Making a Statement About NFTs Through a Kickstarter Campaign

Can a crowdfunding campaign be art? Let’s find out.

Rick Kitagawa (he/him)
7 min readApr 5, 2021
My latest art project / Kickstarter campaign rolled into one

Yes, there are a bajillion articles about NFTs now, as they’re the hot new thing that is poorly understood, often mischaracterized, and completely oversaturated right now.

As an artist who works both digitally as well as traditionally, I think that NFT’s are super interesting, yet was also concerned at the huge energy costs associated with them and Proof-of-Work cryptocurrencies (ie. Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc.) in general.

I wanted the campaign itself to be the art piece.

So I created a Kickstarter campaign that hawks NFTs — but physical ones. In the past, I’ve made monster-themed enamel pins, but for this campaign I wanted the campaign itself to be the art piece. In this case I’m selling a series of limited-edition, numbered, sustainably-produced wooden pins (think enamel pins, but texture-less and printed on wood), as well as Certificates of Authenticity signed by “Blockchain” (a person, not a piece of technology), and one-of-a-kind, hand-embellished versions of the main pin design.

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Rick Kitagawa (he/him)

Amzn best-selling author talking trust, leadership, #NFTs, creativity, and horror fiction — Co-Founder, https://spotlighttrust.com. https://rickkitagawa.com