Stamina (2022- )
Minted on the Ethereum and Tezos blockchains.
First launched: September 2022
<link to objkt.com>
<link to Foundation.app>
Stamina is inspired by hope and resilience in turbulent times. As well as being the word for the ability to sustain prolonged effort, stamina is also the plural of stamen, the reproductive organ of flowers.
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A recent study found that when many flower species get knocked down, they reorient themselves through rapid bending or rotation, increasing the chance of pollination. Fragile, but resilient. A bit like us.
Flowers have always played important roles in troubled times, from remembrance flowers, to flowers placed down the barrel of guns, to seeds placed in enemy soldiers’ pockets to grow in their grave. I was recently transfixed by the resilience and optimism displayed in a photograph of a woman planting flowers in war-torn Ukraine.
This series combines influences of graffiti, Chinese/Japanese calligraphy and Abstract Expressionism. It acknowledges disruption, miscommunication and turbulence through scrawls and broken lines, sometimes partially obfuscated, on digitally conceived canvases. There are seeds of hope in there too, along with flowery hues and asemic swirls which fly like seeds on a breeze. Asemic seeds on a digital battlefield.
note:
Whilst Stamina isn’t created by, or particularly representative of, nature, connecting asemic writing with nature isn’t new and my cap is doffed to Cy Twombly and Brian Clarke. Additionally, ‘Eco asemic’, as it has become known, is writing created by nature. This might be a slice of tree bark mimicing the lines of poetry (see Nancy Bell Scott), or scribbled lines in the sand by small creatures (see angela rawlings).