Pushing the Boundaries of the Conventional: Artnet partners with Decentraland on Metaverse Art Week 2022

• Artnet to curate the world’s first performance art- filled program in the Metaverse
• Decentraland is one of the largest virtual worlds
• Artnet to introduce performance art, impromptu poetry readings and AI to the Metaverse as a ground-breaking experiment
• Sotheby’s, Frida Kahlo’s Family, and Super Rare Labs also participating

New York/Berlin, August 23, 2022: Artnet AG, the leading platform for art market data and media, and the global marketplace for fine art, is excited to announce its partnership with Decentraland for their annual Metaverse Art Week “The World is Made of Code.”. This marks an exciting milestone as Artnet has launched its NFT Initiative in 2021 and committed to lead the art and technology space .

“Metaverse Art Week 2022 is coming at a pivotal moment for the larger adoption of Web3 technology and decisions about our digital reality. We believe that the future of the internet should be built by decentralized communities who do not seek to profit off of user data, imagination, and creativity,” said Creative Director of the Decentraland Foundation, Sam Hamilton. “This year’s Art Week is a love letter to what the next generation of artists are doing in the metaverse.”

For the Decentraland Art Week, Artnet presents a highly curated program, created in partnership with theVERSEverse, the NFT poetry collective. The program includes, A Little Umbrella Ⅱ by performance artist Hsin yen Wei, crypto-native poetry readings by critically acclaimed poets including Sasha Stiles, Kalen Iwamoto, Christian Bök, Gisel Florez and more. Artnet also debuts an Information Center and a Poetry Garden in Decentraland, where the visitors will be able to attend performances in the garden, together with the digital animals created by artist Jonas Lund.

This will be the first time ever for people to experience performance art in the Metaverse, which is a pioneering experiment. While discourse surrounding the Metaverse has largely highlighted a new frontier with endless opportunity, limitations, ephemerality, and physicalities of the human artist as an avatar will be exposed. In a nod to the Happenings movement, first coined by artist Allan Kaprow in 1959, Artnet is hosting a brand new curatorial project, Art is Happening @ Decentraland . “What does it mean to experience art in the Metaverse? As a brand that prides itself on developing critical conversation around art and technology, we wanted to explore the Metaverse in a meaningful context, to provoke thought and create truly unique encounters with art--- that is why we present this highly curated program where performance artists, poets and AI, human and non-human, interact with each other in Decentraland. We wanted to onboard our users to experience something uniquely valuable in the Metaverse,” said Jiayin Chen, Artnet’s Head of NFTs. ”

Metaverse Art Week 2022 comes to Decentraland this August from the 24th to 28th. Inspired by globally renowned art events, such as the Venice Biennale and Art Basel, Decentraland is presenting a Web3 experience with immersive art installations, performance and conceptual art productions, and NFT exhibitions unlike anything ever seen before. Metaverse Art Week 2022 will host a series of activities throughout dedicated spaces inside Decentraland, centered around a 3D Sculpture garden known as ‘Art Plaza,’ a gravity-defying open air museum. Adjacent to this area, there will be community-designed and art collective gallery exhibitions, which will introduce panels and round tables.

Metaverse Art Week 2022 is designed to showcase the latest technological innovations in digital art and design development through an extensive virtual world fair that brings the contemporary art world into further alignment with the emerging world of Web3. Metaverse Art Week 2022 aims to demonstrate the frontier of extended reality and the evolution of the visual internet.

About Decentraland

Launched in 2020, Decentraland is a virtual social world powered by the Ethereum blockchain and the first decentralized metaverse. Within the Decentraland platform, users can create, experience, and monetize content and applications as well as socialize and attend a wide range of daily community-driven events. Decentraland is unique in that it is owned, created, and governed by the people who use it every day. Through the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) users can submit proposals and even apply for grants for the community to vote on.

For Media Inquiry: press@decentraland.org

About Artnet

Artnet has an unparalleled 55 million users annually, making it the largest global platform for fine art. Founded in 1989, Artnet has revolutionized the way people discover, research, and collect art today. Artnet’s Data provides  mission-critical resources for the art industry, encompassing more than 15 million auction results and AI- and ML-driven analytics, further driving transparency and insight into the art market. Artnet’s marketplace connects leading galleries and auction houses with its global audience, offering a curated selection of over 250,000 artworks for sale worldwide. Artnet Auctions, the pioneering online-only auction platform, offers unprecedented reach, liquidity, and efficiency for buyers and sellers. Artnet News covers the events, trends, and people shaping the global art market with up-to-the-minute analysis and expert commentary. It is the single most-read news publication in the fine art industry, with a rapidly growing, dedicated audience. Together, Artnet’s broad synergistic product offering provides a comprehensive ecosystem that drives and informs the modern art market.

Artnet AG is listed in the Prime Standard of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, the segment with the highest transparency standards. The majority of operations are headquartered in New York at its  wholly-owned subsidiary, Artnet Worldwide Corporation, a New York based entity founded in 1989. Artnet Worldwide Corp. owns a London based subsidiary, Artnet UK Ltd.

ISIN: DE000A1K0375

LEI: 391200SHGPEDTRIC0X31

Contact:

Sophie Neuendorf

sneuendorf@artnet.com