Get the Skibidi out of my white cube.
The Institute of Modern Art is hosting the first institutional display of the viral YouTube series Skibidi Toilet. The serialised animated narrative has prompted critical discussion about brain rot, algorithms, and digital cultures since becoming a Gen Alpha cultural touchstone in 2024.
Made by the creator known as Boom, the 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 Boom’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.
Join visual artist and curator Simone Hine, University of Queensland’s Director of Digital Cultures and Societies Nicholas Carah, and artist and educator Daniel McKewen to discuss the implications of Skibidi Toilet both within and beyond the gallery space. The panel will be chaired by IMA Assistant Director Nicholas Aloisio-Shearer.
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Simone Hine is an artist, curator, and writer. She works as Collection Curator at Redland Art Gallery. She is a founding co-director of Kuiper Projects, in Meanjin/Brisbane. She was also a founding co-director of Screen Space and Beam Contemporary in Naarm/Melbourne. She holds a PhD in Art History from the University of Melbourne, School of Culture and Communication.
Daniel McKewen is an artist and Senior Lecturer and Study-Area Coordinator of Visual Arts at QUT in Meanjin/Brisbane. His work addresses the intersections of contemporary art, screen culture, economics, and politics, exploring how institutions, systems, and structures of power inform our individual and collective imaginations.
Nicholas Carah is Director of the Centre for Digital Cultures and Societies in the Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences and Professor in the School of Communication and Arts, at the University of Queensland, Meanjin/Brisbane. He is an Associate Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society. He has written and edited numerous publications, including Media and Society: Power, Platforms, and Participation; Brand Machines, Sensory Media, and Calculative Culture; Digital Intimate Publics and Social Media; and Conflict in My Outlook.
Alexey 'Boom' Gerasimov 'Skibidi Toilet' 2023–ongoing.
