Rust Belt #4

Created using demolition explosives on the ruins of the river-side rust belt area where the artist was born and raised, this project is made possible through the use of a lens of a ballistic camera that films at 2000 frames per second. The 150 seconds of the video in fact represent only two seconds, the time it took to create the artwork and then ensure its complete destruction. A lifespan that serves as a metaphor of the natural cycle of everything that exists in the universe, a cycle of creation, destruction and new creation, driving us forward on a continuous path of doors that are wide open, and many others that are tightly closed. Ironically, a Non-Fungible Token (NFT) represents an ideal way to not only document but also eternalize this work. The portrait is based on archive pictures of workers from the factory that once stood here, and which at its height employed a workforce of over 30.000 people. It pays homage to them all, but is also a testament to ephemerality, even of the most enormous and complex industrial infrastructures created to produce what societies think is the best for us. Crystallizing this artwork in an NFT proves that a new digital industrial era is approaching at full speed, in a timeframe and territory where our presence will be progressively less evid…