🏛 The Steward's Mandate: Collecting Fire Alarms, Not Commodities For me, the collector, an artwork is not just a high-value asset on a balance sheet. It is a cultural insurance policy. I am not accumulating wealth; I am storing vital human capacity.

This view reframes my entire relationship with art:

1. Risk vs. Reward: The Cultural ROI The traditional collector asks: “Will this piece appreciate financially?” My question is: “What essential human function does this piece secure?”

• Financial Risk: Art is illiquid and volatile.

• Cultural Risk: The greatest risk is a future where humanity is "programmable" and has forgotten how to be human.

• My Collection Strategy: I seek out art that is the most effective cognitive device. I look for works that fiercely protect memory, insist on meaning against chaos, and aggressively rehearse a future where awe and individual complexity are still possible. I collect the "fire alarms" that promise disruption when shared meaning becomes tyranny. The financial return is secondary; the Return on Imagination (ROI) is everything.

1. Provenance as Context, Not Just Price The value of an artwork is not just who owned it before me, but what it was used for by its previous owners.

• A work with strong 'Technological Provenance' shows how it has historically resisted official narratives, inspired revolt (even intellectual revolt), or smuggled empathy across a severe cultural boundary.

• By acquiring a work, I am adding my own act of stewardship to its history, ensuring the instrument remains functional and accessible for future "users." I am its protector and its legitimiser in a world that would otherwise dismiss its function as mere aesthetics.

1. Patronage as Strategic Support I am not merely funding a person; I am subsidising the R&D department of the human soul.

• When I purchase a work, I am recognising the artist as a cognitive engineer whose "product" is resistance to efficient death and algorithmic flattening. My money is fuel for the provocation engine.

• I prioritise artists whose work actively pushes back—against single narratives, against technological domestication, and against the reduction of life to function. I use my resources to ensure their signal against propaganda can be broadcast effectively.

1. The Collection as a Functional Machine My collection is not a static display of status; it is a dynamic, curated laboratory for meaning. The works are in conversation, challenging and reinforcing each other.

• I am asking: How does this sculpture make the painting next to it function differently? How does the collected "memory without permission" of one piece activate the "speculation about the unseen" in another?

• The collection itself becomes my personal "Cathedral" (my chosen container for meaning) but one that is always capable of setting off its own internal "Alarm."

1. Legacy: Protecting the Skill of Being Human My ultimate goal is not to leave behind a portfolio, but to leave behind a functional cultural legacy.

• My collection's value will be measured not by the final hammer price, but by how much harder it made people to domesticate for the next generation.

• I collect these cognitive devices so that a student, a citizen, or a future person facing a moment of crisis can stand before a piece and, through its illicit intimacy, feel seen, feel less alone, and remember why life is worth building for in the first place.

I am not a rich person who buys art; I am a steward of human potential who uses capital to protect the skill of being human. I collect the spark.

🏛 The Steward's Mandate: Collecting Fire Alarms, Not Commodities For me, the collector, an artwork is not just a high-value asset on a balance sheet. It is a cultural insurance policy. I am not accumulating wealth; I am storing vital human capacity.

This view reframes my entire relationship with art:

1. Risk vs. Reward: The Cultural ROI The traditional collector asks: “Will this piece appreciate financially?” My question is: “What essential human function does this piece secure?”

• Financial Risk: Art is illiquid and volatile.

• Cultural Risk: The greatest risk is a future where humanity is "programmable" and has forgotten how to be human.

• My Collection Strategy: I seek out art that is the most effective cognitive device. I look for works that fiercely protect memory, insist on meaning against chaos, and aggressively rehearse a future where awe and individual complexity are still possible. I collect the "fire alarms" that promise disruption when shared meaning becomes tyranny. The financial return is secondary; the Return on Imagination (ROI) is everything.

1. Provenance as Context, Not Just Price The value of an artwork is not just who owned it before me, but what it was used for by its previous owners.

• A work with strong 'Technological Provenance' shows how it has historically resisted official narratives, inspired revolt (even intellectual revolt), or smuggled empathy across a severe cultural boundary.

• By acquiring a work, I am adding my own act of stewardship to its history, ensuring the instrument remains functional and accessible for future "users." I am its protector and its legitimiser in a world that would otherwise dismiss its function as mere aesthetics.

1. Patronage as Strategic Support I am not merely funding a person; I am subsidising the R&D department of the human soul.

• When I purchase a work, I am recognising the artist as a cognitive engineer whose "product" is resistance to efficient death and algorithmic flattening. My money is fuel for the provocation engine.

• I prioritise artists whose work actively pushes back—against single narratives, against technological domestication, and against the reduction of life to function. I use my resources to ensure their signal against propaganda can be broadcast effectively.

1. The Collection as a Functional Machine My collection is not a static display of status; it is a dynamic, curated laboratory for meaning. The works are in conversation, challenging and reinforcing each other.

• I am asking: How does this sculpture make the painting next to it function differently? How does the collected "memory without permission" of one piece activate the "speculation about the unseen" in another?

• The collection itself becomes my personal "Cathedral" (my chosen container for meaning) but one that is always capable of setting off its own internal "Alarm."

1. Legacy: Protecting the Skill of Being Human My ultimate goal is not to leave behind a portfolio, but to leave behind a functional cultural legacy.

• My collection's value will be measured not by the final hammer price, but by how much harder it made people to domesticate for the next generation.

• I collect these cognitive devices so that a student, a citizen, or a future person facing a moment of crisis can stand before a piece and, through its illicit intimacy, feel seen, feel less alone, and remember why life is worth building for in the first place.

I am not a rich person who buys art; I am a steward of human potential who uses capital to protect the skill of being human. I collect the spark.