Jonas Lund on AI Agents, Institutional Power, and Hacking the Art World

In an interview with Anika Meier for SLEEK, Swedish artist Jonas Lund discusses how value is produced in the art world, arguing that attention has overtaken traditional institutions as the dominant mechanism. Lund's works, including The Fear of Missing Out (2013), the Jonas Lund Token (JLT, 2018–ongoing), and Performance Review (2026), use algorithms, blockchain, and AI agents to examine artistic value construction. He notes that social media, NFTs, and new market entrants have disrupted the institutional theory of art, where a small hierarchy decides relevance. Lund's JLT is an ERC-20 token on Ethereum with a fixed supply of 100,000, allowing a board of around 250 members (including Hans Ulrich Obrist) to vote on proposals, making value judgments transparent. His recent exhibition Performance Review at Office Impart in Berlin featured an AI agent directing contract workers to produce works, with collectors submitting requests. Lund reflects that AI agents tend to produce 'slop' without human guidance, but the system made visible the logic of platform work. He believes art is not ending, but the established value-production system is becoming harder to justify. Lund also teaches at the University of Applied Arts Vienna's Digital Art Department.