A participatory artwork
A letter, signed in code.
Chain Reactions is a participatory visual art project and national letter-writing campaign advocating for resale royalties for visual artists in the United States.
The project combines generative text-based artworks, smart contracts on the Tezos blockchain, printed letters, and public installations. It is timed to the renewed national conversation around the American Royalties Too Act of 2025 (H.R. 4017).
How It Works
Each token in Chain Reactions is a generative letter-artwork — a unique visual composition built from text advocating for artists' resale royalty rights. When you collect a token, the artwork becomes yours, and the letter it contains becomes part of a growing public record.
Every token can be signed as a cryptographic petition. When you sign, your wallet address is permanently recorded on-chain as a supporter of resale royalties for visual artists. These signatures appear as floating text within the artwork itself — a visual representation of collective action.
Royalty Structure
Chain Reactions uses the Tezos blockchain not as a speculative device but as a structure for solidarity, circulation, and civic pressure. Every sale distributes funds to the artist, writer, a shared artist pool, project operations, and an artist royalty society — modeling the very system the project advocates for.
The Legislation
The American Royalties Too Act of 2025 would establish a resale royalty right for visual artists in the United States, ensuring that artists benefit when their works increase in value on the secondary market. Visual artists are among the only creators in the U.S. who do not receive ongoing compensation when their original works are resold.
Credits
Created by Travis LeRoy Southworth.
Early development supported by a microgrant through the MoMI x Tezos FA2 Fellowship.
A brief history
Artist resale royalties in the United States
Visual artists remain among the only creators in the U.S. who do not share in the secondary market for their work.
The fight to change that stretches back more than a century — through copyright reform, failed bills,
state-level experiments, and an art market whose scale keeps the question urgent.
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1909
Copyright Act extends protection to works of art
The 1909 Copyright Act grants visual artists the exclusive right to reproduce, distribute, and display their work — an early acknowledgment that artists hold a continuing interest in what they make.
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1940s–50s
Abstract Expressionism reshapes the market
American artists move to the forefront of the global art market. As prices climb, awareness grows that the value generated by artists rarely returns to them after the first sale.
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1958
First federal resale royalty bill
Congressman Robert Kastenmeier proposes a resale royalty for visual artists. The bill does not pass, but it puts the question on the federal record for the first time.
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1973
Rauschenberg vs. the Scull auction
At Sotheby's first record-breaking contemporary art sale, Robert Rauschenberg watches his painting Thaw — originally sold for $900 — hammer for $85,000. He receives nothing. Rauschenberg channels his outrage into a campaign for artist resale royalties that helps pave the way for California's 1977 law.
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1976
Visual Artists Rights Act introduced
VARA establishes moral rights — attribution and protection from destruction — but stops short of granting artists a share of resale value.
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1977
California Resale Royalties Act takes effect
The CRRA grants California artists a 5% royalty on the resale of their works — the only such law in the country. It remains in force for more than three decades.
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2011
California's law struck down
The CRRA is ruled unconstitutional, a major setback for artists' rights advocates and a return to the status quo: no resale royalty anywhere in the U.S.
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2013
U.S. Copyright Office reverses its position
In its report Resale Royalties: An Updated Analysis, the Copyright Office revisits the question it had previously dismissed in 1992 and concludes that Congress should consider a federal resale royalty right to bring U.S. law in line with the more than 70 countries that already recognize it.
Copyright Office report (PDF)
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2014
American Royalties Too Act of 2014
A federal bill modeled on European droit de suite regimes is introduced. Critics raise concerns about enforcement and market liquidity; the bill does not advance. Frank Stella becomes one of its most public advocates.
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2025
American Royalties Too Act of 2025 (H.R. 4017)
Reintroduced by Congressman Jerrold Nadler on June 17, 2025, the bill would give artists a 5% royalty on any resale over $5,000, capped at $50,000 per work, collected by a designated society and paid to the artist.
Nadler press release
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Bill text (H.R. 4017)