In 2019, artists Casey Reas, Rick Silva, Addie Wagenknecht and duo exonemo embarked on a project, inviting around 75 of their fellow artists to submit and trade edited blockchain-based works over the course of a week. “This experience”, write the curators, “is a way for us to exchange works to create a collection”. They dubbed the project a2por Artist-to-Peer, and in spirit and format would lay the foundation for Feral File.
Today, Feral File has established itself as a digital art platform by and for artists that continues to champion the publishing model. Since its founding in 2020 by Reas and blockchain startup Bitmark, it has hosted 33 online sales exhibitions, featuring 26 curators and 178 artists. The offers range from the collective exhibition “Equals,” Organized by Buffalo AKGby Tina Rivers Ryan, to “LeeMullican.PCX“, curated by Anika Meier and collecting the oil painter’s first computer artworks from 1987. More recently, “Invisiblesaw curator Linda Dounia Rebeiz collect AI works by black creators that highlight the inherent biases of the technology.
“It’s just such a wide range of artists, with different ideas and approaches to digital art practices,” Reas told Artnet News of the platform’s lineup. “Outsiders might see digital art as quite narrow, but for me, Feral File shows that it’s such a diverse and eclectic practice.”
Lu Yang, Material World Knight – Flight Mode (2023). Courtesy of Feral File.
On June 28, Feral File will commemorate its second anniversary (not counting the first nine months after its founding, which involved development) with a retrospective titled “Feral File 1.0”. The exhibition features 33 works by artists such as Dmitri Cherniak, Refik Anadol, Sofia Crespo, Tyler Hobbs, 0xDEAFBEEF, LaTurbo Avedon, Helena Sarin and John Gerrard. All pieces have been selected by Reas from each of Feral File’s past exhibitions (and original curatorial texts from those previous exhibitions will be included).
“I really feel that Feral File is at the heart of [a place for] showing digital and code sculpting,” Reas said. “But in doing ‘Feral File 1.0,’ I tried to get a mix of all mediums, all types of work, just trying to create that range in the series.”
Refik Anadol, Unsupervised — Machine Hallucinations — MoMA Generative Study 1 (2021). Courtesy of Feral File.
“Feral File 1.0” will also mark a turning point for the platform, closing its first chapter. Going forward, Feral File 2.0 will continue to focus on artist rights (the platform’s smart contracts secure royalties to creators through resales and cross-blockchain transactions), while focusing on edited series and group exhibitions. With the latter, participating artists will receive an edition of each work in the exhibition and collectors will be able to purchase sets containing, again, all of the works in the exhibition.
It’s a format, Reas said, inspired by Feral File’s 2021″-CHART” art show based on the plotter, which was sold as a set.
“We believe that when the work is collected, the collector should have a work by each artist. When something is collected as a complete set, the income from it is also distributed equally. It’s a way for us to work against the collecting dynamics of the traditional art world,” Reas explained, adding that the format further allows contributing artists to connect and form a community.
Feral File 2.0 will kick off on July 13 with a generative art exhibit, “N=12,” curated by artist Aaron Penne.
Auriea Harvey, history (2022). Courtesy of Feral File.
Rounding out the platform’s second anniversary festivities is a smaller, but no less significant show that revisits the roots of Feral File. “The Experiment” presents a curated selection from the a2p 2019 collection (a second version of the experiment took place in Spring 2020), featuring creators such as Kim Asendorf, Auriea Harvey, Tabor Robak, Yoshi Sodeoka and Alan Butler, among others.
The show is not collectable, but symbolic for Feral File, as it revisits the seed of the platform as well as a time before the NFT boom – “Right before we had that fork, before let this new energy and culture emerge,” Reas said.
More so, Feral File’s constant experimental philosophy, he added, is bottled up inside.
“The initial goal of Feral File was to experiment with different ways of working with curators, with group and individual exhibitions, with different ways of enabling people to collect. Can we try this? Can we try this? said Reas. “We tried a lot of things, and it’s what we imagined Feral File could be or what we feel it really should be. That’s really what Feral File 2.0 is all about.
“Feral File 1.0” and “The Experiment” are playing at wild file from June 28 to July 13.
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