How it makes money
Covenant. Not royalty.
The Genesis Artifact is governed by a permanent resale covenant.
- Instrument type
- Resale covenant
- Remittance
- 50% of gross transaction value
- Trigger
- Any change of custodianship
- Jurisdiction
- Document chain
- Enforcement
- Self-executing
- Term
- Permanent. No sunset.
- Dependence on third parties
- None.
Fifty percent of any future sale remits to the artists. This is not an artist resale royalty scheme.
Artist resale royalties depend on secondary market infrastructure, jurisdiction, and the willingness of subsequent holders to comply. This covenant is built into the acquisition document itself.
It runs with the object. The artist does not need a gallery in the right jurisdiction.
How it trades hands
The covenant travels. The chain is unbroken.
Lifecycle of the object
-
01
Primary acquisition
Custodian acquires the Genesis Artifact at $15,000. The acquisition document is signed. The covenant attaches.
-
02
Covenant execution
Custodian sells. Before any other claim, 50% of the gross transaction value remits to the artists. This is not optional.
-
03
Transfer of custodianship
The new custodian signs the same document. The covenant travels with the object. The chain is unbroken.
-
04
Compounding provenance
Each transfer generates institutional documentation, press, and provenance. The object appreciates not in spite of the covenant but because of it.
The covenant is the engine of value, not a tax on it.
What the work comments on
The object did not change. The jurisdiction did.
How the work works
An unlicensed Canal Street Rolex encased in archival resin is a $200 object.
It was made institutional by the document that governs it.
This is what Duchamp did with a urinal in 1917. This is what the art market does every day with provenance, auction records, and institutional placement.
CoCA made the mechanism visible and legally binding simultaneously.
The resin is not preservation. It is proof. The CoCA mark etched into the block is not branding. It is a legal notation.
The work does not comment on the art market from the outside. It operates inside the art market's own logic and makes that logic explicit.
Why this is ethical
This is a trick question.
The claim
CoCA does not make the world a better place. CoCA makes better fiction.
Good is not what improves conditions. Good is what illuminates what is.
The resale covenant does not reform the art market. It reveals what the art market has always been: a system of agreed-upon fictions governing the transfer of value between people who believe in them.
CoCA made the fiction legally binding and named it honestly.
Two instruments compared
| Artist resale royalty | CoCA covenant | |
|---|---|---|
| Enforcement | Jurisdiction-dependent | Document chain |
| Compliance | Goodwill | Signature |
| Third-party infrastructure | Required | None |
| Geographic limit | Yes | No |
| Term | Varies | Permanent |
The only ethical claim: that this is honest.
The PR and marketing strategy
The covenant is the asset. The Rolex is the address.
Placement strategy
What is being sold
Not a watch.
What is being offered is entrance to the covenant. The acquisition is not a transaction. It is a placement.
The price
$15,000.
Arbitrary. Chosen because it is the price at which a collector makes a decision rather than a decoration. Also the number the press will print.
The press
Distribution, not audience.
Every article written about the Genesis Artifact extends the jurisdiction of CoCA into a new readership. The press is the distribution mechanism for the covenant.
Frame the acquisition the way a private equity placement is framed: not what you are getting but what you are entering.
Terms of placement
- Work
- The Genesis Artifact Collection
- Catalog Nos.
- UNSUB-GEN-001 — UNSUB-GEN-010
- Edition
- Ten unique placements
- Medium
- Unlicensed timepiece, archival resin, covenant document
- Primary price
- $15,000 USD
- Pre-commitment
- $1,500 USD — locks the placement; balance due on collection
- Resale remittance
- 50% of gross transaction value
- Covenant term
- Permanent. No sunset.
The custodian is not buying an object. They are entering a legal and institutional relationship that will follow the object permanently.