221A Launches Blockchains & Cultural Padlocks Research Report and Events Series

May 17, 2021

221A publishes its Blockchains & Cultural Padlocks (BACP) Digital Strategy Research Report. This 200-page publication culminates two years of social, cultural and ecological research on the emergent technology of the blockchain. Supported by the Canada Council for the Arts’ Digital Strategy Fund, BACP outlines a values-led strategy for 221A to engage civil society with the challenge of developing a digitally cooperative culture, and to work towards the recommoning of land, data and objects.

The free publication outlines 221A’s key positions and partners within its digital strategy, and features major commissioned papers by art writer Rosemary Heather (Toronto); artist Julian Yi-Zhong Hou (Vancouver/ Vernon, BC); artist and theorist Patricia Reed (Berlin); and critical geographer Maral Sotoudehnia (Victoria, BC).

The free publication is accompanied by a public events series, beginning with a live streamed launch on May 25, 2021 at 10 AM PDT with Jesse McKee, BACP Lead Investigator and Head of Strategy at 221A; Rosemary Heather, BACP Editorial Director; and Svitlana Matviyenko, Associate Director of Simon Fraser University’s Digital Democracy Institute.

With Blockchains & Cultural Padlocks, 221A leads the cultural, educational and nonprofit sectors in fostering greater awareness about the ways blockchain tech will challenge institutions to evolve towards more collective and cooperative models. The technology also enables creators and communities to derive far greater benefit from daily internet use, through new means of data sovereignty and emerging forms of peer-to-peer interaction.


Partners
221A’s BACP research development benefited from key partnerships with Blockchain@UBC (Vancouver), Canada’s leading blockchain academic research cluster; New Models (Berlin), pro-complexity media node; the beecoin project (Berlin), experimental DAO organized around the health of urban beehives; DOMA (Paris/Kyiv), non-profit housing platform cooperative; and ChinookX (Pacific Northwest), Indigenous data sovereignty and green energy start-up. The Human Data Commons Foundation (Vancouver), supports 221A’s digital strategy as a communications partner.  


Events Series
Please join us for a live stream events series bringing together key contributors of the Blockchains & Cultural Padlocks Research Report alongside a host of leading figures across academic, urbanism, media and blockchain development communities.

Blockchains & Cultural Padlocks Digital Strategy Launch
May 25, 10 am PDT / 1 pm EDT / 7 CEST
With Jesse McKee, BACP Lead Investigator and 221A Head of Strategy; Rosemary Heather, BACP Editorial Director and Principal Researcher; moderated by Svitlana Matviyenko, Assistant Professor and Associate Director of Simon Fraser University’s Digital Democracies Institute.

The Valuation of Necessity: A Cosmological View of our Technologies and Culture
June 4, 10 am PDT / 1 pm EDT / 7pm CEST
With BACP researcher, artist and theorist Patricia Reed; critical geographer Maral Sotoudehnia, and Wassim Alsindi of 0x Salon, Berlin, who conducts research on the legal and ecological externalities of blockchain networks.

Recommoning Territory: Diversifying Housing Tenure Through Platform Cooperatives
June 18, 10 am PDT / 1 pm EDT / 7pm CEST
With 221A Fellows Maksym Rokmaniko and Francis Tseng (DOMA); Andy Yan (Simon Fraser University); and BACP researcher and critical geographer Maral Sotoudehnia.

Roundtable: Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) & Social Tokens
Released June 25, Pre-recorded
Roundtable co-organized with Daniel Keller of newmodels.io, with participation from development teams and researchers from @albiverse, trust.support, Circles UBI, folia.app, SayDAO, and Blockchain@UBC

Blockchains & Cultural Padlocks is supported by the Digital Strategy Fund of the Canada Council for the Arts.

For more, contact us hello@221a.ca