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Crypto University: HSE Researchers Are First to Publish Study on NFT

Still from the promo video ‘The Back Office Manifesto: Towards (NO) Future Institutions’, created by Eduard Peshkov, student of the Design programme.

Still from the promo video ‘The Back Office Manifesto: Towards (NO) Future Institutions’, created by Eduard Peshkov, student of the Design programme.
Photo courtesy of Margarita Kuleva

On October 1, 2021, ‘The Back Office Manifesto: Towards (NO) Future Institutions’, one of the first cryptographic works based on scientific data, was published on Foundation.app, the leading platform for NFT art.

This innovative work was created by Margarita Kuleva, Head of the Division of Design and Contemporary Art at the HSE University in Saint Petersburg, with the participation of Elena Penina (graphic design), Robin Mitchell, Alexandra Shanina and researchers from the HSE St. Petersburg research group, ‘Digital History of Art’.

Margarita Kuleva

Margarita Kuleva, Head of the Division of Design and Contemporary Art, Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology

This work is the result of a long-term ethnographic study of social inequality in visual art. This is a manifesto written on behalf of cultural workers who are often deprived of a voice and recognition. The manifesto represents a utopian version of the museum, existing in one possible future. In particular, according to the manifesto, in this museum "everyone is a researcher", and "the contribution of all human and non-human agents (including museum cats and ficuses) to its design and production is equally valuable.

NFT art is not just a fast-growing segment of the art market with sales of $2.1 billion (for the first half of 2021, according to Reuters estimates), but also an alternative version of the cultural economy, implying equal opportunities for all digital artists.

The work was published with the support of the creative agency ARKA and the NFT Bastards community.