T:>Works dives headlong into NFT world

T:>WORKS is set to become Singapore’s first performing arts company to launch non-fungible tokens (NFTs). The first of its NFT series will comprise creations by artist Brian Gothong Tan, who has been working in the digital space for over 20 years. Artists for the subsequent series have not yet been named – though the company, in recent times, has been cultivating relationships with well-regarded visual artists such as Shubigi Rao and Ho Rui An.

The company, formerly called TheatreWorks, is diving into the metaverse despite the controversy surrounding NFTs’ environmental costs and market volatility. T:>Works’ artistic director Ong Keng Sen says: “Digital content is so often expected to be free, especially in the post-pandemic era. It becomes dangerous for artists if people don’t want to pay for ideas and art. Hence, we want to look into the sustainability of artists and their practices in the digital realm. We want to develop a kind of process where we try and safeguard the artists and their interactions with the market.”

Ong adds: “We have to engage with the fact that NFTs exist. We have to step up to what is happening digitally. If we don’t do anything about it, we and our audience will remain ignorant of it.”

Since the pandemic struck, T:>Works has pushed itself into the virtual sphere, creating fully digital events such as the Festival of Women: N.O.W. and the PerForm webinar lecture series. It joins the ranks of other global creative companies, from fashion houses to record labels, which are choosing to embrace NFT tech the belief that it offers the best solution for protecting access, provenance and ownership rights of digital works. 

To address the environmental concern, it is working with the Polygon blockchain that has made a green pledge to be climate-positive: For every NFT it mints, Polygon calculates its carbon debt and takes various steps to offset it. Its post-2022 goal is to be the first blockchain in the world to be climate-positive.

Artist Tan himself is a long-time believer of cryptocurrencies and NFTs – not least because of cryptocurrency’s idealistic proposal of a new world order away from existing governments and financial systems. He explains: “The margins and the peripherals have always been central to my creation. If we could build a different world, what would that be? How would we wish to imagine the air we breathe, the atmosphere we imbibe, and the possibilities away from the present boundaries we have? For me, art is one space where the imagination is free to create … and search for the alternative.” 

T:>Works will release 30 single-edition NFTs created out of Tan’s visual realisation of this new world he named Metazomia – a portmanteau derived from the words “metaverse” and “Zomia”, the latter being a stretch of highlands in South-east Asia where 100 million minorities reportedly live largely divorced from any state rule.

His extraordinary images will also appear in a major live production titled #Metazomia. It will premiere at T:>Works performance space in Mohamed Sultan on Dec 31, 2022, and run through the January 2023 stretch of Singapore Art Week. Tan’s last production for T:>Works was the stunning The Swimming Pool Library that ran in early 2022 and is still talked about among art and theatre lovers. 

All 30 NFTs will be put up in a silent auction from Nov 8-18, 2022. Following that, the pieces will be minted in December using the Polygon blockchain.

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For more information, visit tworksnft.com