Our screening room will host the first institutional display of Skibidi Toilet (2023–ongoing), the viral YouTube video series by Alexey Gerasimov, known as Boom, that has become a Gen Alpha cultural touchstone. Boom’s machinima series employs videogame violence and meme culture on an epic scale, where a race of toilet-bound heads clash with camera-headed men in an eternal technological war. The horrors of the unconscious, filtered through TikTok remixes and action-film excess, are unleashed through Gerasimov’s nightmarish vision, filled with Fortnite dances and unending destruction. Skibidi Toilet stands as a contemporary manifestation of surrealist film, its dreamlike logic at once both banal and disturbing, its undeniable resonance with young people a red flag for contemporary art.
Image: Alexey ‘Boom’ Gerasimov ‘Skibidi Toilet’ 2023–ongoing.
