Maarten Vanden Eynde

Blockchain (2022), Art Brussels, Meessen Gallery, Brussels, Belgium (photo: Maarten Vanden Eynde)

Blockchain (2022), Art Brussels, Meessen Gallery, Brussels, Belgium (photo: Maarten Vanden Eynde)

Blockchain is a ball and chain sculpture covered by lead printing press letters and symbols for the same presentation. Like a prisoner chain, it represents the weight of the invention of writing that humans carry with them wherever they go. At the same time, it visualizes the self-inflicted restriction that arises when writing is seen as a dividing marker between history and prehistory, between literate societies and illiterate societies. Looking at the use of letters or printable symbols as a barrier between different eras instead of a link in an evolutionary chain makes one a self-convicted prisoner with a limited reach and, consequently, understanding. When Theuth, the father of letters, presented Thamus, the mythical Pharaoh of Upper Egypt, with the remarkable invention of writing as an elixir for memory and wisdom, he replied: “... this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are not part of themselves will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have invented an elixir not of memory but of reminding...” (attributed to Socrates, in Plato’s Phaedrus, 370 BC). Although visualized as a burden humans have carried with them since they invented writing, Blockchain also alludes to the long and interconnected sting of evolution of abstract symbols that emerged around 100.000 years ago in South Africa and eventually led to the many different alphabets that are currently in use.