Arshake is proud to host on its Banner ZANNI (Ẓ) – Carlo Zanni’s cryptocurrency work which also goes by the artist’s name. Everything revolving around the world Zanni has depicted since the end of the 1990s now merges into one, engulfed by the currency and the fluid economy his works inhabit – that of Ethereum, Bitcoin’s rival[1]. As a result, the author has also become one with this world.
Attention to the economic aspects and the way these provide an outline of the landscape has long been present in Zanni’s creative outlook. In 2004, Ebay Landscape created a Japanese-styled panorama. The data extrapolated from the Ebay stock exchange together with information taken from CNN.com transformed some of the work’s features according to these data trends. Attention to the economy was also at the background of works focused on different aspects of the electronic landscape, in its relationship with individual and collective identities. We-works contained in suite-case – sculptures (series of Altar Boy, 2003-2004) as well as video-books (ViBo series, 2014) have extended ephemeral works to two opposite economic perspectives.
With ZANNI (Ẓ) the interface that separates the gaze from the depicted landscape can no longer be found along the border between these two worlds. The artist immerses himself in the virtual currency and disappears in the liquid economy, thus becoming one with this landscape. When the price is the artwork, the artist becomes the currency unit. Then the rats come and eat everything. To view the artist’s work we must, as a result, buy it and to buy it we must enter the blockchain system, a decentralised and ‘asymmetric’ structure that perfectly fits the description philosopher Timothy Morton gives of the age we are entering. The Arshake banner looks out towards an economic system that gives life and form to ZANNI (Ẓ). Through the banner this system can also be monitored in real time. If we really want to look at the work we must then open a virtual wallet, enter the system and buy its currency. The disappearance of a space in between and of a lookout point from which to observe and contemplate the work is what most markedly defines the profile of the current landscape.
[1] Cryptocurrency is a global payment system created in 2009 by an anonymous inventor, known as Satoshi Nakamoto who developed the idea which he shared on the Internet at the end of 2008.
