It was a powdery snowy January day and during lunchtime, I met with Lukas Amacher in Zug, to discover more of his enigma. I met Lukas for the first time at the preparation for the NFT LATE SUMMER PARTY at unpaired. NFT Gallery - a show he co-curated with Georg Bak, showcasing gems from the world-class 1of1 collection, and I was already curious to find out more about him.

Dimitria: How did your NFTs/crypto journey start?

‍Lukas: Art came earlier than crypto. I started collecting in my late teens, one of my first pieces was a Fred Sandback drawing; conceptual art always had a big place in my heart. I was always drawn to immateriality and ephemerality - I think, hence, why I became a musician later on. Music is the most ephemeral art form, it’s over the moment it’s created.

I started buying bitcoin in early 2017 - at like $1'000 or something. I caught the bug and spent a lot of time researching like all of us really. Reading papers and hanging out on Twitter. I had seen NFTs during that cycle for the first time, I followed the CryptoKitties, but it didn’t click in my head that this could be used for art too. I guess I was too much into painting at that time for it to click. When I saw NFTs the second time in 2020, things cleared up in my mind very fast.

On his background:
Lukas studied law in St. Gallen, Philosophy in Zurich and thereafter worked for Galerie Peter Kilchmann and the streaming platform Livebeats. It was through his music production efforts, that he found himself walking into the path of becoming the co-founder of Projekt Interim; a successful real estate project that offers low-cost, temporary spaces in commercial and residential properties, mostly for creatives and artists of all disciplines.

Looking back on how Projekt Interim started, Lukas says: “Interim feels like 2 lifetimes ago - I am proud of what we built, but it’s so far away. Back in 2011 I was looking for a space to build a music studio and found one in a vacant bank property in Zurich-Altstetten, where a lawyer had organised a temporary real estate project for a client of his law firm. It was a pretty huge project; 80 people in about 4’000 square metres. The success of the projects in that house eventually led an architect friend of mine, that lawyer, and myself to co-founding Projekt Interim. Interim was profitable from day 1 and we built it one project at a time. I split my time between music and Projekt Interim for many years. When I left in 2019, we had 3’000 tenants and 20 employees. I took some time to fully work on my music and made an album and a couple of EPs. It was an incredibly rewarding and beautiful time - and thanks to Covid, I ended up spending 2 years at the studio, exclusively focussing on music. Back when I had left Interim, I told myself that I would only start “a job” again if I find one that a) connects my creative interests with my entrepreneurial spirit, b) is in tech, preferably crypto, c) is structured with very flat hierarchies, and d) would allow me to travel. And so in late 2021 my current position at Dialectic popped up in my feed and while I didn’t think I would get it, I applied anyway."

The playground of NFTs: “I think that interest in interdisciplinarity is why NFTs resonate with me. The boundaries are fuzzy. The taxonomies aren’t entirely divided up and there seems to be more space to play with ideas irrespective of their specific origin.

Part of what I find so striking about NFTs is that we spend 8 hours a day on our devices and we are so influenced by the internet culture which influences everything these days, yet the internet doesn’t seem to have had a major impact on most of contemporary art, excluding the instagramification of blockbuster exhibitions.

However, if I look back at the interesting and valuable cultural artefacts of any given time, they were all products of their own times. Donald Judd’s work was interesting in the 60s because industrial production became visible everywhere and he played with those ideas. Today, that isn’t revolutionary anymore, you go to Kunstgiesserei St. Gallen - have a piece made and then  
💥 boom 💥 it’s perfect. Industrial production is not interesting anymore. But you know what is? Networked creation. And that is online. I decided a long time ago that I want to be a man of my time, and so, it’s a necessity to deal with what is now, rather than what was yesterday."‍

When asked about one of Lukas’ favourite “hidden gem” artists he responded: "None of them are really hidden and most of my dialogues are pretty interdisciplinary. I have a very close dialogue with Nina Christen, who is a shoe designer. She used to do the shoes at Bottega Veneta and now she does them at LOEWE. Nina is one of the big fashion geniuses of our time. She looks at the world in a very unique way and distils the memefied moments of our times into high-end shoes. She is a good friend and we speak very often."

Left image: Loewe's balloon pumps made of deflated balloons
Right image: Loewe’s floral heels
Both LOEWE Spring-Summer '23 created by Nina Christen
Courtesy of LOEWE

Bottega Veneta Lindo Sandals, created by Nina Christen. Photograph: Pascal Grob for annabelle

"On the art side, I really admire Sarah Friend for example. I had an incredible conversation with her in New York a couple of months ago. She often works around topics of gamification, which I think is one of the big developments of our time. She does it in a way that is native to the medium she works in (the internet). I like it when the work and the personality come together and both are super interesting."

Terraforming by Sarah Friend, Berlin (Germany). Installation picture: Simon Vogel

Ethimm LP Cover featuring artwork by Paa Joe (2021)

On the culture side: "I’m lucky to count many artists as my friends and I always kept collecting privately since my first purchase in my teens. I did some curation work here and there and I collaborated with various artists on the sound side of things. I did some soundtracking for installations and sound design. And then of course, I released my own records under my Ethimm moniker."

On his mentors Lukas says: “The mentors continually change obviously, right now Ryan (Zurrer) is a mentor. I had a mentor when I first got into art, a very eccentric collector that was into minimal, concrete and constructive art. When I started in music, I had various mentors that helped me along the way in the studio. Mentors are important, they help you grow, they help you put things into perspective. But I’ve also observed that there is a point where one has to move on from the specificity of someone else's mindset." 

“I remember this older musician telling me at the time that it is all going to take a lot longer than I would think and he was right, it took me almost 10 years to release my debut album.”

"However, I am really weary about idolising people... it seems like so many of those idol stories are more marketing than factual. The story of one's life path makes sense in retrospect, but often no sense while you’re in the moment. I can totally build a narrative as to why my position as a curator for art in crypto (or vice versa?) makes sense when looking at my personal development - but the actual path in the making feels a lot more random and strange than the story does in hindsight. So, to answer your question: I have people that I admire - but there is not a singular figure that I look up to."

‍On travelling for leisure: 'When I travel, I do either one of two things: either extreme sports or I go see culture. I specifically say culture rather than art, because I equally enjoy exhibitions as much as any other cultural discipline; concerts, theatre, ballet, raves, dinner, you name it.

My favourite trip during the pandemic was the Vatican. I had always wanted to see it in solitude. It was the most incredible experience. The Vatican's beauty is only exceeded by its opulence and it occurred to me there that there is no opulence without violence. So, beware when life gets too opulent.

You know this meme of the guy that stands on the wall with the conspiracy? The Vatican is that. Every artwork references another artwork in the building, and getting to the bottom of the story is going down this crazy spiral. QAnon made sense to me in the Vatican. The endless search for clues and references, connections, patterns and storylines comes from the bible. This modus operandi of storytelling is so pervasive in our popular culture. The recent Balenciaga witch-hunt is a good example. Three different campaigns were woven together to one big conspiracy. Even Kim Kardashian, who has one of the most public sex tapes ever said “as a mother of 4, I am shocked…”. You have a public tape, wtf are you talking about?

Another striking aha moment at the Vatican was that the Catholic Church probably built the first metaverse. They used spatial, visual, sonic, and sensory experiences to create a world that is larger than our physical one. It’s a perfectly crafted dramaturgy that helps you escape your physical presence, ironically through the very senses, that define your physical presence. Have you ever noticed how all the good art in St. Peters is hung in places that are incredibly uncomfortable to look at? Walking out of the Vatican your neck hurts. Your body is in such weird positions all the time - and this is by design. Everything in that space urges you to transcend into a larger narrative that has nothing to do with your physicality. Sounds like a metaverse to me.

"The Catholic Church
is probably
the first metaverse."

One place that Lukas visited for work that he enjoyed: "I really enjoyed my recent trip to Hong Kong. As opposed to New York, where I was often in the last 12 months, Hong Kong felt like an uncompressed city with a great dynamic nature. You can have dinner for a dollar or for a thousand dollars. The city feels nicely mixed and somewhat intact, as compared to New York, where it feels like an overpriced concrete playground for billionaire kids. The quality is shit and the people are rude, the whole thing doesn’t work in itself. Hong Kong is the same size, but it feels like the exact opposite. Looking past the pricey apartments, the place feels like it's intact and actually livable.
‍
‍‍Castello di Rivoli is up there as well. It’s a really gorgeous museum and is the antithesis to M+ in Hong Kong. One of them is new and the other is 500+ years old. As a castle (Castello di Rivoli) is defensive by nature, which works well with art. It makes the works even more precious. The rooms live and breathe and the views are spectacular."

Beeple "Human One", installation view Espressioni con frazioni, Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Rivoli-Torino 2022
Photo © Sebastiano Pellion di Persano

On tea or coffee: ‘I am a hedonist, I like tea and coffee [he says with a smirk]. I have a very high quality coffee machine at home, which I bought when I was 18 and I drink rare oolongs and green teas from a shop called Shui Tang.

When I got my first apartment, I thought hard about what piece of furniture I should buy first - and I came to the conclusion that a coffee machine would be the most sensible thing to purchase because of its necessity and longevity. I found these beautiful handmade coffee machines by Olympia Express, made in Glarus. I called them and said, "Hey, I am a student, I really want a coffee machine, can I come and see how you make them and maybe you can get me a deal?”. They were really excited that a kid came and said, "I want that". In the end they sold me the machine they used at a fair at a substantial discount.'

"Daemon"
by Daniel Suarez

The two last books I read that really had an impact on me were:
‍
“Daemon” by Daniel Suarez
‍
"A Silicon Valley tech tycoon, who dies early, wrote a programme that posthumously keeps interacting with humanity autonomously. Rumour has it that this book is Vitalik’s (Buterin) inspiration for the smart contract. But who knows if it’s true. This perfectly captures the idea of an autonomous programme that acts as its own entity in a very realistic way. It feels like that tech is around the corner.”

"The Three-Body Problem" by Cixin Liu

‘Another book that really struck me was “The Three-Body Problem” by Cixin Liu. It is a trilogy about a scientist that grows up during the cultural revolution and then becomes an astronomer.

*Spoiler alert*: She sends messages into space and eventually a message comes back that says “Never send a message again, otherwise something terrible will happen”. As her father was killed in the cultural revolution, she’s extremely frustrated with mankind and sends another message. The reply is “we’re gonna invade earth and will be there in 400 years”. So humanity knows that an invasion is coming and that they have 400 years to prepare. On top of that, the alien attackers limit humanity’s capacity to do deep research - we have to fight with the state of deep tech that we have right now.

It’s a very versatile book as it touches on topics of philosophy, politics, history, existence, the sheer size of the universe, and especially on hostile environments, which obviously resonates with my interests in crypto. It’s about survival.’