Seychelle Allah in front of “Nuclear Tropics II: Escape from Bikini Peel” (2010).
One of the figures behind Space Slave Trade, Seychelle Allah discusses his brand of afrofuturism that layers the visual culture around him into a world in which the aggregate plays an important role.
Allah’s relationship with social media has been complex. Space Slave Trade, named after a friend’s band, started after he was kicked off Facebook for sharing images deemed inappropriate by the service. The resulting blog is NSFW and careens from porn-like images with young Asian girls to absurd representations of starving Africans. The aesthetic is young, fresh, and aggressive without being violent.
His 2-D work, like “Nuclear Tropics II: Escape from Bikini Peel” (2010), which is exhibited in #TheSocialGraph, is a visual explosion that portrays a friends of his in a state of rebirth in cyberspace. Allah explains in the interview that social media feels like one of the most natural things he has ever done, and he considers it a form a nature.
Still a student, we’re sure to be hearing more from Allah as his work, and Space Slave Trade, develops. The following is an interview conducted at the Outpost.
“The aesthetic is young, fresh, and aggressive without being violent.”
Funny… my first reaction to the aesthetic was that I had seen it all before, though this would definitely be a less intellectual and meaningful variant of it.
Also… so, this is all a hissy fit over being kicked off of facebook for posting things that very obviously violate just about anybody’s terms of service? Someone should really tell these folks that when you use incredibly provocative imagery you should have some reason for doing it… and a good reason beyond its aesthetic and its provocative nature… because so far I have yet to see much good reason for all of this stuff.