On 10 November 2021, the project “The Ethereal Aether. An Exhibition of Digital Art” will be launched in the virtual space of The Stock Exchange building.
The display will include both existing works by well-known NFT-artists and pieces created specially for the Hermitage. All of them will reveal the subject of NFTs from various research viewpoints.
Symbolically, the exhibition will be connected to the building of The Stock Exchange building, which will provide the virtual “cloud” setting where the artists’ works will be on show. The NFT system is inseparably linked to cryptocurrencies and crypto-exchanges, so The Stock Exchange building created by the architect Thomas de Thomon in the early 19th century is a reference that makes it possible to put the NFTs in historical and philosophical context.
The goal of the Hermitage exhibition will be not merely to present works in the NFT format, but also to reveal and explain the nature of an NFT. The project will become the start of the construction of a “Celestial Hermitage” – an ideal structure in the virtual noosphere that in the future will function as a digital double for the museum. The Celestial Hermitage’s purpose is to preserve, study and expand digital cultural heritage: metaobjects that originated in a digital reality (including ones born as NFTs) and exist exclusively within it.
“Entry” to the exhibition will be accomplished from any device connected to the Internet by means of links or QR-codes posted on the buildings of the Hermitage. The virtual exhibition will not be exclusively attached to any of the NFT platforms, but it will be possible to access it from several of the leading resources. The Hermitage is inviting platforms to collaborate.
The exhibition will be mirrored in physical reality by a research and practice conference and a series of master classes to be held on 11–13 November 2021, during the time when the 9th St Petersburg International Cultural Forum is taking place. Their main theme will be the study of the digitization of the museum as a means of preserving cultural heritage.
The exhibition has been prepared by the Hermitage’s Department of Contemporary Art and will be a continuation of a series of projects focussing on the latest tendencies in art (“Artificial Intelligence and Intercultural Dialogue”; “Innovation as an Artistic Technique”). The curators are Dmitry Ozerkov and Anastasia Garnova.
A list of participating artists and their projects will be announced closer to the date.
