jess

Punks x MoMA. Full stop.
 Now, seeing the words @larvalabs beneath that iconic MoMA logo, I’m pinching myself. In a space where it can be hard to think even a few months ahead, it’s surreal to look back and realize that nearly four years ago, “Punks x MoMA” became a personal benchmark for what would be the result of thoughtful long-term stewardship of the collection. Conversations with this institution, and many others, began back then: education and translation. 
 In the end, it took the Punks themselves to bring it home. Thank you @kukulabanze, @ArtOnBlockchain and Mara, @CozomoMedici, @judithESSS, @NTmoney, and @Rhyd0n with a helping hand from @10F1_art, @Noahbolanowski, and of course, @nodefnd behind the scenes. 😉
 I’ve watched this project be defended and loved by the Punk community for years. Seeing these artworks now enter MoMA’s collection is a testament not just to the art and the artists, but to the people who carried the project forward. 

This acquisition by @MuseumModernArt will further cement CryptoPunks in the art canon and ensure the work’s long term preservation and study. But it’s the collectors, builders, and artists who made CryptoPunks what they are, and ultimately, what they will be. That should never be forgotten.

This is OUR moment Punks. (And Squiggs too). Let’s take it in.

It’s been four years since the last @larvalabs project. When pioneers return, it reminds us how far we’ve come and how much further we can go. Matt and John built the foundations on which we stand. CryptoPunks. Autoglyphs. Meebits. The blueprint for everything that followed. A “quine” is code that contains the instructions to replicate itself. It’s a reflection (and a refraction I suppose) of how we create, how we pass things forward, what we leave behind, and how we understand ourselves through what we make. Larva Labs has spent months on this collection in a more rigorous studio approach for the first time. Systematically exploring color. Compressing five kinematic engines into self replicating programs. Balancing code with typographic beauty. Every day a new exploration, a refinement, a challenge. Watching them work, I witnessed two artists unfolding and rediscovering themselves through their craft. Synthesizing everything they’ve learned across years of constraint-based work and discovering what persists, what matters, what gets carried into something new. Quine is quintessential Larva Labs. I’ve had the honor to not only bear witness, but to contribute to the historic release of this collection with @artblocks, the final Curated. It’s a responsibility I don’t take lightly. And I hope you love these strange loops as much as I do. Quine | October 9