An independent research space concerning contemporary issues. This is neither a formal academic publication nor an opinion column: it is analytical work supported by data on topics I consider relevant and worthy of rigorous examination, even when they fall outside specialised academic circuits. Open to co-authorship. Proposals to: hola@juanesteban.art
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Entries: 137
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Art, productive time and material survival
Resumen ejecutivo La historia del arte puede leerse como una historia de la organización social del tiempo creativo. Antes de ser “genio”, el artista necesita duración, concentración, materiales, espacio, mediaciones y una forma de subsistencia. En la larga duración histórica, ese tiempo ha sido financiado por regímenes muy distintos: culto religioso, corte, nobleza, burguesía comercial,…
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Post-NFT Digital Art. Infrastructure, Archive, and Recognition III
Recognition. Institutions, market and canon. This entry concludes the series. Entry I examined provenance—what renders a digital work identifiable as a work—through the case of the artist romainiti and the closure of Foundation. Entry II addressed persistence—what is required for a work to endure and continue...
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Post-NFT Digital Art. Infrastructure, Archive, and Recognition II
Persistence. Archive, custody and the duration of digital art. This research examines, from the perspective of curatorial practice and collecting, what remains of tokenised digital art following the collapse of the speculative NFT market. Entry I examined the first dimension of the triadic framework—provenance, persistence and recognition—through the case of the artist romainiti and...
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Post-NFT Digital Art. Infrastructure, Archive, and Recognition I
Provenance. The Romainiti case. Introduction to the series. This research examines, from the perspective of curatorial practice and collecting, what remains of tokenised digital art following the collapse of the speculative NFT market. The series is developed across three entries that articulate three dimensions of a single problem: provenance, persistence and recognition. The present text, the first of...
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Global Art Market Overview
Foundation, an invite-only tokenised art platform within the Ethereum ecosystem, has gone offline indefinitely after failing to find a buyer. The platform itself attributes the decision to a financial and operational reality that prevented the resumption of service with any guarantees. What follows is an interpretation of the current situation, distinguishing between what…
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Mass technology and ethical consumption
Regarding the environmental impact of artificial intelligence, video games and social media in 2025. Study objective. This paper compares, using the best evidence available in 2025, the order of magnitude of the annual environmental impact of three mass digital markets—artificial intelligence, video games and social media—and discusses whether the prevailing question…
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Art, a cultural luxury today
Art is not an ornament. Nor is it an expendable footnote in a strained budget. Institutional practice has treated it as such for years, and the result is visible: when cuts arrive, what was considered accessory falls first. That gesture is not neutral. It defines what we understand as necessary. Today, in a large part of the…