memee

fig. 063 — the painter

memee is my passion project. i’m creating new artworks every day, and i don’t plan to stop. ever.

for freedom

so far, memee has been —

a wizard

a spy

a lifter

a gamer

a viking

a painter

a chef

a burrito

a traffic light

a captain

golden

an avocado

01
no mouth.
it says everything with its eyes and its posture.
02
blue goes on first.
in patches, never all over. the white is the paper.
03
red is the face.
burning with passion, from the inside
04
it is never finished.
there will be another one tomorrow.

fig. 114 — new glasses

the thought process

memee manifesto — original post

memee is a real-time reflective art study of internet memes, freedom, and what happens when culture becomes commodity

what if creating art for a living could just be free?
not free because it has no value
free because nobody has to give you permission to make itfree because nobody has to approve it before somebody else can see itfree because an idea can leave one human somewhere in the world and immediately arrive in the hands of another
and maybe make them smilemaybe make them thinkmaybe make them feel a little less alone
the freedom to create something beautiful or something stupid
something profound or something completely meaninglesssomething technically perfect or deliberately crudesomething that takes six months or six minutessomething nobody understands except you
but throughout history, artistic freedom has almost always come with intermediariescommissioned work means somebody else ultimately decides what they are willing to pay for
galleries decide what deserves a wallcollectors decide what deserves a pricedealers, agents, platforms and marketplaces take their sharesmarketing determines what gets attentionalgorithms determine what gets seen
and sometimes the artist gradually learns not to create what they want to create, but what
they believe somebody else wants to buy
every intermediary takes a little piece of the pie
not only financially
sometimes creativelysometimes emotionallysometimes without anybody even noticingmemee is an experiment in what happens when some of those walls disappear
today an artist can make something at a kitchen table, photograph it with a phone and show it to someone on the other side of the planet a few seconds later
platforms like X turned the timeline into a global exhibition that never closes doors
there is no opening night, guest list nor correct language to considerno requirement to know somebody who knows somebody
the internet does not eliminate borders, censorship, cultural restrictions or social expectations
but it can make them considerably harder to contain an idea within
low-cost, low-barrier cryptocurrency networks make it possible not only to share something globally, but to build open economic structures around young communities of likeminded people
suddenly the distance between
i made something
and
we can participate in this thing together
becomes remarkably small
that deserves to be explored as an artistic medium in itself
because memee is not simply artwork advertising a memecoinand the memecoin is not simply merchandise attached to the artwork
the relationship between the two lies at the core of the experiment
before so many other things were
long before crypto communities existed, memes were already crossing bordersa badly compressed image could travel from a forum in one country to a teenager’s computer thousands of kilometres away
someone changed the captionsomeone drew another versionsomeone combined it with something completely unrelatedsomeone reposted it
nobody really knew who owned the joke anymore
and somehow that was part of its beauty
over more than a decade, generations of internet culture accumulated their own visual language
rage facespepedogewojaksbadgerscatsstick figuresreaction images
characters drawn terribly in microsoft paint
thousands of tiny cultural artifacts that probably should never have meant anythingyet somehow did
they connected people who had never met
people from completely different countries, cultures, social classes and lives understood the same joke
that matters
there is something deeply human about collectively messing around
sometimes the internet does not need another argumentsometimes it needs a stupid little drawing that makes someone laugh at two in the morning
memee is inspired by that tradition
with ai we are now entering a very different chapter in arts
for centuries, we developed fairly stable ideas about artistic skill
someone spent decades learning how to paintsomeone mastered photographysomeone learned animation frame by framesomeone developed an unmistakable visual language over an entire lifetime
skill was scarce because skill required time
now a person can describe something they imagine and watch a machine help turn that thought into an image
that changes things
the borders between original and derivative, handmade and generated, inspiration and imitation, author and tool are becoming increasingly difficult to define
questions around intellectual property become harderquestions around authenticity become harder
even the meaning of artistic skill becomes harder
something valuable can undoubtedly be lost in that transition
but something extraordinary can also be gained
someone who cannot draw can suddenly communicate visually
a painter can explore a hundred compositions before touching a canvasa photographer can imagine impossible lightinga child can build worlds
a person with almost no money can experiment with tools that would once have required a studio, a team and expensive equipment
ai does not have to be the end of human creativity
it can also become another instrument inside it
an uncommon new paintbrush
and perhaps the interesting question is no longer simply
who made this?
but also
who imagined it?
why did they make it?what did they choose?what did they reject?
and what did it make another human being feel?
memee deliberately experiments with that uncertainty
digital and physicalhuman and machine-assistedoriginal and referentialserious and ridiculous
art and meme
culture and commodity
there are things people struggle to say
sometimes because they cannot find the wordssometimes because saying them directly hurtssometimes because society tells them not tosometimes because politics, culture, family, fear or expectation makes certain emotions difficult to express
art has always offered another route
you can paint loneliness without writing
i am lonely
you can draw hope without explaining why you desperately need someyou can make something absurd when reality feels too serious
you can put a tiny character underneath an enormous moon and somehow communicate something that would take pages to explain
that is part of memee
memee does not even have a mouth
yet somehow memee can say almost anything
most lives are not lived in spectacular moments
they happen between them
waiting for the trainsitting at a deskmaking coffeelosing moneymaking money
falling in lovegetting your heart brokentrying again
walking home at nightlooking at the moon
doing something incredibly stupidrealizing you did something incredibly stupidlaughing about it eventually
and somewhere inside all of that there can be a tiny memee
sometimes victorioussometimes completely defeatedsometimes hopefulsometimes delusionalsometimes carrying a sword into an impossible battlesometimes just eating something
not every piece of art needs to change the world
sometimes changing thirty seconds of somebody’s tuesday afternoon is already worth it
that is perhaps the most important part
memee does not need a particular countrymemee does not need a particular languagememee does not need a gallerymemee does not need expensive materialsmemee does not even need to be particularly good at drawing
a few lines can be enough
a thought can be enough
an emotion can be enough
memee can be anything
for anyone
anywhere
with almost nothing
and because memee can be almost anything
perhaps memee can become almost everything
because the experiment is also about value
a painting has value because somebody believes it doesa collectible has value because people collectively agree that it doesa gallery establishes value through reputationa market establishes value through transactionsa meme establishes cultural value through attention, repetition and participationa memecoin makes that relationship unusually visible
the artwork travels
people reactpeople remix itpeople gather around it
a market forms around the same cultural object
attention, culture, community and financial speculation collide in public and in real timethat collision is fascinating
it is also unpredictable
a memecoin can go upit can go downit can become valuableit can become worthless
nothing about the existence of the art guarantees financial value
and financial value does not determine whether the art matters
that separation is important
the memee token is therefore not a promise attached to the artit is participation in the experiment surrounding it
the art can exist without the price
the community can exist beyond a chart
and the chart becomes another moving component of the artwork itself
an imperfect measurement of attention, belief, speculation, emotion and collective behavior
in that sense, memee asks a question that sits at the center of internet culture
what happens when culture becomes commodity?
not theoretically
live
there is another possibility hidden underneath all of this
a more personal one
what if the same technologies that create so much noise could give an artist more freedom?
what if sharing art directly with people around the world could finance the creation of more art?
what if community could replace some of the gatekeepers?
what if an artist could wake up and spend the day making something they actually care about?
not because somebody commissioned itnot because a gallery requested itnot because an algorithm predicted it would perform
simply because there was an idea worth exploring
there are no guarantees that this happens
there should not be
freedom has never meant certainty
it means having the possibility to choose
and perhaps financial opportunity is meaningful precisely because of what it could ultimately purchase
Time
time to thinktime to painttime to experimenttime to failtime to make ridiculous thingstime to make beautiful thingstime to be present with the people you lovetime to spend a lifetime doing something that matters to you
that is a much bigger idea than a token
maybe memee remains a little character on the internet
maybe a few people smile at it
maybe people draw their ownmaybe they paint itmaybe they remix it until nobody remembers where one version ended and another beganmaybe an internet community forms around it
maybe the experiment succeeds financiallymaybe it doesn’t
but the possibility itself is worth exploring
because nearly everything humans eventually considered important started as something that looked insignificant to somebody else
a sketcha sentencea melodya jokean ideaa little character
so memee will keep wandering through art, memes, crypto, ai, internet culture and ordinary human life
watching what happens when all of them collide
underneath the experiment is something remarkably simple
believe in freedom
believe in art
believe in creative thoughtbelieve in emotionbelieve in sharing ideasbelieve in making somebody smile
believe that technology can remove walls instead of only building new ones
believe that financial opportunity can mean more than money
believe in the possibility of spending your limited time doing something that mattersand believe that sometimes the thing that changes everything does not look important when it first appears
sometimes it is just a few lines on a piece of paper
two enormous eyes
two tiny hands
no mouth
and an entire world still waiting to be drawn
memee can be anythingfor anyoneanywhere
and maybe that means memee can change everything for you and me
never stop exploring
fucking dream!
because i do
with love from Hamburg, GermanyValentin