Thursday, January 27
5pm CT
Watch on YouTube

Artist Kim Alpert (ESS) joins art historians Delinda Collier (SAIC) and Bukky Gbadegesin (SLU) to discuss the technologies and thought forms that have laid the foundation for emerging crypto-cultures. Beyond technical questions, this dialogue interrogates the ripple effects of crypto-cultures on contemporary art-making, art markets, and global economies, writ large. What are the promises and perils of this new digital ecosystem? How do we reconcile the environmental impacts and sustainable potential of crypto-cultures? Shrouded by inscrutable practices, how are outgrowths, like NFTs, situated within the wider context of art history? What inclusions (or exclusions) do these crypto-cultures afford in the relations of art and money, predation and agency?

Panelist Bios:

Kim Alpert combines analog and digital technologies, movement, music, and interactivity, to create sculptural and performance-based video systems. Kim's practice centers on humanism with inquisitions into psychology and spirituality - understanding and translating the impact of visual and sonic languages into meaning making. Kim is an active member of the arts community and serves on the board of Experimental Sound Studio in Chicago, USA and Digital Arts Resource Center in Ottawa, Canada.

Delinda Collier is Associate Professor of Art History, Theory and Criticism and Interim Dean of Graduate Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her research interests are in old and new media in Africa, Luso-African Art, and Cold War modernisms. She is the author of Repainting the Walls of Lunda: Information Colonialism and Angolan Art (University of Minnesota, 2016) and Media Primitivism: Technological Art in Africa (Duke, 2020), among many articles, essays, and reviews.

Dr. Olubukola “Bukky” Gbadegesin is a joint appointed faculty member at St. Louis University in the Department of Fine and Performing Arts, and in the African American Studies Program. Her research interests lie in the fields of photography, portrait practices, transnationalism, and visual politics. She has contributed to various journals (i.e. African Arts, History of Photography, Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry), edited volumes, and online platforms. Gbadegesin has also worked as a researcher and curator for several art museums.