“In China’s big cities, more & more couples are choosing not to have children. Many, instead, choose to dote lavishly on a different kind of ‘child.’” —Weilian Zhu 📸: @MatjazT noemamag.com/chinas-pet-pare…

CARPOOLERS NFTs: LEAP OF FAITH AND WRONG EXPECTATIONS In 2020, I was approached to do my first NFTs. The idea felt alien, but because of so many canceled events IRL during the pandemic, I thought, let's do it. Of course, nothing happened in terms of connecting with people in the space, and I didn't sell anything. Why? My expectations were way off and I was not approaching the NFT space with respect. Fast forward to early 2021, and I decided to try it again, and now I would inform myself of the context in which my art would work. Think of it this way: if you try to do a book thinking you select and edit like it was an exhibition or vice versa, design an exhibition as if it were a book or a website, it just doesn't translate. There are subtle differences, but they can translate wrongly if not taken into consideration. I won't go into detail about what the new perspective was and how I came to it, but one thing that was clear was that I needed to talk about the "collection" language, which in the traditional art space we call projects. I've always worked on projects, and when I first had a go at selling 1/1s randomly, the work, well, was not translating. It was when I decided to offer the work as a collection on @foundation that things changed. The crazy part of the story is that FDN didn't have collections or individual smart contracts at that time. Part of what happened with Carpoolers led to them offering this in their ecosystem. Long story short, on April 13th, 2021 (my birthday), I decided to mint my first NFTs on ETH and start building my collection even if the tools didn't offer this. The first 3 pieces were minted, then a few more on April 29th, and the May 6th and so on. The slow minting was partly because I was coming to the realization that this was a collection but nothing in the marketplace tools offered that idea. It was a leap of faith to do it. FDN team can tell this story! and how they were uncertain of me pushing the work that way and if it would work. This small story is to show how things have changed in 3 years in web3 and also to say thank you to the new collectors of 5 of the most important works of my NFT practice. You are holding the spark that led me to build @obscuradao and @fellowshiptrust! Thank you for holding these works into the future. They are REALLY important to me. Take care of them 🌟🌟