When the markets open this morning, artist and musician N-Prolenta will begin composing a mixtape via twitch.tv livestream. Confined in an undisclosed location for the next six days, they will rely entirely on the online audience for sustenance during this marathon composition process, which culminates with a live performance at the New Museum on October 25.
In a format that draws inspiration from financialized structures such as an IPO or token sale, viewers are asked to remotely interact with N-Prolenta, submitting gifts and donations, placing bids, and bearing witness to the artist’s voluntary confinement. The artist will be unable to access provisions for themself, and so the audience is implored to donate funds in order to trigger a series of “imports” to sustain the artist. Donations must be made through twitch.tv, submitted via paypal. The basic donation categories are below:
FEED: Banana, $1
WATER: LITER of water, $5
MYSTERY GIFT: $500 incrementally, or unlocked when fund reaches $500 total
DONATE: contribute any amount freely
GIFTS: $10 each (lettuce, nuts, breath mints)
Imports will be made every other day at 4pm. Please note the nature of your contribution when sending funds (i.e. FEED or *banana emoji* etc.)
60% of proceeds will be directed explicitly toward 2017 climate-related disaster relief efforts.
This work was commissioned by Rhizome and the New Museum for “First Look: New Black Portraitures,” an online exhibition launching October 25 that interrogates the genre of portraiture in relationship to Blackness, exploring the complexities and violences endemic to this territory.
Multimedia artist and producer Brandon Covington Sam-Sumana works to interrogate matters related to currency, transience, narrative structure, and system metabolism. Their investigations have spawned music projects, objects of generative design, and forays into speculative finance, video, and visual art. They were born in the mid-1990s in Fayetteville, NC.
