2027
With his cod glitch, digital Banksy aesthetic, frequent nods to state surveillance and the philosophy of CC0 amid the aphorisms, Patrick Amadon is easy to google, interviewed widely, a frequent speaker on public panels, rare traits in the mostly anonymous worlds of both web3 and street art.
With a scant website and minimal instagram reach, his well intentioned “voice of the movement” style twitter persona is regularly shared with over a hundred thousand followers.
In such a densely peopled marketplace, where so many bare their souls online, hawk and shill their art everyday, how do artists with an output as innocuous and minimal as Amadon’s portend to speak for all of us?
Most well known for his widely pr’ed Art Basel piece about Chinese state censorship, and sensing which way the wind was blowing during Sotheby’s “Natively Digital: Glitch-ism” debacle, the last of Amadon’s 18 objkts was minted in August 2021.
These aren’t large numbers of artworks, but they feel instructive in this context. A characteristically gnomic and - you’d have to assume - self serving tweet about things likely going belly up for tezos by 2027, has really got things stirred up this year, with the use of the arbitrary year #2027 now creating its own memes, shit posts and hot takes.
In the context of an artist who doesn’t seem to use the tezos blockchain much, you could easily see this prophetic vision as less insightful than opportunistic.
As with so many of the big names in crypto art, its tricky to know wether its marketing, talent, or representation - in its traditional usage of an agent employed to represent a client’s publicity, press releases and promotional interests, not the modern incarnation of representation as a diverse and fairer playing field - that propels an artist like Amadon to such giddy heights of reach and influence.
As much as I keep trying to leave web3, maybe to start an art studio of my own, or at least focus on some deeper and better work, its this type of office gossip, personality cult churn that both repels and attracts me.
I’ve no idea who this guy is or any real interest in his work as collector or peer, so why do I care so much?
Social media, its arcs of heroes and villains, metrics of clout and invisibility, keeps me back for one last drip. I am not part of this person’s community, yet through my own vanity, ego, my perceived lack of either success or clout, I find myself competing with him, fuming angrily, comparing my own numbers and lack of a collector base, instead of putting my energies somewhere important.
As much as I keep trying to leave the twitter binfire, its siren song calls to me; a weaponised harnessing of base animal competitiveness and propensity for easy distraction, instead of tricky deep work.
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My big plans for this year ahead were to see a therapist, help unpick some lingering family trauma, and focus on being a better person and artist. Ideally I would love to find a method in which my daily work life can help to balance or even support my inner monologue.
Instead I’m fixating on some navel gazing twitter drama from a glitch artist I couldn’t pick out of a line up.
I hesitate to call it the X Factor, but whatever the hell it is, Elon Musk will make keyboard warriors of us yet …
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Post script: Amadon’s Sequence series was minted shortly after on Solana, raising around $30,000 in primary sales.