The Blagoev Tontine

Ideological nostalgia functions as a tontine: its value concentrates among a shrinking pool of aging survivors, mathematically guaranteed to end in either total monopoly or physical ruin.

Real-time actuarial ledger tracking mosaic loss against surviving Soviet-era subscribers. · motion: depreciating through physical erosion and survivorship consolidation

wall text

Constructed through mandatory public stamp subscriptions in 1981, Bulgaria's Buzludzha monument is reimagined here as an active financial tontine. Using the unit-of-production accounting method, computer-vision LiDAR tracks cobalt glass mosaic decay during alpine freezes, writing down total asset book value in real time. Simultaneously, equity held by deceased original stamp-donors transfers to the surviving registry rather than heirs. The piece establishes a direct mathematical race between material entropy and actuarial mortality: value concentrates among a diminishing cohort of elderly citizens until physical collapse outpaces biological survival, terminating in either a single private owner of the final intact tile or total ruin.

shown: Installed permanently at the base of Buzludzha Peak (elevation 1,432m) in a reinforced, solar-powered steel kiosk that receives live telemetry from the internal monument sensors.

anchor facts used

Built to commemorate the 1891 socialist assembly led by Dimitar Blagoev
Funded by 14,186,000 leva collected through 'voluntary' citizen stamp donations
Contains 510 square meters of cobalt glass mosaics actively degrading due to the looted copper roof

mechanism

Tontine share subscription — 14,186 digital shares are issued to living Bulgarians who can produce the original funding stamps from the 1970s, creating a closed market of nostalgic capital.
1. Tontine Share Issuance
Unit of Production Depletion Method (Accounting) — The asset's total book value is actively written down based on computer-vision analysis of mosaic tiles detaching from the inner walls during seasonal freezes.
2. Unit of Production Depletion
Tontine Survivorship Benefit — When a verified shareholder passes away, their share of the monument is not inherited; instead, the surviving pool absorbs their equity, concentrating ownership of the remaining intact tiles.
3. Mortality Dividend Accrual
Physical settlement of a futures contract — When the shareholder pool reduces to a single individual, the tontine liquidates, granting them the legal right to extract the final intact cobalt tile from the mountain peak.
4. Contract Winding-up and Physical Settlement

lineage

terra0 (Paul Seidler, Paul Kolling, Max Hampshire) — Extends their self-owning forest smart contract by applying automated physical depreciation to state-owned architectural ruins.
Gordon Matta-Clark, Fake Estates (1973) — Builds on Matta-Clark's acquisition of useless real estate micro-parcels by securitizing the negative space of a decaying monument.
Michael Asher, Untitled (1973, Galleria Toselli) — Mirrors Asher's physical subtraction of architecture, but outsources the removal to meteorological forces and financial time.

curatorial qa (machine verdict, unedited)

SCORE 3/5 after 2 attempt(s)
READS: LiDAR surveying of crumbling socialist mosaics paired with unit-of-production depreciation metrics, linking physical ruin directly to asset write-downs.
FAILS: The survivorship consolidation and tontine share transfer mechanics are buried in generic green UI overlays rather than visibly shifting asset value or ownership.

spec: antigravity agent · keyframe/artifact: gemini-3.1-flash-image · video: veo-3.1 image-to-video · qa+wall text: gemini-3.7-flash watching the render · 56.2s total