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Right now on a 50-foot screen in the lobby of the Museum of the Moving Image in New York, blockchain is being used to hide things from you. […] In a medium that has spent a decade insisting that everything should be on-chain, verifiable, and transparent, a museum installation is using those same tools to argue that some things should stay opaque.

Deep Dive: “To Be Perceived, Against Evil” at MoMI

Artists: Linda Dounia (Senegal, b. 1994) and Rhea Myers (UK, b. 1973) Venue: Museum of the Moving Image, Schlosser Media Wall, New York Dates: May 14 through August 2, 2026 Series: MoMI x Tezos: Blockchain as Art (2025-2026 cycle)

The third installation in MoMI’s expanded partnership with the Tezos Foundation. The work borrows its conceptual framework from Edouard Glissant’s “right to opacity” — the Martinican philosopher’s argument that people, cultures, and forms of knowledge do not need to become fully visible, translatable, or explainable in order to survive. Glissant developed this in Caribbean Discourse (1981) and Poetics of Relation (1990), writing: “We demand the right to opacity for everyone.” He opposed opacity to transparency, arguing that the demand for transparency is often a demand to possess, objectify, and extract.

How It Works

  • The media wall starts submerged in blur
  • Passersby are encoded as encrypted branching data — trees function as both visual metaphor and literal data structure
  • Tezos smart contracts decrypt “proof of presence” to select which images to un-blur
  • Single visitors reveal only fragments; groups that stay together bring more into view
  • What stays blurred is what the work intentionally withholds

The Artists’ Frameworks

Linda Dounia connects opacity to her research with the Serer community in Senegal, whose cosmology centers five sacred trees tied to creation, burial, ancestry, and memory. Some of those trees have not been sighted for decades — absence itself becomes part of the work. She asks: “How to honor the communities, stories, languages, and forms of care without turning them into material for extraction?” Dounia was recognized on TIME’s 2023 AI 100 list for her work on speculative archiving.

Rhea Myers connects opacity to the double-edged nature of trans visibility and the systems that demand proof, categorization, and exposure. Her practice asks what it means to prove existence without surrendering entirely to the proof. Myers has used blockchain as an artistic medium since 2014 and has exhibited at Buffalo AKG Art Museum, HEK Basel, and ArtScience Museum Singapore.

Why This Matters

This is a fundamentally different use of blockchain than what the crypto art space has normalized. Most blockchain art uses the chain as a record — a ledger of ownership, provenance, existence. Transparency is the selling point. “To Be Perceived, Against Evil” inverts that logic. The smart contracts aren’t documenting; they’re gatekeeping. The blockchain isn’t making things visible — it’s deciding what remains hidden, and under what conditions.

The Broader MoMI x Tezos Program

MoMI and Tezos expanded their partnership for 2025-2026, running through January 2027. Five artist pairs cycle through the Media Wall:

  1. Nov 2025 - Feb 2026: James Bloom and Gottfried Jager
  2. Feb - May 2026: Sarah Friend and Yehwan Song
  3. May - Aug 2026: Linda Dounia and Rhea Myers
  4. Aug - Oct 2026: Jonas Lund and Yoshi Sodeoka
  5. Oct 2026 - Jan 2027: FA2 Fellowship selected artists

Each commission is accompanied by a free process image minted on Tezos via objkt. The partnership also includes a “FA2 Fellowship” — virtual educational sessions on smart contracts and creative blockchain applications.

Glissant’s Right to Opacity: Context

Edouard Glissant (1928-2011) was a Martinican writer, philosopher, and literary critic. His concept of opacity is a response to Western universalism and the colonial impulse to reduce other cultures to knowable, transparent objects. Key formulations:

  • “It is impossible to reduce anyone, no matter who, to a truth he would not have generated on his own.”
  • “Widespread consent to specific opacities is the most straightforward equivalent of nonbarbarism.”
  • Opacity is not ignorance — it’s a tool for respect, humility, and a different mode of understanding he called donner-avec (“giving-with”)

Sources: movingimage.org/event/to-be-perceived-against-evil | momixtezos.art | Glissant, Poetics of Relation (University of Michigan Press, 1997) | tool-shed.org/resource/edouard-glissants-right-to-opacity

Topics Researched But Not Cast About

1. PostParams: Art Blocks’ On-Chain Configurable Parameters

PostParams are on-chain configurable parameters that let artworks evolve after minting. Artists define what parameters exist, how they can be changed, and who can make changes. First debuted with Jiwa’s DDUST collection (July 8, 2025) on OpenSea. Three pillars: collector participation (DDUST has 32 color palettes from Marfa photographs), artist collaboration (evolving works with updates and seasonal changes), blockchain partnership (art responds to live on-chain Ethereum data — DDUST “dust storms” triggered by blockheight, occurring 1-2x per year per piece). Notable projects: Quine (Larva Labs), Gas Wars (Jack Butcher), LIFT (Snowfro), Send/Receive (Snowfro), Diggly Collects All (DCA).

Rejected because: Already covered PostParams in the Art Blocks Curated closing cast (June 16). While DDUST is a fresh implementation, the underlying technology was already discussed.

Sources: artblocks.io/articles/postparams-debuts-jiwa-opensea-living-art | docs.artblocks.io/protocol/postparams | opensea.io/blog/articles/in-conversation-with-jiwa

2. Art Blocks x OpenSea Marfa Residency: Manuel Larino

Manuel Lariño announced as second artist in the Art Blocks x OpenSea residency program (May 30, 2025). His 2023 release Forecast recreated a weather system within the algorithm.

Rejected because: Residency announcement is procedural. Jiwa’s DDUST (first residency artist) is more developed but PostParams angle was already covered.

Sources: artblocks.io/articles/art-blocks-opensea-artist-residency-manuel-larino-marfa

3. “Infinite Images: The Art of Algorithms” at Toledo Museum of Art

Survey exhibition covering 24 artists across 64 years (1961-2025), from Josef and Anni Albers through Vera Molnar to Tyler Hobbs and Dmitri Cherniak. Curated by Julia Kaganskiy. Through November 30, 2025. Frieze review noted it “risks verging into techno-utopia” with its pioneer narrative.

Rejected because: Opened July 2025, reviews circulating since August. Not breaking news. Vera Molnar/Art Blocks connection was covered in the Sotheby’s Gen Art Program cast (June 14).

Sources: rightclicksave.com | detroitartreview.com | lerandom.art/editorial/infinite-images-finite-control | frieze.com

4. Le Random: $8M Seed for Generative Art Institution

Raised $8M seed (Metaversal, RockawayX, Collab+Currency) to build a permanent digital generative art collection across Tezos and Ethereum. Founded by thefunnyguys and Zack Taylor. Advisors include Anne Spalter, Georg Bak, Jason Bailey/Artnome.

Rejected because: Announcement from March 2025. Not breaking. Covered extensively on Farcaster.

Sources: artplugged.co.uk | jingdailyculture.com

5. “Contingent” — James Bloom x Gottfried Jager at MoMI

First installation in MoMI x Tezos 2025-2026 cycle (Nov 2025 - Feb 2026). Jager coined “generative photography” in the late 1960s. Bloom transposed 1967 pinhole photographs into blockchain-controlled digital art. Interactive at contingent.live.

Rejected because: Installation ended in February 2026. Mentioned in cast as context for the current installation.

Sources: contingent.live | movingimage.org/event/contingent/

6. fxhash 2.0: Entangled and Multichain Expansion

fxhash 2.0 adds Ethereum support alongside Tezos. Entangled by Bjorn Staal is the flagship cross-chain project — particle orbs synchronize between browser windows via localStorage. Went viral: 10M+ impressions, 970K likes.

Rejected because: Launch announced in 2023, covered extensively on Farcaster. Not fresh.

Sources: fxhash.xyz/article/entangled:-the-story | nftnow.com | nftculture.com

7. Blockchain Art Preservation: “81 Horizons” Risk Assessment

Academic risk assessment of Rafael Rozendaal’s “81 Horizons” (2021) using the Brokerhof method. Key finding: NFTs are NOT the artwork — they’re transactional metadata pointing to external assets. Blockchain does not equal preservation.

Rejected because: Already covered in the “digital art vanishing” cast (June 23). Same thesis, supporting academic material.

Sources: resources.culturalheritage.org/emg-review/ | medium.com/@wac-lab/ | artdependence.com

8. Art Blocks Marfa Weekend 2025

Fifth annual gathering, October 16-19, 2025. Five-year anniversary celebration. Over 700 guests in 2024.

Rejected because: Announcement from February 2025. No fresh news.

Sources: artblocks.io/articles/art-blocks-marfa-weekend-2025

  1. Blockchain as creative material, not just infrastructure. The MoMI series explicitly frames blockchain as a medium for art, not a sales channel. This mirrors a broader shift — the Met launching Art Links, ZKM running restoration workshops, TGAM expanding in Barcelona.

  2. Post-colonial and identity frameworks entering on-chain art. Dounia’s work with Serer cosmology and Glissant’s opacity doctrine represents conceptual depth the space has lacked. The philosophical frameworks are catching up to the technology.

  3. Museums building dedicated blockchain art programs. MoMI/Tezos is running a two-year commissioning cycle. Toledo Museum mounted a major survey. The Serpentine, Musee d’Orsay, LAS Art Foundation, Francisco Carolinum all have Tezos-based programs. This is institutional infrastructure, not one-off exhibitions.

  4. Transparency vs. opacity as the defining tension. A decade of crypto art has been built on transparency — public ledgers, verifiable ownership, immutable records. The emergence of opacity as a deliberate artistic stance in blockchain work is a philosophical counter-movement.