EYES OF COVID / Popular and unpopular perspectives on the pandemic are usually mediated through the gaze of mass media. This keeps the focus on protagonists discussing, explaining and dealing with the health crisis through Covid-19 / SARS-Cov-2: politicians, TV hosts, virologists, writers, epidemiologists, doctors, actors, policemen, journalists etc. – but less on the common people, the ones who are most impaired by getting sick and enduring measures to contain the spread of the virus.

The photographic series EYES OF COVID, an arrangement of 270 photos taken directly from Italian TV programs (diverse talk shows, discussions and news in various channels) during 03-2020 till 10-2020 gives these eyes an visual, critical context, reducing them to close-ups without narration. It attempts to condense erratic moments of this global crisis into one tableau vivant of eyes becoming abstract viewpoints. Many of them may be famous or known to the public, a few are bystanders without a name and without a voice.

Minted as a series of 99 Non-fungible Tokens in a FA2 smart contract on the TEZOS network with a proof-of-stake consensus protocol. This means 2 Million times less CO2 emissions than with a proof-of-work blockchains like Ethereum. 98 got listed for 99TEZ (~372,23EUR) each on the platform OBJKT.COM marketplace, 1 remains in the artist´s wallet. For artistic creation and production a royalty fee of 5% got set up as part of the contract.

The funds created by the sale of the artworks will be get donated to Covid-19 relief charities like COVAX (Covid-19 Vaccines Global Access), UNICEF or WFP.org.

The series’ setup is accessible here:

https://objkt.com/asset/KT1USBjm3rSqDzDD9SuwnjAdeEvNM2jLSC35/0