Decentralised Embargo

2022

EnBW (client of Gazprom Germania) electricity contract, rack case, open frame server including four Nvidia 3090 GPUs, custom water loop, Ethereum Blockchain

Vertical drills break the earth's surface encountering pockets of gas, which is then extracted skywards; high-pressure streams of water, chemicals, and sand flush deep into the rock, splitting it open; allowing gas to escape; to be stored, transported, processed; pipelines stretch across large landmasses; crossing borders subject to trading agreements; delivering gas to power-plants; turning into steam under high temperatures; spinning combustion turbines generate electricity; which is then transported across local power grids to contractually designated locations; powering a hardware cluster which fires and routes electric signals and requests across a GPU- accelerated system as it generates and proofs hashes; water flushes through a closed water-loop; pumped upward into 4 plexiglass casings; absorbing heat from the silicon layered with tantalum and palladium transistors and capacitors whilst this electric input is rewarded with a crypto-currency monetary reward which is send directly to the official cryptocurrency wallet address of Ukraine to go in support to humanitarian aid. Russia has the first-highest amount of proven gas reserves in the world, with 50279 billion m³ in 2019. Today, Russia provides over a third of Germany’s energy needs – both oil (34 percent) and natural gas (35 or even 35.4 percent). In 2021, Germany received 50.7 billion cubic metres of Russian gas.

The gallery in Berlin, Germany, where the installation was initially exhibited in May 2022, was requested by the artist to sign an electricity supply contract with the energy provider EnBW. While it is one of the largest energy companies in central Europe, it is also known for being a client of Gazprom Germania, a daughter company

To main page ↩

of a major Russian state-owned multinational energy corporation ranked as the largest publicly listed natural gas company in the world. EnBW generates electricity supplied to the German market by burning Russian fossil fuels. Burned gas creates heat which powers a turbine, its rotation then spins a generator which eventually creates electricity. This electricity is then supplied to an ultra-powerful computing server set up by the artist as part of his exhibition in the Berlin-based gallery. The hardware components include four high-end graphic cards which perform the energy-consuming algorithmic process of validating blocks on the Ethereum blockchain. Or in other words, the machine runs a cryptocurrency mining operation throughout the entire duration of the exhibition. Such a process of computational network participation is rewarded with Ethereum tokens, tradable at their current market price. While the machine is mining, these tokens are being regularly transferred to the official Ethereum wallet address for cryptocurrency donations to the government of Ukraine, an invaded country at war (the announcement tweet from an official account of Ukraine’s government is also displayed on a small screen included in the installation). Via this chain of events and the gallery installation, the artwork suggests a strategic diversion at perhaps the largest issue within the European economies today - dependence on Russian fossil fuels as a source of energy and infrastructural necessity despite the apparent misalliance with Russian outward politics, its current geopolitical agenda regarding Ukraine's political inclination towards Europe, and the resulting catastrophic and atrocious armed conflict.