Tokenised kitsch: OpenSea’s top 50 NFT collections and MoMA’s first two NFTs

Abstract

Blockchain-tokenised media is kitsch. We examined OpenSea’s top 50 collections of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) as well as the first two NFTs acquired by New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). We concomitantly developed two concepts: oppositional kitsch, and historically informed kitsch. OpenSea’s profile picture collections exemplify oppositional kitsch: they are described by their creators as anti-normal, degenerate or animalistic. CryptoPunks and Bored Apes are the best-known examples. Historically informed kitsch is, by contrast, pleasant and reassuring. MoMA’s first two NFTs exemplify historically informed kitsch: they are produced by artificial intelligence (AI) models that rely on historical data. For Unsupervised – Machine Hallucinations – MoMA , Refik Anadol trained an AI model with images from MoMA’s GitHub archive. The Unsupervised NFTs are mementos of individuals’ encounters with the work at MoMA. For 3FACE , Ian Cheng created an AI model that draws on blockchain transaction histories. The AI model generates tokenised portraits of individuals based on their transactions. Oppositional kitsch and historically informed kitsch both valorise the individual consumer. OpenSea’s oppositional kitsch lets consumers identify with cartoon figures like CryptoPunks and Bored Apes that are marketed as avatars (alter-egos) and profile pictures. MoMA’s historically informed kitsch sells mementos of individuals’ experiences and portraits that are based on individuals’ consumption choices. Our conception of blockchain-tokenised media as kitsch is primarily informed by the philosophers Alain Badiou and Thorsten Botz-Bornstein as well as the media theorist Jean Baudrillard. These three thinkers treat kitsch as a category of sophistic, liberal-cum-libertarian culture.