Mantou and the non-fungibles 

The “mantou” is the first participatory actor in our embodiment of questions around decentralized value systems. The mantou is a plain steamed bun which is a daily food staple in northern China. Its history can be traced back to a steamed bread form recorded some 2300 years ago during the period of the Warring States. Legend attributes the present name to military strategist Zhuge Liang (181-234 AD), who directed river-crossing troops to make large buns in the shape of human heads as offering to the river god. The mantou’s main ingredient is wheat, a food crop that was cultivated since 9600 BCE, and one of the most universal foods around today. 

The mantou is also our earliest and longest-staying subjects through our various art projects. We have been purchasing mantous from the same local market in Beijing since 2010. One mantou cost 0.5 renminbi (0.075 USD) in 2010. In 2020, the price reached exactly 1 renminbi (0.15 USD). Extending the possibilities of this unitary figure, we position the ubiquitous mantou to formulate spatial cognizance of value. 

How would the mantou’s value change, crossing from physicality into a digital and extended virtual universe? Its innateness is self-defined but perhaps invites us to imagine its relational margins. The pure ordinariness of the mantou exudes almost unnerving realism. Does its being differ from perception as a commodity, a rarity, a random product of creation? 

Our 88 non-fungibles

In the next phase of the DVS project, we present the work in a non-fungible token (NFT) form. For many artists and creators, NFTs have gained popularity as an alternative to traditional collectibles. Both similarly necessitate uniqueness, but have different collector profiles and gatekeepers. Realistically, a key attraction of NFTs is the relative openness of platforms for building global community support and interaction. The creator, the object, the collector, the platform, the exchange, the currency and its purposed equivalents, all become parts of the new ecosystem which draw parallels but also variance with the conventional art world.

For our inaugural DVS NFT project, we lay the fundamentals of a tiered structure with individual mantous appearing in three variations — white (80 units), silver (5 units), and gold (3 units). Each unit denotes its relative rarity in the natural world. White mantous in pre-industrial China were considered more expensive due to more processed flour, while silver and gold were found in their near-natural state since millennia ago. All together, 88, an untouchable and palindromic number is offered in its totality.