Bad at Sports Episode 927: Alfred Steiner

Recorded in Miami during art fair week:

Alfred Steiner joins Bad at Sports live from Miami, arriving by bicycle from the beach in full cowboy boots and jeans, already soaked through and fully inside the psychic weather of art fair week. A painter, conceptual artist, and practicing intellectual property lawyer, Steiner brings a rare combination of market fluency, legal clarity, and genuine artistic skepticism to a conversation that moves easily between booths, blockchain, copyright law, and the unwritten rules that quietly govern the art world.

The discussion opens with a pulse check on the fairs, moving from NADA’s familiar “house style” of faux-naïve figurative painting to the broader diversity of the main fair. Rather than ranking winners and losers, Steiner frames art fairs as emotionally destabilizing machines, places where impressive work and baffling work coexist in ways that are equally exhausting. What matters most is not judgment but endurance, the daily labor of continuing to make work in a system that constantly measures value against visibility and sales.

From there, the episode dives deep into Steiner’s dual practice. As an artist, his work spans painting, language-based conceptual pieces, NFTs, and legal interventions that deliberately stress-test institutional systems. He walks through two blockchain projects that were designed to fail commercially, including one where each NFT generates a unique text based on a buyer’s Ethereum address, and another where ownership includes the right to alter the work itself, opening the door to misuse, mischief, and unexpected generosity.

NFTs check in as, Steiner recounts a moment when an NFT holder copied a high-value work by Mitchell Chan, prompting Chan to respond by turning the forgery into an original drawing. The story becomes a parable about trust, legitimacy, and the strange ethics that emerge when technology destabilizes traditional ideas of originality.

The conversation touches copyright law, photography, and artificial intelligence. Steiner explains why registering a copyright still matters, even in an age of ubiquitous images, and why most photographs are protected by default despite containing little expressive decision-making. He outlines how current legal frameworks are struggling to catch up with AI training practices, predicting that future court decisions will hinge not on whether content was scraped, but on how models are used and whose markets they undermine.

Threaded throughout is a candid reflection on professional identity. Steiner speaks openly about the suspicion artists face when they have parallel careers, the romantic myth of total artistic devotion, and the quiet prejudice against artists who appear too competent, too organized, or too financially stable. Having spent years working part-time at Morrison & Foerster before founding his own firm, Steiner argues that the art world’s fear of “dabblers” says more about its investment logic than about artistic seriousness.

Recorded live, mid-fair, with sweat, exhaustion, legal theory, and humor all equally present, the episode offers a rare look at how art, law, labor, and belief intersect... Just don't look to hard at it.

 

NAMES DROPPED

• Art Basel Miami Beach — https://www.artbasel.com/miami-beach
• NADA Miami (New Art Dealers Alliance) — https://thenada.org/nada-miami
• Untitled Art Fair — https://untitledartfairs.com
• Ethereum blockchain — https://ethereum.org
• Mitchell Chan — https://mitchellchan.com
• Rick Astley (via Rickrolling NFTs) — https://www.rickastley.co.uk
• Lawrence Weiner — https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/lawrence-weiner-2124
• U.S. Copyright Office — https://www.copyright.gov
• Supreme Court of the United States — https://www.supremecourt.gov
• Morrison & Foerster
• Alfred Steiner - https://alfredsteiner.com/