Blockchain culture and digital image precariousness. Questioning NFTs as an art preservation strategy

Abstract

In the last decades, the digital image has moved between the thin line that separates its exponential multiplication and its continuous danger of invisibility and loss. Despite the fact of being constantly used on the internet or social network interactions, the difficulties in filtering, gathering, authenticating and preserving new media images have led them to be a type of art barely collected by contemporary art museums. Even more, the huge amount of material produced not only by artists or creatives but also by citizens makes it impossible for cultural institutions to tackle the task of preserving a significant percentage of it. Museums seem to be unable to distinguish what might be considered art or heritage among the massive amount of images that fed popular culture. Nevertheless, the irruption of blockchain culture has focused on the importance of digital images as an identity, social and economic asset. NFTs seem to attempt to remedy the weaknesses of the digital image by associating it with a verifiable and supposedly incorruptible contract. This study tries to analyse the precariousness of the digital image as a key element in the emergence and sudden rise and fall of the so-called “crypto-art”. To this end, the idea of the “poor image” outlined by Steyerl is followed. The aim is to clarify whether the digital images associated with blockchain transactions solve the problematic obsolescent and unstable condition of the works, or if, on the contrary, these are used as fuel for a new ultra-liberal financial machine being quickly consumed and discarded.