Krista Kim on Bringing NFTs to Art Basel Miami | NFTS.WTF Interview

NFTS-WTF Interviews
Written By David Cash

Krista Kim explains why NFTs took over Art Basel Miami Beach in 2021 and why she brought Continuum, her gradient light installation, to the public as a message of decentralization and wellness.Interviewed by David Cash. Book David to host, moderate, or speak: https://davidcash.ca

Krista Kim is a digital artist and the founder of the Techism movement. David Cash sat down with her for NFTS.WTF at the Sagamore Hotel in Miami Beach during Art Basel Miami Beach in December 2021, in front of Continuum, the installation that had already shown in Toronto and China. They talk about showing digital art as public art, an augmented reality intervention by SuperRare artists at the convention center, meeting the NFT community in person after two years of Twitter and Clubhouse, collaboration in Web3, and her plan for a Continuum world tour.

Watch on YouTube

Chapters

  1. 00:00 Welcome to NFTS.WTF from Miami
  2. 00:33 Continuum at the Sagamore Hotel
  3. 01:21 Continuum as public art
  4. 02:36 A busy Art Basel week
  5. 02:49 The AR intervention at the convention center
  6. 04:13 Meeting the NFT community in real life
  7. 05:42 Why NFT culture is being taken seriously
  8. 07:27 Collaboration and open source in Web3
  9. 09:46 What's next: an auction and a Continuum world tour
  10. 11:09 The gradient as a symbol of decentralization

Speakers

  • David Cash, interviewer and editor-in-chief, NFTS.WTF
  • Krista Kim, digital artist and founder of the Techism movement

Key topics

  • Continuum as a public art installation in Toronto, China, and Miami Beach
  • NFTs at Art Basel Miami Beach 2021, the first edition since the pandemic
  • Augmented reality art from SuperRare artists
  • Krista Kim's collaboration with The Fabricant on a digital fashion piece
  • The NFT community moving from Twitter and Clubhouse to real life
  • Decentralization and the empowerment of creators
  • Collaboration between artists, collectors, and promoters in Web3
  • Miami as a hub for crypto culture

In their words

"I just want to get the message out there that we should live with optimism and hope for the future." Krista Kim

"I think especially if you're creating beautiful art these days, it's a team effort." Krista Kim

How to cite

APA: Cash, D. (2021). Krista Kim on bringing NFTs to Art Basel Miami [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/Rn6R43V2AsM

Chicago: Cash, David. "Krista Kim on Bringing NFTs to Art Basel Miami." Recorded December 2021, Sagamore Hotel, Miami Beach. YouTube video, 11:51. https://youtu.be/Rn6R43V2AsM.

Recording details

Recorded December 2021 at the Sagamore Hotel, Miami Beach, during Art Basel Miami Beach. Original release: NFTS.WTF. This edition: archival re-release with chapters and captions, 2026.

About the series

NFTS.WTF was a Web3 culture publication and interview series edited by David Cash, covering artists, collectors, and builders during the 2021–2022 NFT boom. It ran for two years and closed after a board decision by the NFTS DAO, which left many of its interviews unpublished.

Transcript

Machine-transcribed and reviewed. Timestamps link to the moment in the video.

[0:11] Welcome back to NFTS.WTF. My name is David Cash, and we are here in sunny Miami, Florida, at the Sagamore Hotel for Good Basil, and I am joined with one of my dearest friends, metaverse pioneer, artist extraordinaire, founder of the Tech is a Movement, Krista Kim. How are you doing today, Krista? Thank you so much for being here. Wonderful, thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here with you, darling. Such a pleasure, and of course, doing this in front of Continuum, the next leg of the tour. We've seen it in Toronto, we've seen it in China, and now we're here at Art Basil, experiencing it right here, right here in the flesh. I'm so happy to be here at the Sagamore Hotel. They've been so hospitable, and I love the way that they really embrace the arts, and are really so supportive of having artists do installations here. They're really wonderful. Yeah, and it's so amazing to travel and come and see your art at this scale all over the world. Thank you so much,

[1:00] really. It's such a pleasure. And you know, I mean, it's wonderful that I'm actually bringing this message of decentralization and healing and wellness to the gradient, and bringing it to Miami during this really incredible, historic Art Basil, actually. Absolutely, absolutely. NFTs are taking over this year, as we have witnessed firsthand. And I think one of the most powerful things about this piece in particular is the public art element, seeing people interact with it IRL. And obviously, we saw that in Toronto in a very specific context, but how has it been bringing it into an open atmosphere and seeing people interact with it in party settings during the day, at lunches? How has it been for you seeing it this time in Miami? Well, you know, this is the thing. I think that overall, I just want to get the message out there that we should live with optimism and hope for the future, and have that sort of decentralized movement moving forward.

[1:54] You're right, it's all about NFTs right now, and NFTs have really taken over Art Basil in a major way. I'm also involved in the NFT Now curated show for Christie's, and I'm with some incredible artists, like really, really top-notch. And it's been such an incredible sort of, how can you say this? All of us know that we're part of a greater movement. And the fact that I'm here, the fact that we're here during a very historic time, post-COVID, the first Miami Basil that's opened since two years. It's, yeah, this is gonna be written about in history. That's right, and the artists that have shown during this period of Art Basil, it's really written in history, so it's a real honor. That's beautiful, and you have absolutely been very busy this week. You had this installation, you had, like you just mentioned, the Christie's NFT Now, there was the SuperRare Monolith, and we had, of course, our little takeover of the Miami Convention Center. Exactly. Do you

[2:50] want to tell the people what we did, our intervention here at Art Basil 2021? Oh, absolutely. So basically, it's a collaboration between SuperRare and Super World App, and Super World App is the internet of augmented reality. So what we've done is we have chosen 15 SuperRare artists who have created AR art sculptures that were placed in augmented reality on the SuperRare App to view inside the Miami Convention Center. So it's very interventionalist, it's very cheeky. Absolutely. It's very NFT. I think that it's a wonderful intervention that shows that we're here and we're not going away, and the level of the art and the curation is so beautiful. It's such an honor to collaborate with Fabricont on my piece, actually. We created a beautiful piece where they created the fashion, and my art was actually used as part of the fabric design and everything. It was beautiful. It's historic, actually. That's

[3:48] another really special piece, and we have incredible artists like Marjan Moghadam, like Kenny Schecter, so many artists. Federico Clappis, everyone in that show is really a legend. Absolutely, and I feel like that experience was very much a metaphor for what's going on here. NFTs are taking over Art Basel. Our announcement article of this was NFT Basel. There even was an event, NFT Basel, and of course, on top of all of your art installations, you got to speak on so many different panels. Do you have any highlights from the week? Anything, any conversations that you had that really stuck out to you from this past week? I think that there's a lot of solidarity in the community. I love to see that everyone from moving from virtual space on Twitter to real-life space, I think that there's so much camaraderie, friendship, connecting as human beings in person. It's a very spiritual space.

[4:42] Everyone is so friendly and open, and when you meet them in person, it's really special. We're part of a larger community, and you feel it when you meet each other face-to-face and you're in a place like NFT Basel and you're seeing all the faces of people that you've seen on Twitter online, and then you connect, and the human connection in person, in real life, can never be replaced by Twitter Spaces or Clubhouse. But think about it. There's no icebreaker. We just know each other, and I think it's really special that we have this amazing pioneering group of people, incredible, talented people, here in Miami. And it's only going to get bigger and bigger every year. This is just the beginning. And I mean, seeing companies like Tezos sponsoring Art Basel and seeing other huge organizations really just taking over the city and being so relevant in this time where the whole traditional entertainment industry comes together, and the fact that NFTs are being

[5:44] written about more than traditional art, I would say, from a lot of the major publications. How has it been for you, seeing this art form now taken so seriously as it's grown over the past year? Well, you know, I like to look at it more as sort of like the introduction of NFTs and the culture of NFTs, meaning decentralization, and empowerment of creators, empowerment of the sovereign human. I think this whole cultural movement is really growing and the awareness of it. And art is always the first, I guess, introduction. It's accessible. It's accessible, and it really expresses the zeitgeist, you know, the feelings and the expression of what's happening today. So it's really quite exciting. I really encourage everyone to go check out the NFT now and the Christie's auction sale show. You've got super rare artists, you've got 33 NFTs, you've got so many incredible collectors that are showing their masterpieces in the NFT world. And it's such a stark contrast

[6:45] to the traditional art exhibition of Miami Basel in the Convention Center. Because I feel like when you're in the NFT show, it's so now, and everything is going digital, and now into the metaverse. So... It feels more relevant. You have to check it out. Yes, exactly. It really does. And you know it's the future too. You feel like, wow, this is the art of the future, and the message of the future, and the culture of the future. And it's really amazing seeing so many of us early metaverse builders and participants being able to come here in person. And I said the same thing in New York, but it really feels like this is the metaverse. We are bringing the metaverse to these physical locations. And it's really incredible. And you touched on this briefly, but I wanna bring it up again, the openness of the space. And I really attribute that to the open source nature of information, of art, of communities. And the fact that we can

[7:38] learn from each other and grow together and kind of discover these emerging leading edge technologies as a group. So how has collaboration and this kind of open source aspect of the space, how important has that been for you and your practice? Oh my goodness, it's everything. I think especially if you're creating beautiful art these days, it's a team effort. I think that in the space also you can't do it alone. You have relationships with the collectors, you have relationships with the artists, you have relationships with the promoters, the people who are actually there like yourself, really advocates for the space and helping promote the art, helping promote the culture. So we need each other. The interdependence and the collaboration is really a beautiful thing to see in Web3. I mean, this is what it's all about. You see Miami is really a hub for like cryptocurrencies.

[8:32] You've got even in the Sagamore Hotel, you have like a conference on cryptocurrencies. It's the future. The crypto revolution is here. And we are, as artists, we are the ones who are really pivotal in creating culture for Web3. So it's special. I mean, I get goosebumps sometimes and I think about how important this time is right now in Miami and what we see and what we're witnessing, the conversations and the relationships that we're making right now. These are people you're gonna collaborate with to actually create the pioneering forces of the future. It's really incredible. Absolutely. And it's such a lovely thing where we are right now where our collectors, our collaborators, the people that we work with are the community that we are working for and with. And we've really like reached a point where all of these roles almost blend together.

[9:28] And we've built a real community here and each of our communities are interoperable as is the space. So I think it's really exciting and you are definitely one of the pioneers pushing this space forward. So I appreciate you. I know a lot of people watching appreciate you. And yeah, I don't wanna take up too much more of your time but just to summarize and let people know, what do you have going on? What's for sale right now? Where should people, what should people Google to see what Krista Kim is up to right now? Well, I have two major things that are going on right now. The first is that I've listed a piece for auction in Christie's that has already reached its reserve price. And my Continuum installation is here until Sunday. And the plan is basically to create and produce a world tour of Continuum. So it's a wonderful experience here to show it at the Sagamore. We had the mayor, Mayor Gilbert of South Beach here and the owner of the hotel,

[10:23] Ronnett Newman, you know, really, they hosted a beautiful brunch here for the community. It's an annual event. But I mean, it was so nice to be here and to be, you know, the marquee artwork of the event and to, you know, to showcase it. And more eyes on the art, it's better to spread the word. And I really love giving a speech and talking about decentralization and the vision for a decentralized future and how Continuum is bringing meditativeness, wellness around the world and how we went from, you know, Toronto to China to Miami and beyond. So that's a great admission. And it's, I'm getting a lot of support for it too. It's wonderful. Absolutely. I'll use your words to wrap us up, but the gradient is the symbol of decentralization. And that's why I got my nails done in the same as Continuum, so.

[11:17] Yes, he's got a Krista Kim nail. It's beautiful. Krista Kim nail, it's amazing. Well, it's such an honor. I'm so happy we're here in front of your speech. It's so beautiful to see it again. Thank you, love. And yeah, it's been a pleasure. Thanks for making the time. Oh no, of course. Anything for you, David. Love you. I love you too. As always, we're here with NFTS.WTF. This was Krista Kim and David Cash. Thank you so much. Bye from Miami. Take care.

David Cash https://www.davidcash.ca