Other Life Podcast: Bataille, NFTs and Crypto-Sovereignty

First notes on the psychodynamics of web3

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I recently recorded this podcast for Justin Murphy’s Other Life, where we discussed everything from Accursed Share to the revolutionary implications of web3; GameStop and why markets are not on the spectrum of the rational, but the sentimental; the dislocation of state and capital as the new separation of state and church; why character matters; how DAOs will foster the political diversity our institutions can’t; the imminent maturation from scarcity to quality in NFT-land, and how we can expect “the world” not to embrace us when they find out what we got up to while they mismanaged Covid.

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Esprit de l’escalier: One question I wish I had answered more pithily on this podcast is what the tonal difference is between the NFT space and ‘crypto’; the former is High Romantic, the latter High Modern.

I’ll be expanding on this and other points shortly. Needless to say, immersion in the space has rapidly refined many of my opinions, and I am starting to draw connections between web3 and some of my earliest work on Covidian aesthetics, including my August 2020 lecture on Hyperbaroque.

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Wyndham Lewis. Praxitella. 1921. Oil on canvas. 142.2 x 101.6 cm. Leeds Art Gallery.