Interview with Nanu Berks
Editing: Mark Lissenberg
How did Nanu become a blockchain artist?
Nanu Berks is a prominent blockchain artist whose creativity is ignited by finding our roads back to freedom through this technology. She believes in creating large-scale public art murals/installations as efficient ways of continuing the conversations outside of the screens and keyboards.
For the past two years, Nanu has been following the blockchain conference circuit speaking, reporting, and live painting, bridging the gap between non-technical creatives and hyper-technical advances, leveraging the opportunities for self-evolving education that exist in between.
She is originally from Argentina, but as long as she can remember she has been backpacking living a nomadic lifestyle. She was born in San Juan, Argentina, a very small town and had the privilege of growing up playing in the dirt without much tv or distractions. When she was nine years old she moved to a bigger city, Cordoba and then Buenos Aires and at 13 immigrated to the US. Without any English background, and coming from a broken economic system where the Argentinian banks had stolen all of her family’s life savings, escaping and traveling became her coping mechanism.
At first, she backpacked hoping to detach from society and its rules, lived in jungles with no phone or computers and she thought she would never return to civilization. She started painted murals and busked on the street and lived an adventurous life hitchhiking across the Americas and a bit of Europe and The Middle East.
As soon as she decided to return to the city again she was hit by a truck while biking in Argentina and had a near-death experience. She had to move back to the US (Boston) where her mother was based to re-learn how to walk and reintegrate into the human experience.
After this happened, she decided to try life the conventional way and moved to Austin Texas. She became a digital nomad creating content and pr strategies for various tech companies and finally paid rent for an apartment where she lived. This move gave her the chance to confront her escapist tendencies and focus on growing some roots. Finding community and having a place to create art ongoing healed her and so the anarchist rebel in her was able to resurface with new aligned intentions and motivations of serving our collective conscious evolution.
Realizing that resisting technology meant she had to help in this very realm from within. This was the most useful of all sparks for her. She always advocated for education as self-empowerment and learning about blockchain technology as a vehicle for activism and efficient change continues to motivate her to become a better person and positive community building influencer.
Following the crypto conference circuit has brought her back to her roots. She knows to some people, especially non-technically inclined creatives, technology might not seem parallel to grounding, Genesis, beginning, however, everything we are is technologic evolution. From the most ancient plant medicines and biochemistry to blockchain decentralization for this paradigm shift. These extreme mirrors are what interest me the most, and so my visual interactive creations are based on encompassing a moment in time with the raw feeling of the energy surrounding an event or project. She intends to in this process create a visual timeline of the blockchain evolution movement as we live it.
At conferences like tokenfes.io, she enjoys creating a contemporary street art collage piece such as the one in the picture, using found objects, often brands’ stickers as a visual map of a snapshot in time. In many ways, this decentralized city of nomadic visionaries and entrepreneurs feels very similar to what she imagines was the roaring 20’s, and she feels privileged and grateful to have a voice within this transformational human experience.
She does not have the exact roadmap yet, but figuring this out is turning out to be the most fulfilling adventure she has embarked on so far. The amount of support and collaboration in this space is beautiful and she wants to help other artists discover their unique ways of living their dream-lives in ways that are abundant for themselves, as well as the healing of our planet
Did you become the first crypto artist?
Nanu thinks she is not the first crypto artists. There are already hundreds of artists in this movement using blockchain technology. There are interactive art installations and all sorts of VR experiences and how do we define what a blockchain artist is? She believes code is creative and therefore most engineers or visionaries even in ideation stage are artists as well. However, as far as traditional street art or visual art creation, she is one of the very few traveling the circuit and even fewer doing this as a full-time passion. She has a PR and branding background and made it her mission to become proficient and abundant while designing the life of her dreams. She wants to have a voice and large audiences because she truly believes she is able to help other artists free themselves in designing the lives of their dreams too.
Her life quote is: “Nothing in life is as important as life or death.”
Basically, if there is no death to mourn or life to celebrate, everything else is manageable.
What about the blockchain?
She believes in the decentralization of power and redistribution of wealth and resources. She believes in freedom of expression, compassion, innovation, and that abundance and technological progress do not have to be destructive. Blockchain technology is the vehicle for all of this to become a more tangible reality.
All technologies can be good or evil. Medicinal plants from tea to ayahuasca, can heal depression and our spirit in so many ways, yet when misused or abused they can be destructive, plants are our most ancient technologies, similarly, this blockchain evolution can be manipulated for disaster or for the healing of our planet, and we must get involved if we want to sway its use towards the positive side of the spectrum. Getting involved can be as easy as reading or listening to one video or podcast a day or a week even, just being informed, having your own opinions about this movement.
About the artist:
From a PR/branding background merging with the street art backpacker lifestyle, and a business mind, she has been studying patterns for the last eight years. It seems that many angles of profitability fit into the same containers, but no containers quite exist. This is why she aims at connecting the brands with street artists to use their marketing budgets to support genuine creativity, while donating to planet positive initiatives, and adding elements of social experiences such as events or gathering that are centered around the arts and other ways of encoding information beyond speeches and panel discussions. We need a combination of all of these.
Traction has picked up through podcasts, Steemit, YouTube, and now she is in conversation about solidifying some strong ongoing partnerships for the purpose of larger community projects, releasing her own token to fund an educational branch for other artists to learn to onboard themselves onto the blockchain, and connecting everything we do to planet positive initiatives.
She loves independent projects and is always open to creative conversations. Many of the large-scale plans we have will include collaboration with multiple brands and people so please connect @nanuberks on Steemit and twitter or @nanu_berks on Instagram or send me a mail [email protected]
Nanu is at the blockchain event Ethereal in New York on May 12th and she will be at the next token fest in Boston in September and if you want her to come to an event please send her an email and she would love to schedule it.
