October 17, 2022 — The First Historic NFT Festival, the first event of its kind devoted to the exploration and celebration of the history of NFTs, will take place October 28-30 at the Reial Cercle Artistic, a historic landmark in the Gothic Quarter of Barcelona.
Hosted by DADA, this intimate gathering of the original innovators and pioneers of NFTs and Crypto Art will explore the genesis of the earliest NFT projects on blockchain up to 2019 through in-depth conversations about the value, historical significance and contributions of early NFTs.
The roster of speakers for the festival features many of the most influential artists and technologists in NFTs and Crypto Art.
The festival will offer a range of in-depth conversations about the origins of NFTs with pioneering creators, a retrospective exhibition, workshops, and special activities, such as a digital treasure hunt through the streets of the Gothic Quarter.
NFT Ticket sales are now live, with a price tag of $200 for the 3-day event. The NFT ticket includes a commemorative NFT that will be airdropped to those who attend in person after the Festival.
In the spirit of decentralization, most of the conversations will be live streamed through a free app which will serve as the hub for public and virtual attendance.
Commonplace: A Retrospective Exhibition
Also the first of its kind, this exhibition is open to the public and features a dimensional timeline of early NFT development and innovation up to 2019. This exhibition is being curated transparently and collaboratively through a series of public Twitter Spaces involving recognized pioneers and experts in the fields of NFTs and Crypto Art, led by curator Eleonora Brizi.
The retrospective aims to make visible the people behind the innovations and the network of connections and influences, experiences and memories that deepen and enrich the nascent field of NFT historic research.
HNFT’s Commonplace is a sensitive map that tries to deconstruct the different versions of history about which works are valid and belong to the NFT canon and which works are ignored because they no longer exist, they are considered of low cultural value, they are ignored due to different biases, or they have not achieved record prices.
This multidimensional timeline takes into account the hard data coded on-chain, technical challenges, the innovation factor, the evolving social landscape, the cultural ethos of crypto, and key events that have contributed to the evolution of NFTs up to 2019.
This historic map will become an evolving online timeline that could be organized based on different criteria like mint date, technical or artistic innovation, collectibles/art, cultural significance or social relations. Each narrative and its interactions will paint a complex picture of early NFT history and is intended to serve as a reference for years to come.
The Venue
The Reial Cercle Artistic of Barcelona is a historic arts club that has counted artists like Dalí, Miró and Picasso among its members. It is housed in a XVI Century palace in the heart of Barcelona’s Gothic Quarter.
Judy Mam, co-creator of DADA, host of the festival explains:
“Even though the NFT market reached billion dollar sales last year, up to now there has been very little focus on the context, culture and the history of NFTs. Few people are aware of the origins of their groundbreaking innovations, like the creation of digital ownership, automatic distribution of earnings in smart contracts, and the artists and builders that first experimented with them. As both mainstream attention and the NFT community grow, it is essential to articulate and create a resource for research on the history of early NFTs because knowledge of the past will lead to better innovation in the future.”
About DADA
DADA is a global and decentralized community of artists, technologists, thinkers, researchers, and collectors. DADA’s ecosystem stems from its visual conversation platform where people around the world speak to each other through drawings, spontaneously creating collaborative art. DADA pioneered several NFT collections, including Creeps & Weirdos, (2017) the first project to encode automated royalties on smart contracts. It is currently building the Invisible Economy, an alternative socio-economic system that protects intrinsic motivations while creating collective wealth.
Festival website: hnft.community
Twitter @hnftfest