Merkle Root: Berlin

Exhibition and discussion curated by Maria Paula Fernandez and Stina Gustafsson. With the assistance of Chris Dake-Outhet
16-18 September 2022

Participating artists: Cibelle Cavalli Bastos, Coco Magnusson, Cornelia Sollfrank, Holly Herndon, Mat Dryhurst, OMSK Social Club, Sam Hart, terra0

Merkle Root Berlin is an exhibition that aims to unearth the roots of Berlin’s blockchain art scene, connecting them with the newcomers, the explorers, and the curious. The exhibition was a start to an ongoing project, where DoD seeks to map the Berlin blockchain art history timeline, to further explore and acknowledge the experiments, people, thinking and works that stem from Berlin, and have inspired and developed the space into what it is today.

As a starting point, the curators decided to trace a relationship tree with a common denominator: all artists selected should be established in Berlin, or have developed an important part of their career in the city.

Together with the exhibition, we’re building a Berlin blockchain art timeline, based on influential locations, both physical and virtual, rooted in the city. The beginnings of blockchain art in Berlin track down to 2014, and the city has seen spaces such as Trust, Full Node, Department of Decentralization, and Crypto Circle create communities of exploration that resulted in projects like token gated raves, terra0, Folia, Simon Denny’s 2016 Berlin Biennale Blockchain Visionnaires installation, the seminal Proof of Work 2018 exhibition, Left Gallery, Sarah Friend’s works and much more. We want to represent them all — with the exhibition acting as a starting point of a long-term project to create a community-owned timeline to show the roots of a movement and its ramifications.

Merkle Root: Berlin was kindly supported by JPG, Department of Decentralization and Infinite Objects

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