With Occupy Cybertron, toy prankster Sucklord splices the Occupy movement into the Transformers universe, with 99-percenter Autobots facing off against 1-percenter Decepticon overlords.
His latest batch of custom action figures, which will go on display Wednesday night in New York, place Decepticon heads atop the iconographic suits that have pulled the plug on the global market while skimming off obscene profits.
"I don't claim to be part of Occupy Wall Street, to represent it or speak for it in any way, and I do not use the name directly in any of my offerings," Sucklord, aka Morgan Phillips, told Wired.com in an e-mail. "This project is my exploration into the way occupation as a means of protest has taken over popular culture. By transposing the idea into the world of Transformers, it underscores the concept's applicability."
Still, the one-night-only Occupy Cybertron exhibition has the New York artist carefully walking a tightrope fraught with fraying possibility.
"I thought long and hard and nearly pulled the plug on this release, for fear of running afoul of the movement," said Sucklord, who previously created a gay Star Wars toy collection. "I'm squarely in the camp of the 99 percent, and I know it's anathema to the movement to profit off of it, so I want to make my intentions clear before anyone makes any snap judgments."
Sucklord's knockoff Transformers gear will be joined by Occupy Cybertron trading cards created for the event; they will be handed out free to attendees dressed in relevant costumes.
That means you, unnamed dude who wears the Guy Fawkes mask over the Megatron armor. And probably you, too, whoever dresses up as someone from Sucklord's ongoing web series Toy Lords of Chinatown.
"I think this could be helpful to the movement, because the sci-fi toy nerds of the world who have thus far sat out Occupy Wall Street may see how it relates to them, now that it has been presented in a language they can understand," Sucklord said, with what could only be described as a virtual straight face. "Perhaps I'm giving myself too much credit for having any influence, but I feel I can help spread it into non-physical spaces and get its ideas out to other groups."
Sucklord's Chinatown-based Suckadelic Enterprises is making more this year than it did in 2010, and it has done so with local workers proudly hand-crafting all of its expensive crap. But even if he sells out of his Occupy Cybertron creations, Sucklord says he's not looking at a 1-percenter windfall.
"The amount of money that actually goes into my pocket after all is said and done is not really enough to be the primary motivation," said Sucklord. "That said, I also know that even with my scant earnings, I still am obligated to give something back to the movement, and I intend to do that."
Part of Sucklord's success stems from reality television series Work of Art: The Next Great Artist. The artist's obsessions with Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings recently got him bounced after a very watchable bid on the competitive show, but what the experience taught him about the art market has proven priceless.
"Nothing I made up there was great, yet that doesn't seem to matter: That's the lesson I learned," Sucklord said. "Even though I made pure shit on the show, I have been getting nothing but support, opportunities, access and press. It's all based on personality. For me, as an artist, that's my greatest commodity."
A self-described "Comic-Con guy" who would much rather get his work shown in Toys R Us than the Museum of Modern Art, Sucklord might be the most notorious toymaker in the art game right now. Yet he's under no illusions about the kind of high-minded aesthetics that have been largely left behind by a century in love with ironic distance. Now he's hard at work on more gay action figures, another Great Zeroes of Sports line and further episodes of his beloved Toy Lords of Chinatown.
Sucklord knows that any great Jedi master must eventually enter his or her own Dark Side Cave to smash open the Vader mask and see what truth lies inside. That means creating something that's wholly original and flows from the depths of his sweet but sucky soul, rather than depending on hilarious and relatively lucrative satire.
"Although I love doing appropriation and rip-offs, I still aspire to create something original," he said. "That's why Work of Art judge Jerry Saltz was able to unman me by demanding that I 'stop the Star Wars.' I've always had in the back of my mind that someday I would graduate from being a bootleg artist and create my own Star Wars. That's my highest goal, to make a new franchise that's all my own."
Occupy Cybertron runs from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. Wednesday at the End of Century Gallery in Manhattan.
