ABOUT THE ARTIST
I am no longer surprised by how many great people are to be found in Bitcoin.
Not that I am at all cavalier or insouciant about it. It’s just that time after time this proves true.
I remember receiving a phone call from Preston Pysh earlier in the year (cough humble brag cough) and afterwards getting a message from him saying exactly this – that whenever you speak to pseudonymous Bitcoiners, 99 out of a 100 times you walk away thinking ‘what a great fucking guy’.
We have all experienced this and it makes sense, I suppose. We have lots in common.
We all share being curious in nature, lovers of rabbit holes, higher than average levels of disagreeableness, a desire to usher in a different world and so on. We all coalesce around the object of all of our affection, Bitcoin. Rarely though, do I meet someone I immediately have so much in common with. Artist, polyglot, musician, bitcoiner, vintage guitar nerd, restlessly creative, a French connection to boot and, most surprisingly, not only a remote citadel builder but a fellow forest friendly fucker!
You have all seen his incredible graphic novel Bulltardia, both on Twitter and more famously in Citadel21. It is of course the inimitable, Dim Zayan.
THE INTERVIEW 1/3
Dim grew up in Paris, France. He remembers always being super curious and obsessive about collecting and exploring rabbit hole experiences. Computers, video games, programming, music, art and drawing, to mention but a few. At the age of ten he was making his first comic books as well as programming bits and bobs for his own amusement.
"Even from the youngest age I only remember being drawn to two things. Comic books, drawing and art and the other was computers, programming and video games.
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Some years later, when forced to choose the direction of his academic pursuits, he chose to go down the economics route but a couple of years into a university degree he found it untenable. Katoshi aka Katia told us about her very similar experience of studying economics, where it didn’t matter how illogical and incongruous you found the ideas behind the Keynesian teachings. You were simply told to stop asking questions and just commit the text to memory.
For a creative mind that thrives on questioning whatever you’re faced with, this would be a frustrating experience to say the least. Rabbit holes are for exploring. Giving someone a map of what’s beneath the surface and telling them to simply trust it, without ever getting a chance to explore and verify for yourself, would be most unsatisfactory for any intellectual cartographer, unacceptable even. As a result Dim decided to ditch economics and instead he followed his early interests and embarked on an art degree.
While it was the love for art that made him change degrees, it was the love for a woman that made him change countries. He was bid adieu by one Statue of Liberty in La Ville Lumiere, The City of Light, and welcomed by another, much grander dame, in The Big Apple.
New York would be where Dim would hang his proverbial hat since. As he tells Daniel Prince in his feature interview:
"The woman eventually left but the city stayed. That was where the real love story was, it was with the city!
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He started working as a web designer and eventually as a consultant to startups who wanted to broaden their online presence. Eventually though the joy and creativity Dim had found in this work began to wear off and it became any other office job. Inspiration gone. Curiosity impaired. Motivation destroyed.
"I wanted to get back into something where I could be an explorer, a discoverer. Something where I could try new things and be on the forefront of something again.
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Amazingly, serendipitously even, this moment of frustration and stagnant self-development was also the moment Dim discovered Bitcoin. What started as a simple itch – the learning and discovery of financial freedom – became a full-on rash, another obsession.
This is something we have all experienced. That moment we go from standing at the edge looking into the abyss to feeling ourselves getting sucked deep down into the rabbit hole. When an idea imposes its gravity. When curiosity becomes necessity.
Born out of a need to communicate through art Dim started a simple comic on the Trading View platform. Using the “story” of the market, the charts, as the foundation to overlay a story about Bitcoin. He did this by drawing a narrative onto the charts, a story about the Honey Badger, that simultaneously told his own story while also analysing the price of Bitcoin.
"Strangely enough, because I didn’t think it would have that much success, it attracted a lot of people and eventually became one of the most, if not the most, viewed chart of Trading View."
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#Episode 03
THE INTERVIEW 2/3
Not particularly proud of this work and frustrated by the tediousness of the platform and working within this “medium” he decided to take the core of his story, the main character Bits The Honey Badger, and turn it into a real comic book. This happily coincided with Hodlonaut and Katoshi starting up Citadel21 and after speaking to them about the two projects it became clear that Citadel21 would publish Bulltardia. Due to requests, demands even in my own case, Dim later decided to manifest the digital comic book into beautiful and impressive physical form.
While his love affair with Bitcoin was growing deeper and more profound, at a certain point, Dim started to fall out of love with New York. The things that inspired him and fuelled his creativity were starting to slow him down. Oppress him even. He started to feel the need for space, calm, freedom. A couple of years ago he and his wife and their dog Bowie started their citadel dream. In the middle of the big forests, somewhere only they know, they set up their forest citadel.
"I just love it! I could never go back. Now that I have tasted the privilege of being surrounded by nature and being able to enjoy all it brings I realise how much I was missing it before."
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THE INTERVIEW 3/3
"I just love it! I could never go back. Now that I have tasted the privilege of being surrounded by nature and being able to enjoy all it brings I realise how much I was missing it before."
As the king of my own forest citadel I know the peace, personal agency, inspiration as well as the intellectual and moral clarity it brings. I also know of the many rabbit holes it opens up. No surprise Dim and his wife have become permaculture nerds, self-sufficient and off-grid living advocates. It’s a life that ties in so wonderfully with the ethos of Bitcoin. They amplify each other in so many ways. Both are ways to combat and readdress the many ways in which we have drifted further and further away from the natural order of things.
Increasingly we as a society have let a certain scientism ring the changes of our way of life.
Nature is more and more seen as entirely quantifiable, as something solely material and because of this separation between us and it, we think that we now take precedence over nature. We, in the broadest sense of the word, have come to view anything that is quantifiable as manageable. Something we can and should manipulate to our immediate ends.
This is why we have been trying to manage nature in the way we have. The reason we are now brrrrr’ing money in torrential fashion to patch up leaks that were created long ago through sheer arrogance. Introducing foreign predators to our biological system as pest control, causing untold damage. This is why Bill Gates is suggestion dispersing sand, or whatever nonsense he is on about, into our atmosphere to manage sun light. This is why we think we can and should manage our economies the way we have been. Hold nature in a head lock and particularise it in a way that has undoubtedly brought about disastrous side effects, not least in the form of so many people loosing the connection to nature and life and death itself.
Dim isn’t just fighting back by hodling Bitcoin. He isn’t just on the forefront of a movement that puts self-sustainability, sovereignty and living a life that is equally technologically advanced and respectful of ancient wisdom. He is creating art, beautiful and funny at that, to push change. To grow a movement that, despite it’s size, is bigger in intent and purpose than anything I have witnessed before.
This is what it’s about and this is why we’re all here at this stage. Let’s hope this is just a preview of what’s to come from Dim Zayan, because we here at 21ism love what he’s about.