October 8 - December 3, 2021, Exhibition
at the Théâtre d’Orléans
“At the root of certain radical technologies, there is often not only a practical application but also much broader fantasies and powerful ideologies. This is the case with the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, whose founding white paper was published on October 31, 2008, on Halloween night, by the enigmatic Satoshi Nakamoto, at the height of the global financial crisis. This decentralized, peer-to-peer currency, born in a context of widespread distrust, was intended to bypass both states and banks.
The workshop aims to map out the various ideological and political currents—sometimes contradictory—and their ramifications that underpin the creation of this digital currency and the architecture supporting it, the blockchain.
It intersects with movements such as the cypherpunks, who advocate for a proactive use of cryptography to protect privacy and oppose intrusive governments; libertarians and anarcho-capitalists who anticipate an imminent collapse of the state in favor of a spontaneous market order; and the Extropians, an influential Californian subculture, who believed that through this currency, an agent of chaos, they could unleash innovation and live forever.”
Text source:
https://bim.esadorleans.fr/expositions/
Photographic credits:
Lionel Broye
