New York — The Museum of the Moving Image (MoMI) and the Tezos Foundation have announced a major new partnership that will transform how artists engage with blockchain technology.
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Extending their 2024 collaboration Museum Without Walls, this expanded program will spotlight blockchain as a living artistic medium through a two-year cycle of commissions, workshops, and fellowships hosted on MoMI’s Herbert S. Schlosser Media Wall from November 2025 to January 2027.
A New Chapter for Blockchain Art
The initiative will commission five artist pairs to create projects using Tezos’s FA2 standard — a flexible, multi-asset smart contract framework designed to support complex and interactive digital works. Alongside the installations, the program will host public events, performances, and a FA2 Fellowship aimed at helping artists and developers experiment with blockchain in new creative ways.
The opening commission, created by James Bloom and Gottfried Jäger, bridges past and present—revisiting Jäger’s groundbreaking generative photography from 1967 and translating it into a modern networked artwork. Subsequent pairings include:
Sarah Friend (Canada) and Yehwan Song (South Korea/US), exploring games, systems, and selfhood.
Linda Dounia (Senegal/Lebanon) and Rhea Myers (UK), focusing on speculative archiving and blockchain as art.
Jonas Lund (Sweden) and Yoshi Sodeoka (Japan/US), dissecting the aesthetics and ethics of networked systems.
Each project will push the FA2 standard to its creative limits, turning blockchain into an expressive, interactive material rather than just a technical tool.
“Since the days of hic et nunc, I’ve hoped to see more artists engage with the Tezos blockchain itself as a performative and behavioral component of their work. With this initiative, we’re fostering a new creative direction where blockchain isn’t just the medium—it’s part of the art’s behavior.”
Regina Harsanyi, Associate Curator of Media Arts at MoMI
The FA2 Fellowship and Microgrant Program
At the heart of the initiative is the FA2 Fellowship, pairing selected artists with Tezos developers for hands-on experimentation. Participants will attend four sessions that culminate in a final commission opportunity for display at MoMI. Completing the program also unlocks eligibility for microgrants ranging from $500–$1,000, supporting artists in developing and expanding their blockchain-based projects.
Throughout the cycle, artists will also release eight “production artifacts” — open-source sketches, generative tools, or code fragments — freely collectible on the Tezos blockchain, offering the public a glimpse into each artist’s creative process.
“Artists have always led the adoption of new media. Through this partnership, we’re giving them the tools to make blockchain interactive, experimental, and alive. Museum of the Moving Image is the perfect partner to realize this vision.”
Aleksandra Artamonovskaja, Head of Arts at Trilitech (Tezos R&D Hub)
Building on a Shared Vision
This new collaboration follows the success of Museum Without Walls, the 2024 initiative that allowed museum visitors to mint and collect free digital artworks on Tezos. That program helped democratize art ownership and showcased code-based creativity through Compositions in Code: The Art of Processing and p5.js.
Now, the FA2-centered partnership deepens that mission—bridging contemporary art and decentralized technology while empowering artists to rethink what digital creation can mean.
