MaHKUscript’s 2019 issue Whatever Speculation will focus on a key-concept in the history of artistic thinking, i.e. speculation. Nowadays speculation has been devalued to a mere one-dimensional, economic meaning. It seems that speculative thought about both future forms of knowledge and solutions to problems surrounding existence and social viability has made way for an almost self-evident resignation in the present moment and the status quo, producing a blurred view of complex issues that characterize the here and now. For that reason it is extremely urgent to reconsider different and alternative connotations of speculation and bring them up to date.
This paper analyses the performativity of the sociotechnical imaginaries that the online communities interested in blockchain applications (e.g., cryptocurrencies) construct through the memes they share, in the context of a crisis of truth and amid pervasive precarity. These memes adopt a subcultural language that is a mix of financial jargon and blockchain slang, neither building on the established codes of the regulated financial sector nor belonging fully to the colloquial nature of internet banter. Through them, the community collectively constructs ways to overcome the fundamental uncertainty that traverses all aspects of contemporary life – housing, precaritisation of labour, political ruptures, etc – by doubling down on them. Financial speculation is no longer reserved to those with disposable income but becomes a tactic for survival in a scene that actively destabilizes information for competitive market advantage. Through the use of repeated memetic subcultural phrases, blockchain memes blur the difference between fact and fiction in an effort to reconcile the extreme volatility of cryptocurrencies with the neoliberal conviction that the market is always right. As a result, no one is trustworthy, individualism takes on a new dimension, and what Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou calls a “speculative community” arises. Ultimately, this case study highlights how the iterative and distributed character of memes supercharges the normative character of performativity.
