The Poetics of an Invisible Market

Editor’s Note: This article was produced in collaboration with the Arts & Culture MA concentration at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.

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“Is tokenization existence?” Sarah Meyohas asks, rhetorically, of course. Meyohas, a conceptual artist whose art considers the nature and capabilities of emerging technologies in contemporary society, visually articulates the conceptual systems of the blockchain. By embracing NFTs, Meyohas allows buyers to speculate and bet on her future work and career. While the number of wallets interacting with the NFT space is still small, more than 200 people have taken her up on this offer to interact financially with her work — and some have made serious money, up to $350,000, reportedly, in the process. Cashing out may be the only tangible exchange (win or lose) of the process.

Her latest project, the Non-Existent Token, which launched in September of this year, is an infinite NFT auction: a public exchange for NFTs no one would actually own, but instead, would temporarily borrow on lease. It’s an overtly ironic experiment, utilizing the very technology Meyohas criticizes, in order to advance it. The project, which is both social commentary and digital art project, is her most technically and conceptually complex work to date. “It’s meant to be totally hilarious and totally metaphysical, you know?” she says with a smile.

A series of smart contracts, embedded in a sleek black veneer, exists as another trick object in her conjurer’s kit, where it is an artwork but also is pretending not to be. “I want it to feel a bit like a Charlie Kaufman movie. It feels like, is this a DeFi protocol?” For crypto-newbs, this stands for “Decentralized Finance,” a digital system (with a libertarian-bent, some argue) that does not rely on financial intermediaries and offers financial products on a public and decentralized blockchain network.

On the Non-Existent Token website, along with the instructions for the bidding war, are floating bubble animations — an obvious representation of the “bubble” discourse, a comment on the market’s speculative and frenzied nature. When you place your bid, the bubble animation is added to your wallet. 

To enter the exchange, Person X must offer ten percent more than the previous borrower, Person Y. Once Person X places a bid, Person Y retrieves the initial value of their investment plus five percent. The NFT is transferred to Person X, and Person Y’s once-held NFT is switched into a receipt. A former bidder, as a cheeky experiment, sells their receipt for $20,o00 on Open Sea, Meyohas says, laughing. Meyohas’s royalties are baked into the smart contract automation. 

You may be the winner of the Non-Existent Token for a day, for a year, or for a lifetime. As long as the Ethereum network continues to…