Remilia Collective is a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) which is the driving force behind the creation of Milady Maker and other famous nft collections. The collective comprises artists who prefer to operate under screen names and handles, maintaining a level of anonymity even among themselves.
Remilia's focus lies in producing unconventional digital art, often associated with provocative online performances. The founder, Charlotte Fang, draws inspiration from William S. Burroughs' controversial novel, Naked Lunch, and highlights the influence of the crypto community's tendency to disregard political correctness on Remilia's interest in NFTs.
Remilia's overall aesthetic and approach exude a nostalgic feel, with a website that harks back to the aesthetics of 2004. While Remilia remains shrouded in mystery, with limited information available about the Collective, its objective is to create outsider digital art with a strong emphasis on transgressive online performances. As was said before, Fang compares their content to Naked Lunch and suggests that the crypto community's early adopters, including gamers and 4channers, who now hold significant wealth, are instrumental in driving Remilia's interest in NFTs.
In this context, isn’t a surprise that Remilia isn’t exempt from scandals. The DAO had a connection with Sophia Vanderbilt, a former member who expressed potential financial gains from Milady Maker, but did not disclose the exact amount. Fang confirmed that Vanderbilt received free Milady NFTs but was uncertain if she sold them. This shadowed exchanges of public accusations led lots of users to distrust Remillia NFT collections.
However, Remilia's inclination toward unconventional and transgressive art has also ended up with collaborations and consultations, such as the involvement with the Spice DAO project centred around an unproduced film adaptation of Dune. Despite the pseudonymous nature of most collaborators, Remilia Collective continues to push boundaries in the digital art space while challenging societal norms and embracing the disruptive potential of NFTs.
Remilia Collective NFT projects
Milady Maker, developed by Remilia Collective in August 2021, stands as the group's greatest success. This initiative introduced a collection of 10,000 generative neo-chibi-style profile pictures (PFP) NFTs, intended for use as Twitter avatars. Drawing inspiration from the retro era of custom message board avatars and online guild banners, Milady adds blockchain technology and financial value to the concept. The NFTs feature anime-girl-style avatars with aesthetics influenced by Tokyo's street-style tribes and modern pop culture. Each item possesses unique traits and cosmetic options, offering a distinct profile image to its holder.
Remilia Collective has ventured beyond its successful Milady Maker project, exploring new avenues in the NFT space with two distinctive projects: Bonkler and Redacted Remilio Babies.
Bonkler, introduced by Remilia in April 2023, stands as an experimental finance art project. Its Paced Generative Mint approach gradually reveals rarities over the span of a year, introducing contrasting aesthetics and rarity to obscure price discovery. Each day, a new item is generated and made available for bidding, with redemption shares encoded within based on the sale price. These shares can be exchanged for ETH by burning the Bonkler, with the ETH collected in each auction (minus a 30% fee) fueling the Bonkler Treasury. With only 400 items ever to be produced, their scarcity increases as they are burned to redeem their reserve-backed value.
On the other hand, Redacted Remilio Babies emerged as Remilia Collective's first PFP NFT project after the success of Milady. Created in August 2022, this collection features 10,000 neo-chibi-style profile pictures (PFP) NFTs, showcasing youthful energy, schizophrenic aesthetics, and what the collective refers to as "digital sales terrorism." With art by Ulenka, this collection offers a fresh perspective with a focus on the spirit of 13-year-old running Minecraft hustles. The project combines disparate inspirations into a directed chaos that distinguishes Remilia's approach as a revolutionary art practice.
Through these diverse projects, Remilia Collective demonstrates, once again, its ability to push the boundaries of NFTs, embracing experimentation and unique artistic expressions within the crypto art community.
Remilia Scandals
Remilia has been embroiled in several scandals that have brought scrutiny and controversy to their endeavours. One of the main controversies surrounding the Milady Maker NFTs is Remilia's connection to a group with ambiguous slogans, which has raised concerns about their ideology.
Their affiliation with the "new right" scene in New York City, known for its association with figures like Nick Land and Curtis Yarvin, has fueled speculation about Remilia's political leanings. Critics have drawn links between Remilia and Kaliacc, a defunct collective associated with Nazi ideology, as evidenced by their website linking to an old Twitter handle referencing Nazi ideology. Although accusations connecting "Charlotte Fang" to Kaliacc haven't been substantiated, the controversial behaviour has raised eyebrows within the crypto community.
The Milady NFT collection faced further controversy when a spin-off collection called Milady, that B.I.T.C.H. featured avatars on t-shirts with the word "Treblinka." The Remilia Collective claimed it was an honest mistake, as the words were randomly generated, but this explanation didn't satisfy some members of the community.
The controversy surrounding the collection intensified, and Charlotte Fang dismissed the issue as a joke, which left many community members feeling outraged and deceived. This controversy showcased the challenges NFT artists face in the digital realm, with accusations and controversies threatening the trust and support of the community.