NFT as Joke

Once a meme cycle picks up steam, things get meta: you start seeing iterations that refer to the format itself, instead of using it as a vehicle to joke about something else. In art such reflexivity can pass as high-modern medium-specificity. Or it can be a joke, like when John Baldessari spelled “Everything is purged from this painting but art, no ideas have entered this work” in black acrylic on canvas. In 1996 theorist Lev Manovich sent a provocative missive to Rhizome’s ema