Unknown Art Index (2020), printed publication and website, Helsinki Contemporary Art Center
www.unknownartindex.com
Unknown Art Index is an artist-run digital archive containing artworks by unknown artists from the collection of
the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The objects in the archive range from 2381 BC to AD 1990. Each line in this archive
is an entry for an object made by an artist who is labeled as Unknown.
The highlighted entrees are hyperlinks to the cryptographic token of the same object. Using the open access archive
made available by the Metropolitan Museum on Github, Unknown Art Index uses blockchain to transfer the ownership
of the unnamed art objects from the Museum to UnknownArtist.eth.
There is a distinction between two types of NFTs; one is a digital-born file, the other is a digitized object that
was previously physical and made into a token for archiving purposes. But in both cases, blockchain reroutes their
provenance; for both cases, once made token, the NFT is born and its provenance is made digital. The Unknown Art Index
is an archive of derivatives. In this context, the NFT is a market of archives.