The Balot NFT puts digital ownership of culture into the hands of the many and helps buy back land once stolen. In a radical new model of restitution, NFT technology becomes a tool for decolonization.
NFT technology offers CATPC the chance to claim digital ownership over the long-lost sculpture of Balot and restitute its original function of protecting the community and land. By using the profits from the NFTs to buy back depleted plantation land, the powers of this object can be reclaimed, even if the physical object is held by museums in faraway countries. Museums in the Global North are increasingly minting digital copies of key works in their collection and selling them as NFTs, creating a new profitable existence of these artworks, while keeping the originals in their collections.
Meanwhile, impoverishment on the plantations from which these artworks originate remains rampant. It is essential that local communities make use of this technology and control the powers of their lost art, rather than the institutions that were built on the exploitation of their labour and culture.
Still of Balot NFT #078, CATPC, 2022, photo: CATPC – Cercle d’Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise
Still of Balot NFT #019, CATPC, 2022, photo: CATPC – Cercle d’Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise
With the Balot NFT, CATPC uses blockchain technology to claim back what is theirs: not just art, but land.
Bios
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Photo: Human Activities, 2020Cercle d’Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise (CATPC)
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CATPC, or “Congolese Plantation Workers Art League”, is an art cooperative of plantation workers from Lusanga, DR Congo. It was founded in 2014 together with the well-known environmental activist René Ngongo. With the proceeds of their art, CATPC buys back and restores former plantation land to make worker-owned, ecological and inclusive food forests: the Post Plantation. In the midst of this land, they have built a museum: the White Cube.
Credits
The Balot NFT is created by CATPC and supported by Human Activities.
Human Activities takes care of the technical, legal, and financial production.
All sale proceeds and resale royalties, minus gas fees, go to CATPC for the acquisition and restoration of land.
Presented in the context of the STARTS4Africa project. STARTS4Africa has received funding from the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology under grant agreement No. LC-01960720.
