E-Z Kryptobuild (2020; 22 min.) is a multimedia work that responds to architecture’s role in perpetuating global inequity and our current climate emergency. A fictitious company offers high-net-worth individuals “post-apocalyptic sustainable luxury” through a selection of architect-designed utopias for the end of times—as long as they’re willing to invest a whole lot of crypto on the blockchain. As a work of speculative fiction, E-Z Kryptobuild has gotten even weirder in the recent NFT craze.
The project reflects on the language and aesthetics of disaster capitalism that have become familiar mantras in the post-global period. It borrows from the architectural imaginations of notable contemporary architects from Zaha Hadid to Norman Foster, and critiques the libertarian ideologies behind recent architectural movements including seasteading and the design of Silicon Valley mega-campuses. Using satire, speculation, and AI technology, E-Z Kryptobuild exaggerates our current condition and serves as a warning sign of things to come.
Bio
Alice Bucknell is an American artist and writer based in London. Her current work uses speculative fiction to address contemporary ideas of technological utopias and the role of architecture in contributing to global inequity and ecological destruction. She participates in international exhibitions, symposiums, and residencies, most recently at Ars Electronica with KÖNIG GALERIE, White Cube, Annka Kultys Gallery, the Canadian Center for Architecture, and Serpentine Galleries. She serves as a guest critic at international design and architecture schools including the Architectural Association and at the Royal College of Art in London. Her writing appears regularly in art, architecture and design publications including Flash Art, Frieze, Kaleidoscope, Mousse, PIN-UP and The Architectural Review.
She is currently a staff writer at Elephant Magazine and the Harvard Design Magazine, and a resident of HQI in White City. In 2021, she will be in residence at Rupert in Lithuania (May) and RIXC in Riga (August-September), as part of the Goethe-Institut’s AI Residency Program. She studied Anthropology and Visual Art at the University of Chicago and Critical Practice at the Royal College of Art in London.
*We will be in conversation with Alice to discuss E-Z Kryptobuild this coming Wednesday April 7t at 18:00 CET on our instagram livestream. Stay Tuned
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Still from E-Z Kryptobuild, single channel HD video, 2020. Image courtesy the artist.
E-Z Kryptobuild Collectors Coins, 2020. Laser-engraved fluorescent acrylic. 8cm diameter. Variation of 7, each an edition of 10. Image courtesy the artist.
