by Gabriela Abreu
On any October afternoon, my mobile phone rang with an irrefutable invitation: to participate in an artistic residency in central Portugal with 5 other artists where the focus was on ‘words’. Even though I have an ease in writing, it had been almost 2 years since I wrote a poem. The pandemic had upset my emotions and this flow had been blocked. It was the perfect opportunity to reconnect with myself and my art.
The invitation came from Tabea, representing the MUTI collective. I had no idea what I was getting myself into, but I was very much eager to figure it out. Upon arriving this house in the middle of nature, with 5 amazing artists and MUTI representatives, empathy happened instantly, and we were all inspired to live those days with truth and delivery. MUTI representatives conducted everything exemplarily.
Everything was very organized, the (vegan) food was delicious, people were committed to the proposal: exchange and create new experiences.
The result of the week of workshops was an experimental presentation with texts and sounds presented at Prisma, in Lisbon. “I’m not fucked up anymore,” I shouted so everyone could hear.
Along with this experience that put me back on track to write my poetry, there was also a huge desire to learn how to feasibly provide artistic projects support via cryptocurrency. After all, I had earned my first payment and already had my wallet. The first steps were already taken.
It took a lot of talking to Nuno and Tabea to understand how this ecosystem works, it was a slow-paced process. My first proposal was to do a season of my poetic podcast, which was approved and allowed me to carry out this work. The season went very well and MUTI supported another season earlier this year.
With this sequence of approved projects, I came up with the idea of opening my own DAO:
I’m a cultural producer and have a large network of creative people around me. It would be great to be able to support and encourage artworks. That’s when I started the study process and went back to talking to several people from within the community and I was finally able to create with a friend the CRIATURA & BERI DAO: A DAO focused on projects for immigrants, women and Portuguese speakers.
MUTI’s role in my professional career was something unique. As a journalist and someone who’ve been working with communications for 10 years, I knew I’d need to reset my already consolidated career in São Paulo when I moved out of Brazil. But I am a borderless person and a thinker. I’m free, owner of my own time, but also extremely responsible and dedicated to any work I propose to do. Along with that, I’m a big critic of the world we live in, the way art and culture are treated with disdain and lack of opportunity to make a living from it. In short, I consider myself an entrepreneur artist and I’m proud of my determination to open paths and make my dreams come true.
Linking this story with my personality and worldview gave me confidence that joining the NEAR community would be a crucial step on my career and life. The DAO has only been active for a month, but it already builds big projects. Both MUTI collective and CUDO DAO help us a lot in this discovery process by questioning, giving tips and suggestions. I’m a believer that decentralized acting and funding, the horizontal structure on which everything is built within the community and the new possibilities Web3 brings are indeed the future.
I believe that we are at the forefront of everything that will become when we talk about economics, creativity, finances, community and project management. There is still a lot to discover and work within all the possibilities that this ecosystem, the crypto world and Web3 enables. We at CRIATURA&BERI are excited to keep on learning and developing relevant projects, as well as introducing newcomers to the ecosystem. All of this started with the push that MUTI staff gave us through an artistic residency called “Planta a Palavra”. Indeed, the word has been planted, it is now germinating and will bring us beautiful flowers and delicious fruits in the future.