Blockchains & Cultural Padlocks Julian Yi-Zhong Hou: Anoetic Tokenization

Community and collaboration in the new paradigm

Trained as an architect, artist Julian Yi-Zhong Hou has referred to his practice as “hypnagogic,” a word that defines the transitional state between wakefulness and sleep. Applied to an art practice, this idea points to Hou’s attentiveness to how bodily experience combines sensations from both the material and immaterial worlds. Applied to the blockchain, Hou imagines a wholly different use for the concept of tokenization. Anoesis, the mind in a state of sensation without cognition, provides the conceptual basis for Hou’s idea of anoetic tokenization—tokens that quantify the value of relationships, not things. In Hou’s view, this form of token economy has the potential to upend the hierarchical relationships typical of the legacy artworld. Beyond art, Hou offers a clever prognostication of how networks will continue to disrupt and reorganize social relations.