Proof of Stake – Technological Claims

Based on the exhibition Proof of Stake: Technological Claims at Kunstverein in Hamburg, curated by Simon Denny and Bettina Steinbrügge, the book brings together a global group of artists and scholars who inquire into the objects, apparatuses, geographies and power relations of organized life.

How does technology organize life? Who gets to claim the technological as their own, and thereby becomes claimed? How can the technological be reclaimed?
The Proof-of-Stake protocol is assumed to provide a sustainable consensus mechanism for blockchain transactions. This book uses this assertion as a springboard to artistically and conceptually investigate the organizational conditions and effects of technology and technological objects.

Designed by David Bennewith, Proof of Stake: Technological Claims is more thought experiment and tool to think with than exhibition catalogue. It interweaves the documentation of the works of the participating artists with 20 original essays on technological objects written by leading scholars.