Mothership

2013. Video (color, sound), media player, screen or projector, 15 min. Edition of 3, 1AP. Music by Evan Samek.

Conflating references from art history, video games, and popular culture, Mothership is a journey through fantastical, corporate-branded landscapes. Both playful and ominous, Mothership satirizes systems of power, wealth, and technology, inviting viewers into a seductive yet hollow simulation where meaning’s don’t quite materialize.

Photo of video installation Mothership by Jonathan Monaghan, projected in dark museum space, showing robotic figure dancing against blue night sky.

installation view from The Real Thing, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung City, Taiwan, 2015

Still from Mothership by Jonathan Monaghan, showing a robotic figure dancing against a night sky under a disco ball and gold crown.

Still from Mothership by Jonathan Monaghan, showing a jet engines against a yellow sky.

Still from Mothership by Jonathan Monaghan, showing a large cow with London skyline on its back, yellow sky.

Still from Mothership by Jonathan Monaghan, showing an operating room with luxurious black leather fabrics and wood panels.

Still from Mothership by Jonathan Monaghan, showing a spherical object of ornate historical architecture in a landscape, yellow sky.

Photo of laser-etched aluminum collector's case for Mothership, 2013, by Jonathan Monaghan, USB, crypto hash derived from bitcoin blockchain transaction on signed paper.

Relationship to Blockchain

A limited of edition of 3, 1AP, Mothership was the first artwork registered and authenticated through the experimental Keidom SPOOL (Secure, Public, Online Ownership Ledger), later called ascribe, in Fall 2013, making it one of the first artworks to use a blockchain as a decentralized ledger; a prototype for modern NFTs. Because of this, the third edition was auctioned at Sotheby’s in 2024, celebrating 10 years of blockchain related digital art.