Oscar Qvale

Exotic Assets

If you were to have a conversation with Oscar Qvale, chances are you would end up talking about magic internet money. You have certainly heard about it, you probably know it is about coinage of some sort, perhaps even that it is some kind of a shady network business.

But this lingering on decentralised governance systems is not so much a geek world’s obsession or enthusiasm for a better future for Qvale, but rather an entry point to think about the immense materiality of the networked infrastructures supporting our existence. This materiality is not relying only on the subsea cables, processors and radio waves, butdelves deeper onto the subatomic levels of matter.

This however is only one part of the two-fold system singled out by Qvale. The second one which surrounds us – money, finances and economy – are phenomena as hard to keep in steady focus for further comprehension as the first one is.

These two systems merge together, intertwine and interlace to create new conditions for life. Our contemporary struggles are online, hidden deep down in the abstract forests of data, as much as they are away from the keyboard.

With his filmic works Qvale takes us on a journey all the way down: in time – all the way to the birth of the universe, in matter – to the atoms of gold, and in terms of information – to the bits of data stored on our devices.