There are myriad approaches to having an artwork observe and profession, particularly in web3. There’s the near-daily minter who sees their each output as worthy of accumulating. There’s the calculating CEO, conscious of their collectors as shareholders and the rising worth of their work. There are the aesthetes, who search magnificence for its personal sake. And there are the hardcore conceptualists whose work requires superior levels to understand.
The work of artist sgt_slaughtermelon navigates a kind of Center Manner between the aesthetes and the conceptualists. Somewhat than Id and Superego battling it out, his maintain palms and skip merrily alongside. He leverages anonymity to be concurrently as foolish and critical as attainable on the identical time.
In his personal phrases: “‘sgt_slaughtermelon’ is an ironic avatar for a physique of labor that exists in an age when taking oneself critically is the primary signal of retrograde movement: the stagnancy of traditionalism.”
Slaughtermelon’s strategy to creating artwork echoes that of David Bowie, who used his data of excessive artwork in service of mainstream pop stardom.
Likewise, Bowie was a matryoshka of personae, Bowie over the Skinny White Duke over Aladdin Sane over Ziggy Stardust with no David Jones in sight. Slaughtermelon is likewise Lazlo Lissitsky, Brother Melon, Professor Melonius, Jesse Cathode, Sargei Slaughtermelovich, and extra.
A pupil of theory-laden geometric abstraction à la Kazimir Malevich and László Moholy-Nagy (et al.), sgt_slaughtermelon approaches his work with a conceptual rigor downplayed by absurd narratives and semi-ironic nostalgia. He’s each completely honest and looking out in his work and completely disavowing of excessive seriousness.
Think about Daniel Day-Lewis solely taking elements written for Seth Rogen. That’s the slaughtermelon means.
Collapsing Contradictions
The important thing to sgt_slaughtermelon’s strategy to embracing contradiction is highlighted within the comparatively minor venture of his, Oedipus Crimson. The venture was impressed when slaughtermelon observed that “Crimson Cash,” the closing observe on David Bowie’s Lodger, was a transforming of Iggy Pop’s “Sister Midnight,” for which Bowie had written the music.
The place Pop wrote uncooked, impulsive lyrics and sang them in type, Bowie was cerebral and calculating in his strategy. To break down these opposing however complementary approaches, slaughtermelon commissioned collaborator-friend Dusko to create a mashup of the 2 songs. To accompany this Frankenstein observe, slaughtermelon created new work along with his signature geometric strategy collaged in opposition to extra rough-hewn Id-like parts.
So why name it Oedipus Crimson?
For slaughtermelon, the stability struck between Bowie and Pop mirrored what he noticed between Carl Jung’s erudite idealism and Sigmund Freud’s “grand concepts that turned out to be delusions.”
In his personal phrases, “Within the context of this artwork (pretentious as it’s) — what I’m doing is making David Bowie out to be the Carl Jung on this relationship and Iggy Pop is Sigmund Freud — however all of it’s simply two flawed methods of wanting ahead to a brand new paradigm the place neither rational idealism and accountability nor visceral preoccupations with sexuality and fantasy appears to assist — however they continue to be a lot extra fascinating than our modest new mind-set.”
Be aware one other key function of slaughtermelon’s strategy: the phrase “pretentious as it’s” (and, within the earlier quote, “taking oneself critically is the primary signal of retrograde movement”).
Regardless of writing essays on every of his initiatives, slaughtermelon does nothing to advertise these paperwork of thoughtfulness. Even inside the essays that explicate a venture, he’s self-deprecating about his personal tendency to intellectualize his work and makes each effort to counteract any heady conceptualism with absurdity and outright silliness.
Which brings us to…
Sargei Slaughtermelovich & Lazlo Lissitsky
“My earliest actual assortment of labor had some fairly heavy considering dedicated to what I used to be calling ‘Neo-Suprematism’ – which is a brilliant pretentious idea, however I figured I might get away with it since I had such a ridiculous artist identify.“ — sgt_slaughtermelon on “Early Glitch and ‘Neo-Suprematism’”
Slaughtermelon attracts vital inspiration from the Russian avant-garde, notably Kazimir Malevich’s Suprematism, which was an summary artwork motion that targeted on fundamental geometric types (squares, circles, and so on.) as a way to emphasize pure inventive feeling.
Based on slaughtermelon, his works of Suprematism mixed with pixel-sorted glitch artwork aesthetics are “directly each an aspiration in direction of the best of geometric abstraction within the spirit of the Russian avant-garde of Malevich and a prepared admission of ignorance and irony.”
In his continued obsession with “non-objective” artwork, sgt_slaughtermelon has continued to develop and discard new personae on whom to venture his sincerity. As an artwork of “pure feeling,” slaughtermelon is uncomfortable with out context (e.g., folks, locations, or issues), maybe as a result of pure feeling is, nicely, fairly bare.
To that finish, along with sgt_slaughtermelon (not his start identify), he has a number of alter-alter egos, together with:
Sargei Slaughtermelovich, a forgotten artist inside Malevich’s internal circle
Lazlo Lissitzky — the stylistic love youngster of László Moholy-Nagy, El Lissitzsky, and an assortment of Swiss Trendy designers — whose work was co-opted and cheapened by mass consumerism
The Moniac Mod, the earliest generative artist, who used a pirated model of a Russian water-powered pc to generate hipster mod designs
Myron Starets, a planetarium worker who “secretly crafted binders stuffed with CDs of his final will and testomony within the type of laser reveals”
All of that are as enjoyable as they’re pointless, since he’s traversed a boggling vary of types as sgt_slaughtermelon with all types of collaborators, together with Amanda Harville, jrdsctt, FiveTimesNo, Dawnia Darkstone, and Salmonmatte Studios.
Many of those collaborations even have documented lore, nevertheless it’s maybe an excessive amount of to get into right here. Suffice it to say, slaughtermelon leans closely on absurd and ironic storytelling to concurrently distance himself from and embrace work that aspires to one thing as naked as pure feeling.
Do You Need to Really feel One thing?
A wholly new fashion has crept into being within the sgt_slaughtermelon oeuvre. This new strategy provides respiration room to the beforehand sidelined storytelling intuition whereas holding court docket along with his acquainted semi-ironic nostalgia.
Combining the visible appear and feel of ‘90s working programs with text-based artwork and hypertext fiction, this new fashion permits slaughtermelon a extra direct route for exploring his deeper philosophical preoccupations with out resorting to earnestness or grand pronouncements.
Bringing the world of interactive text-based experiences into web3 and digital artwork accumulating, Do You Need To Really feel One thing? (2023) is slaughtermelon’s most formidable work thus far. In it, an incisive working system leads you thru a sequence of system prompts designed to interrogate your innermost self.
The opening immediate is, unsurprisingly, Do you wish to really feel one thing?
Your solely choices are “I can’t” or “I’m so drained, I wish to be numb.”
From there, you’re guided via a journey out of and deeper into ennui and existential dread.
DYWTFS doesn’t allow you to steer solely towards optimistic or damaging instructions, i.e., you’ll be able to’t select solely gloomy choices nor solely cheery choices. As a substitute, on this kind of aggressive remedy session, in the event you attempt to go all darkish you’ll attain a immediate the place there are solely hopeful choices. Likewise, in the event you select each optimistic choice alongside the best way, you’ll hit an deadlock the place each choice is a bummer. There isn’t a means out.
But once more, we discover sgt_slaughtermelon embracing what we thought was a contradiction however seems to only be the human situation. Happiness and numbness, pleasure and despondence, hope and despair can and, in truth, do coexist concurrently.
The opposite contradiction at play has to do with expectations. You may have clicked right into a hypertext fiction offered as a comically retro working system with a Lisa Frank coloration palette and NFTs by a man who calls himself sgt_slaughtermelon.
Har har.
However as you click on via, display after display presents confrontationally introspective questions you’d be abashed by even along with your therapist.
At some extent in enjoying via DYWTFS, you would possibly get the sense that sgt_slaughtermelon has been enjoying an extended con simply to get you to decrease your guard.
In his earlier work, slaughtermelon papered over his Modernist earnestness with all the ironic instruments out there to him. With this new strategy — which is able to proceed with the upcoming Macintosh-themed I Am Not Good At Pc — he overtly embodies this spirit of ironic sincerity and honest irony.
Throughout his physique of labor, sgt_slaughtermelon aspires to real emotional expression whereas neither falling into pie-eyed idealism nor po-faced cynicism, a unique type of Center Manner, an embrace of contradiction as the easiest way towards an artwork that makes you are feeling one thing.
