It’s an old myth, treasure island, but one that holds an eternal attraction. Who wouldn’t want to be the chosen one, able to locate the coordinates on a map that hides untold treasures? This is what the exhibition “Treasure Of Lima: A Buried Exhibition” is banking on, in any case. Except instead of wooden chests filled with gold coins, the buried treasure here is an amazing array of works by superstar artists like Marina Abramovic, Pierre Huyghe and Ryan Trecartin. And instead of an “X marks the spot”, aged old piece of parchment leading the way to somewhere on the Isla Del Coco, off the coast of Costa Rica, it’s instead a state-of-the-art encrypted string of code – in itself a piece of art, created by Constant Dullaart, along with a leading German security expert.
The exhibition, curated by Nadim Samman of TBA21, is also a philanthropic venture – all proceeds of the encrypted code (encased in the same Aranda\Lasch-designed chest that holds the exhibition itself deep within the Isla del Coco) will go to researching and protecting the island, a Unesco world heritage site, and some might argue, the real treasure at play here. As Sleek exclusively leaks an image to help decrypt the code from Dullaart, and ahead of the auction, which will take place in New York on November 13, we spoke to Samman and Dullaart about why the exhibition is leaking a “clue” image to help decrypt the key.
The encrypted clue.
The map is being sold via auction but you also chose to “leak” a way to hack this map. What implications does this have for the work that is being auctioned?
Constant Dullaart We would like to help the person or collective that will acquire the treasure map to come closer to potentially breaking the code, and to prevent anyone from acquiring the key or location by any other means possible. We don’t want to be asked for the key for the rest of our lives, and FYI, no single person has direct access to it anyway.
The best way to tackle the problem of decrypting this puzzle would be to create a community, and, to emphasise, this we are releasing clues about how we encrypted the map to the public. Anyone that can find the clues can sell them to the future owner of the treasure map, or of course acquire it themselves.
We have encrypted the treasure map in such a way that brute forcing it would take an unimaginable amount of time. The amount of possible keys is larger then the amount of atoms in the universe. The clues might help to single out the galaxy in which to look for the atom.
Various Artists, “Treasure of Lima: Chest and Map”. Courtesy of PHILLIPS.
So, can you tell us more about what will actually be sold, the artwork and encrytion key: “Map”, 2014?
Nadim Samman: “Map” is both a sculpture—a unique physical object whose form has been determined by the artist—and a tool or set of instructions for disclosing an “elsewhere”. On the one hand its cylindrical form serves to recall antique maps or scrolls—an explicit reference to Coco’s maritime history—while staging its unreadable script as a digital-era successor to the idiosyncratic markings inscribed on the pirate charts of legend.
On the other, this form is also a feature of the encryption system. Without any indication of where the code begins or ends it is exponentially harder to crack. Yet this “design as resistance” is contradicted by Map’s utility for the would-be code breaker, which allows the sculpture to be used as a rolling printing plate—enabling the physical transfer of data to paper by way of ink.
With “Map” our project’s dramatization of the interconnection between the physical and the informatic is in focus. These considerations raise the following questions—must “Map” be used, rather than contemplated, in order for it to achieve the status of an artwork? Or, rather, does it only remain an artwork if its functional indeterminacy is maintained? What is the treasure to which it refers?
Why did you choose to sell the “map” without the decryption key?
Constant Dullaart: This exhibition is installed as an enigma – a real life myth. It’s in the realm of the fantastic, instead of a white cube. In order to emphasise the current social relevance of encryption, needed to shield information against involuntary dissemination, we opted to involve security specialists currently active in German communication industries.
Nadim Samman: Purchasing [the decryption key] may afford the buyer a better chance of locating the “exhibition” than other persons. However, it is by no means a practical or legal guarantee of access. There is the challenge of cracking the code.
In addition, there is the issue of gaining access to the island. Given that digging for treasure is banned on Coco, this is easier imagined than achieved. In this respect the potential ownership of the buried artworks is, itself, buried beneath a set of challenges. Building in these obstacles opens up a space in which to consider questions of value. The project’s commissioner, Francesca von Habsburg puts it like this:
“What is interesting to me is the way the project raises questions about our value systems for both art and nature. How do we collect? What is an exhibition? Which is more precious, old treasure or preserving nature’s treasure? If you manage to find our buried exhibition, what have you really found? Riches, or something worth preserving for future generations?”
Various Artists, “Treasure of Lima: Chest and Map”. Courtesy of PHILLIPS.
Do you expect anyone to find the treasure?
NS: There are certainly people out there who possess the tools and abilities to mount a good effort at cracking the encryption. This is a challenge to all of them.
CD: The clues will perhaps be discovered, if someone truly gifted and ambitious rises to the challenge. Perhaps what they discover can be auctioned too.
But the actual treasure map might not be…
Text by Josie Thaddeus-Johns
The encrypted map to the Treasure of Lima will be auctioned alongside the chest on 13 November 2014 at PHILLIPS, New York.
Check out Sleek Magazine 43: Youth/Truth for an exclusive interview with Nadim Samman as part of our young curators interview series