dark words stain

glitch by misha de ridder, released by Fingerprints, is a collection of 50 animated GIFs, stemming from photographs of erased graffiti. The act of erasing can involve both destruction and generation, transformation and reimagination — allowing for new possibilities to emerge.

Playing with notions of loss and re-coding, misha has re-animated the graffiti, inserting liminal afterimages of what was once there: faces, text, and indecipherable symbols. The result is a series of images that blur the lines between abstract painting, photography, animation, and token art. glitch meditates on the idea of “unwanted information,” — the delineation between messages that are wanted, seen, and proliferated, and those that are not. Like memes for the public space, graffiti is a subversive, spontaneous form of communication meant for the masses.

As a commentary on secondary market dynamics, misha has also introduced a twist: each time a token is traded, the artwork changes. On the first trade, the animation vanishes. Subsequent trades cause the image to fade, until eventually, a faint residue remains.

Collectors can pay to restore the image to the minted original, or choose to burn the token to redeem it for a limited edition, physical fine art print through a collaboration with Assembly.