NEW INC'S Salome Asega on Incubating Tomorrow's Art x Tech Superstars

With AI, blockchain, and augmented reality gradually but inexorably changing the nature of creative work, there has probably never been a time when planning one’s artistic career path has been more fraught with uncertainty. 

In a tough art market, old strategies are starting to look shopworn. Novel approaches are emerging, from reimagining the studio as a startup, as Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst have done with Spawning, to taking on venture capital as an alternative to working with galleries, as some top crypto artists are trying out.

Confronted with this garden of forking paths, what should an ambitious, tech-leveraging artist do if they want to be successful?

Enter Salome Asega. 

As the head of NEW INC, the New Museum of Contemporary Art's art x tech incubator, Salome is dedicated to helping the next generation of creatives shape their concepts and career strategies in this very strange moment. And, at a time when certain Silicon Valley incubators have taken a rightward turn, NEW INC tackles its work with a decidedly New York City ethos, leveraging strategies of diversity, equity, and inclusion not only as humanistic touchstones but also competitive advantages in the cutthroat marketplace of culture and ideas. 

If you want to see what the result of NEW INC’s approach looks like, consider that both Stephanie Dinkins and her Bina48 robot and the attention-hacking collective MSCHF were supercharged by the incubator.

So, what kind of future art world is Salome building toward at NEW INC, and why is New York City the natural place for it to take root?

In this episode, I sit down to talk to Salome about her fascinating, vital work.