THE BLACK HOLE OF MONEY, a theatrical play by the 0xSalon Writers’ Club, 2022.
The Art of Indifference: THE BLACK HOLE OF MONEY A theatrical play navigating parallel timelines in a world dominated by Bitcoin's proof-of-work. Project information: https://0xsalon.pubpub.org/theblackholeofmoney
Spanning the entire 21st century, we are guided by our narrator—a time-travelling cowboy—across multiple parallel timelines originating from present day events. Bitcoin mediates a game of chicken between capital, ecology and the humans who scramble to coordinate and respond to the crises it creates. Characters represent the principal stakeholders in the Bitcoin economy, and their emissaries. Faced with Earth’s quickening deterioration, Earth’s unwitting protagonists can adopt various strategies: acceleration of the quest for limitless energy, attempt to tame Bitcoin with regulation, conducting insurrectionary uprisings, or acquiescence to the new machine god.
THE BLACK HOLE OF MONEY was written by the 0x Salon Writers’ Club, with a virtual character animated by Beth von Undall, and editorial, musical, and staging input from 0xSalon Fellow Steven Warwick and Klara Kofen.
Six months in the making, the 0x Salon Writers’ Club—comprising Wassim Z. Alsindi, Habib William Kherbek, Claire Tolan, and Katharine Tyndall—have collectively prepared an iron ore d’oeuvre that will render all other plays about digital currencies effectively obsolete. The play explores four possible timelines for Bitcoin’s (and, incidentally, humanity’s) future. Can we regulate the Coin? Can we/should we fight against it? Should we give up and just keep hashing? Or, should we press the #Accelerate-or and see what happens? Only the Cowboy-Out-Of-Time narrating our coup de theatre knows for certain, and even he’s not sure which timeline to invest in. The uncertainty promises to have audiences HODLing on to the edges of their seats…
Not since the Murder of Gonzago debuted at Elsinor Castle has a group of travelling players brought forth a coup de theatre of such epochal proportions. Indeed, many of you, dear friends and colleagues have asked how it went. What we can safely say is: by all accounts, it did occur. Scattered around are fragments of documentation to whet the appetite, with video highlights to follow soon. In the meantime, perhaps a little time spent with $HASHY and the Runestone Cowboy might give you an idea of what’s coming (onstage and beyond…)
