Tezos x SXSW 2022: Ana Maria Caballero on Poetry and the Blockchain
The Blokhaus team caught up with poet Ana Maria Caballero at Art Basel to talk about her work, and why she thinks that Tezos is an ideal platform for poetry.
350 words, 2 minute read
Ana Maria Caballero is an award-winning Colombian-American poet, and a pioneer in the use of blockchain technology as a publication and monetization platform for the written word. The Blokhaus team caught up with her at Art Basel, Basel event earlier in the summer, to talk about her work, and why she thinks that Tezos’s ‘underground vibe’ and low gas fees make it an ideal platform for poetry.
You’ll find some extracts from Ana Maria Caballero’s interview below, and you can watch the whole conversation at the top of this page.
On Tezos’s ‘underground vibe’:
What I love about Tezos is this whole underground vibe that it has, that has all of a sudden elevated it to mainstream, but [it] hasn’t lost its edge and its magic, by becoming more massive […] And I think that’s that’s to the credit of the Tezos’ ecosystem.
Why low gas fees are so important:
We think that the way [Tezos] supports artists, that they support and understand the value of community, is very important. And the whole issue with gas [fees] feels very retrograde. […] It doesn’t make sense that you are buying a piece of art, if it’s not very expensive, […] having to pay just as much to close a transaction as you [pay] for the artwork.
On poetry in real life versus the metaverse:
Poetry really is a performative, storytelling art. […] We want poetry to be a living thing, and not this two dimensional sort of quiet event that happens within a closed book […] but really have it be in real life and in the metaverse. So it’s cool to see Tezos [at] real life events too, because it just makes me even more excited about the possibilities of working together.
Click here to check out all of the in-depth interviews from Art Basel, Basel 2022.