adrift

7.356 degrees

Proxima

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hollow

de|growth:generations

What is a utopia? By definition, a perfect place that does not exist. As such, imagining a utopian space always starts with planning the desirable. The design of utopian spaces both preempts and formats that desirability for the people who will inhabit them. In reborn, generative artist Jacek Markusiewicz invites us to mint and occupy our own utopia while pondering a question: what’s at stake in these intentions?

In 1535, Rabelais published his idea of utopia, in a literary work that has since become an intellectual beacon: the Abbey of Thélème. Again, it starts with a plan. Its inhabitants revel in a space that suggests their social lives will be perfect, harmonious, and devoid of violence. Then in 1840, Professor Charles Lenormant produced his take on Thélème (seen below) in another shot at perfection. 

Abbey de Thélème, Charles Lenormant (1840)

Jacek's reborn pushes this exploration even further: his plans are not that of elite castles but entire cities. Perfect political entities, absolute units forming an impossible mesh in an imperfect world.

Alas, we are quickly reminded that such representations are double-edged. This perfect city is also an ideal prison. Its walls and moats protect you from the outside and prevent your escape. Put on your Foucaldian lenses and what you see is a pitiless panopticon — a society that may easily crumble under its calls to virtue. Such calls apply to all, are enforced by all, and yet do not yield a speck of freedom to anyone.

reborn is fertile because it forces us to face our hubris. It takes us from our blurred frustration with an imperfect world and, through its perfect plans, puts us in front of our contradictions. It makes us realize we can have a plan for an ideal world — and absolutely no idea what to do with it.

On reborn

reborn

Medieval Europe’s cathedrals were the quintessential representations of the Catholic Church’s temporal wealth and power. They’re monuments to centralization, representing the sum of many years of human effort and creativity for entire cities and regions. Today, some exist unchanged from their medieval form. In contrast, others cease to exist — torn down amidst the anti-clericalism during the Reign of Terror, destroyed in the World Wars, or abandoned to their fate.

In unbuilt, generative artist Jacek Markusiewicz applies the rules of sacral architecture to imagine 256 cathedrals that exist on the blockchain. Unlike their medieval counterparts, they are immutable - their stone cannot be worn away by time and age, their foundations cannot be shaken, and their walls cannot crumble…

In the same breath, their pews will never be worn to a polished sheen, their stained glass will never catch the morning light or inspire the faithful, and their halls will never be a shelter in a storm. 

Today, we live in another period of high centralization — the first quarter of the 21st century has seen the continued consolidation of political, military, economic, and cultural power in the hands of the few. Each unbuilt serves to remind the viewer of where we have been as a human society, the paths not taken, and the seductive power of extreme centralization.

The decentralization that is a hallmark of blockchain technology, and the crypto-economic systems they enable, is a harbinger of societal change. There’s a real chance we stand on the precipice of another renaissance — one brought on by crypto. 

As the refrain goes, “we are early.” We should take heart that humanity has been here before and that periods where the pendulum swings towards decentralization, while chaotic, give rise to societies where human creativity can truly flourish.

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