SuperRare Sessions

This week, Ben, Luke and Oli battle through Twitter glitches to bring an exciting conversation.

In its earliest years, photography was a medium that brought people wonder and awe for its ability to recreate reality. It was the inception of photography that allowed painters to explore more abstract aesthetics, and over the last century it has become not just a means of documenting the world, but of expressing creativity. 

Recently, SuperRare partnered with Real Vision to bring to life a short documentary about three photographers at the cutting edge of the medium, all building surrealist visions of the world and demonstrating, through their distinct individual styles, that surrealism isn’t just one thing.

Joining us today are Nico, senior executive producer at Real Vision and lens-based artist Ryan Koopmans.

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This week, Ben, Luke, Oli and Linda discuss a topic they'd prefer not to have.

Unfortunately, scams seem to bean integral part of the experience in web3. It’s better to know what they are, how to spot them, and how to protect yourself. Since the beginning of June we have received at least 5 reports of the same case of a highly sophisticated scam that specifically targets artists who are on SuperRare.

More from Luke on Twitter here.

We discuss with Three SuperRare artists, Pol Ballonga, Ian Spriggs, and Hex6c, who have shared their experiences on Twitter.

Pol's Tweet

Ian's Tweet

Hex6c's Tweet

Art That Fucks

Sandstorm.RAD by chepertom

Cold Arms by Ina Vare

Fractured Planet by Dehiscence

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This week Ben & Luke tried something a little different, intentionally using a somewhat clickbait-y title for the Session - because, well, we were looking to get people riled up.

After a little intro we invited everyone and anyone in the audience to request to speak and come up to chat, facilitating a vigorous discussion about the subject matter and comparing traditional art world pricing with post-bull market NFT art.

Additional Reading: Art Basel Report

Art That Fucks:

Unconventional Beauty - Phoenix by dreamingdigitally

anti by Kesean

Anthurium Fin by lykai

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Episode 20:

This week on SuperRare sessions, Ben and Oli are joined by the artist ClownVamp to speak about his new show, “Chester Charles: The Lost Grand Master,” which opens tonight, online and in New York. Following the life and career of a fictional gay Impressionist painter, ClownVamp has used AI to build something we otherwise would maybe never get to know or see. Alongside him, we have Chris from Transient Labs, which is powering the show.

Read Oli's article/interview with ClownVamp here.

Art that fucks:

naivete. by mew.

Master of reality by Mr Shapeless

Aquarium by Stephan Vasement

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In this episode of SuperRare Sessions, Luke, Oli and Ben meet with two of the more industrious and dapper JPEG peddlers in the web3 ecosystem, SuperRare Labs CEO and co-founder, John Crain, and SuperRare Labs CPO and co-founder, Jonathan Perkins.

We delve into the detail of $RARE staking - a proposal that has bee made to the SuperRare DAO and what it means for artist discovery.

During the conversation, we refer to this article and white paper.

Art The Fucks:

Clowntauk (Summer 2023) by Matt Clark

Exhaustion by Gordey Prostov

all walls will be digital by #1 crush

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In this episode, Hosts, Ben, Oli and Luke are joined by Batsoupyum, one of the most prominent 1/1 digital art collectors on SuperRare.

This was a wonderful conversational to learn more about his journey as a digital art collector.

Art That Fucks:

Hold Me In The Dark by Rensi Ardinta

Queensboro Plaza by Trina Hines

Hang The DJ by mrfiretruckmanarts

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This week, we play back and discuss a conversation with SuperRare’s Chief Curator, Alessio De Vecchi.

With Luke Whyte having sat down with him for an hour long chat about the history of SuperRare’s curation and where he thinks SuperRare, and the whole of Web3 Art, should head in the future - we were all eager to hear more and get a sense of the future of curation in the space.

Art That Fucks: (Black and white photography)

A journey into the unknown by Samantha Cavet

Repose by Joe Cardamone

Ascension by Nilus Dantes 

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Last week, we kicked off our short series on gatekeeping in web3 with “Who wins in web3?: Queer creators, bias, and the blockchain.”

Today, we continue to look at gatekeeping but, this time, focusing on an emerging concept we’re calling ‘guerilla curating’ or the idea of harnessing decentralized curation as a response to gatekeeping.  

Ben, Linda and Luke are joined by Diana Sinclair, Rebecca and Michelle from Haus of Collage and Chikai from Monolith.

Art that fucks:

To be free by Negative Vibrations

Crash Test 01. by Geoffroy de Crécy

NEXUS by Martisha Merems

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Queer creators: does web3 really improve gatekeeping?

On Monday 15th May, we published an article in SuperRare Magazine that Oli wrote titled, “Who wins in web3?: Queer creators, bias, and the blockchain.” Behind the scenes, we talk a lot about NFTs and gatekeeping, and it’s a topic that’s become more and more relevant in the web3 creative space, a place that purports to eliminate the gatekeeping prevalent in traditional creative communities and industries but has yet proved to clearly do so.

Article: https://superrare.com/magazine/2023/05/15/who-wins-in-web3-queer-creators-bias-and-the-blockchain/

In this episode we discuss this topic with:

• Dawnia Darkstone: @letsglitchit
• Bee Davies: @thebeedavies
• Zak Krevitt: @zak_krevitt

Art that Fucks:

Zizi - Queering the Dataset #1 by Jake Elwes

dusk (liminal) by Mercy Thokozane Minah

Cyclic Paradise by occulted

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“Art needs curators – and so do NFTs”

That’s the headline of a January 2023 article in Fast Company by arts writer and Professor of Visual Culture, Charlotte Kent, and a sentiment shared by many in the NFT art space today. Nonetheless, it remains controversial: Curation, almost by definition, leads to exclusion from the top down, an outcome that sits in direct conflict with the inclusive, ground up ethos that many consider a fundamental tenet of the cryptoart movement.

And yet, for those looking to discover art, or to be discovered, the lack of digital art curation at scale is a big problem, if not the biggest. On SuperRare alone, which is regarded as one of the most exclusive marketplaces in the space, the total number of artists jumped from just under 1,500 on our first anniversary to just under 36 thousand on our fifth anniversary. How does one solve a goal-impeding problem at scale when all known scalable solutions require sacrificing the values that led them to set that goal in the first place?

Well, that’s the subject if this week’s discussion: Can Web3 Fill the Artist Discovery Gaps Left by Trad Galleries? Joining Ben, Oli and Luke to discuss this subject, we’ve got guest from three fantastic institutions, VerticalCrypto Art, Verse Works, and ArtxCode.

Art that Fucks:

Are Ya Winning Son? By karborn

Gmgmgmgmgngmgmgm by ballzerino

FROG NOIR by twick

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