LAS partners with Black Swan DAO initiative
Can the traditional templates of the art world be challenged?
LAS partners with the Black Swan initiative as a platform that engages the arts and its community through collaborative practices. The partnership will enable the development of digital toolkits through an app that strives to put forth new ways of working together.
Black Swan is a Berlin-based collective pursuing horizontal and decentralized approaches to the traditional art world templates for art making. Through peer support, artist-led funding and community organizing, they place resources into the hands of the users rather than the art institutions.
Black Swan is developing digital toolkits for artists through a methodology that puts play at the centre. Existing communities of creative practitioners are invited to test and experiment with forms of interaction, modes of organization, and sustainable economic models in role-playing events, working groups, and hackathons. Through play, Black Swan is building an open-source and interoperable protocol for artistic communes, which will enable collaborative institutional forms and allow for a redefinition of what art can be. Launching in 2022, the Black Swan DAO aims to become a translocal and mutable source for distributing resources and value differently across interdependent art worlds.
Open Call
Black Swan: The Communes
KW Berlin
27 - 28 August 2021
The first iteration of the Black Swan DAO initiative takes the form of a hackathon at Berlin’s KW on 27-28 August.
Join Black Swan at KW for the game of the Communes. 32 participants will put the distribution of Real Art Resources to the test by role-playing economic models and organizational forms in a 36-hour hackathon. Successful applicants will be assigned to one of four communes: Clan, Guild, Cult and Venture. Each commune is based on a different mode of exchange, decision-making process, and organizational structure. Within their commune, participants must negotiate, trade, and build on the Real Art Resources provided to them by their Silent Stakeholders.
The Real Art Resources include: microgrants for artistic research & development, exhibition space and technical support, residency space outside of Berlin for up to 12 people, studio and rehearsal space, mentorship from experts on the day of the hackathon, features on digital events and exhibition platforms, desk space for 3 months, a digital residency, liquidity for NFT minting, and an NFT exhibition and sale.
The Real Art Resources for Black Swan: The Communes would not be possible without its Silent Stakeholders: LAS, 221A, Callie’s, Curve Labs, Ed Fornieles Studio, Folia, Jaya Klara Brekke, Benjamin Bratton, Kei Kreutler, Kunstverein München, New Models, Ben Vickers, Ruth Catlow, Trust, and KW Institute for Contemporary Art.
Black Swan
Established in 2018, Black Swan works towards a utopian and conspiratorial edge in thinking about the practice of art, daring to see an alternative to current institutional frameworks. By deploying advanced technologies and organizational forms Black Swan pursues interdependent and interoperable art worlds held together by radical friendship and sustainable economics. Black Swan is currently maintained by Laura Lotti, Penny Rafferty, Calum Bowden, and Leith Benkhedda.
Black Swan has previously worked with or presented at: MoneyLab Berlin, the Serpentine Galleries, Goethe Institut London, Furtherfield Gallery, AND Festival 2021, Trust Berlin, Berlin Art Week and KW.