The new work by Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei and Irish New York artist Kevin Abosch, called “Prices,” aims to influence the transformation of worldviews in the conversation about the value of human life, using the Ethereum Blockchain.
According to Ai Weiwei, humanity has a rather complex relationship with monetary value. There is a cryptocurrency market where vast amounts of capital are floating around, seemingly unbacked, while government institutions and infrastructure are slowly collapsing due to lack of funding. How do we value the Earth when climate change continues to threaten life around the world? How do we value human life when migrants and refugees are dying in border refugee camps?
These questions about values in modern society in general, and the value of human life in particular, became the basis for a new art project by Ai Weiwei and Kevin Abosch.
For Ai Weiwei, Blockchain is not a technology, but an opportunity to create a new system for communication. The project does not create an object of art, but rather questions the existing order of imposing values in modern society.
The project consists of two standard ERC-20 tokens on the Ethereum Blockchain, called Priceless (PRCLS).
The main question for the authors is: how will society value these tokens?
“Once the token is in the hands of people, they should value it,” Abosch said. "People can treat their PRCLS like a priceless piece of art or a worthless coin. Whatever happens, the point is to get people to think about their relationship to things that are priceless," Abosch said. The point of the project is not to create a commodity token, but to see what happens to the token over time.
The price is determined by people and society. Calling something priceless is a bit absurd, according to Ai Weiwei.
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