PTE Masako Shiba and Christopher Y. Lew, the Chief Artistic Director at Horizon Art Foundation and Outland Art, with moderator Alexandra Chang, Rutgers University-Newark.

BIOS

SPEAKERS:

Ian Cheng

Since 2012, artist Ian Cheng has produced a series of simulations exploring an agent’s capacity to deal with an ever-changing environment. These works culminated in the Emissaries trilogy, which introduced a narrative agent whose motivation to enact a story was set into conflict with the open-ended chaos of the simulation. Recently, he has developed BOB (Bag of Beliefs), an AI creature whose personality, body, and life story evolve across exhibitions, what Cheng calls “art with a nervous system.” Currently Cheng is developing Life After BOB, a real-time anime miniseries.

Cheng has exhibited widely including solo presentations at MoMA PS1; Serpentine Galleries; The Shed; Leeum Museum of Art; LUMA Foundation; Carnegie Museum of Art; De Young Museum; Sharjah Biennial; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo; Julia Stoschek Collection; and group presentations at Venice Biennale; Museum of Modern Art; M Plus; MoCA LA; Moderna Museet; Whitney Museum of American Art; Hirshhorn Museum; Tate Modern; Louisiana Museum; Fondation Louis Vuitton.

Kevin Heisner is a multi-disciplinary artist. Since graduating from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago as an Art & Technology major in the 80s, he has maintained a long-standing interest in merging art, technology, through his varying creation methods of mixed media paintings or AR activated works connecting exterior spaces to the metaverse. Themes of singularity, human conditions, dimensions, the conscious/subconscious, have been a dominant focus of his practice, even in his street works under his pseudo name of Shlumper. He is based in Chicago and New York, but his works in private collections and public installations are shown globally.
Spirit Snacks website; https://spiritsnacks.io
Greenpointers article; How Artist Kevin Heisner's Work Combines the Digital and the Physical World - Greenpointers

Christopher Y. Lew is Chief Artistic Director at Horizon Art Foundation and Outland Art. He has over fifteen years of experience working at American museums and arts nonprofits. He is a former curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art where he oversaw the emerging artist program and was co-curator of the 2017 Whitney Biennial. At the Whitney, he was co-curator of Salman Toor: How Will I Know (2020) and also organized Pope.L: Choir (2019), Kevin Beasley: A view of a landscape (2018), and mounted the first US solo exhibitions for Sophia Al-Maria, Rachel Rose, and Jared Madere. Prior to joining the Whitney, he was assistant curator at MoMA PS1 and organized numerous exhibitions there including solo shows with Nancy Grossman, Clifford Owens, GCC, and Gavin Kenyon, as well as the group exhibitions New Pictures of Common Objects (2012–2013) and Tastemakers Choice (2014). Lew has contributed to several publications including Art AsiaPacific, Art Journal, Bomb, Huffington Post, and Mousse.

Masako Shiba has been in art organizations in New York for close to two decades, including Sotheby's auction house, Japan Society Gallery, Asia Society Museum, and Asian Cultural Council where she was inaugural director for ACC Japan Foundation. Since the pandemic, she has co-founded ONBD LLC, an NFT curatorial brand & residency, has been appointed inaugural Executive Director of a Brooklyn based Japanese cultural non-profit institution J-Collabo, and is US representative and Chief Artistic Director for Spacetainment PTE. LTD working on art satellites connecting the metaverse to physical space. She also is on the advisory board for HH Dalai Lama official biography art project.
ONBD website; www.onbd.art

MODERATOR:

Alexandra Chang is Associate Professor of Practice in the Art History program of the Department of Arts, Culture and Media, conducting research and teaching on Eco Art, Global Asias Art and Visual Cultures, Decolonizing Practices, Digital Humanities and Web3. She is also Associate Director of the American Studies Program and Interim Associate Director of the Price Institute. She is working with NJ community partners and the Rutgers community to develop The Healing Garden at the Price Institute at RU-N. She is also organizing the Decolonizing Curatorial and Museum Studies and Public Humanities, which includes a network of faculty across the campus and international colleagues.

Stewarding the Potential of NFTs is a program made possible with the collaboration and generosity of the speakers and Department of Art, Culture and Media’s Art History program course at Rutgers University-Newark Decolonizing Practices: From Venice Biennale to NFTs and The Rutgers Global Virtual Exchange Course Development Grant and Rutgers University-Newark Chancellor’s Impact Seed Grant for the Decolonizing Curatorial and Museum Studies and Public Humanities Project.