www.currencyofprotest.com

In the Spring of 2022, I began using nascent Generative AI tools to create 'Currency of Protest.'  It was an attempt to see beyond the churning protest movements of recent years to what might grow from the future soil of these efforts, as the extremes of both the left and right collapsed into each other in a longing for total revolution. 

My exploration culminated that year, in the creation of physical banknotes, printed on seed paper and distributed for free at the 'Paint The Protest' show in New York, curated by Nancy Spector.  This currency, when planted in soil, holds the capacity to bloom into wildflowers.  This concept echoes a well-known phrase in global protests, "They tried to bury us; they didn’t know we were seeds."  During difficult times, of seemingly endless protest, the metaphor of seeds offers hope, suggesting that from the debris of conflict, beauty can emerge, symbolizing literal growth from even the ashes of seemingly failed movements.

Now, in the digital realm, the minting of this currency embeds it within the contentious history of tokens themselves — instruments that have oscillated between oppression and liberation.  This incarnation extends the work's dialogue, seeding the digital landscape with the latent potential for growth and revolution, echoing the resistance and resilience of our messy humanity across the blockchain.  The act of minting this currency interrogates the financialization of dissent, leveraging the speculative nature of the market to amplify the project's impact and distribution, and raising questions about the commodification of activism, inviting us to reconsider what we value.  How do we engage with the currencies of our convictions in this digital age?

At its heart, this currency of protest is also a protest of currency, forming an ouroboros of resistance and renewal that has evolved through decades, centuries, even millennia of civil unrest.  We continuously burn and mint anew — these symbols of defiance and control in a world perpetually reborn from the ashes of what was, into what could be.   

https://www.artpapers.org/some-questions-surrounding-robots-and-rivers/

https://brooklynrail.org/2022/11/art-technology/Art-Protest-and-Plural-Perspectives/