PERMADEATH LOGIC
polyethyleneterephthalat-glyko sculpture, video loop
2026
Leon Sahiti designs, across two interrelated works, a seemingly futuristic world whose visual elements and methods of production each suggest that this world may be closer to our reality than we think. The first is a figure produced using 3D printing, a process of growing importance in industrial and increasingly creative applications. The second is a short video generated using local LLMs, commercial variants (i.e. common AI models), and 3D graphics software. Beyond this form of work-creation that only appears futuristic but is already widespread, the visual elements of both the sculpture and the video reference dominant visual worlds that represent a digital standard.
The sculpture is a kind of cyborg assembled from humanoid body parts, a chimeric physique, a worn-out gas mask, machine components, and rather archaic-looking blade legs on which the figure stands. These legs, in their fragility, read more like prosthetics. Associations with similar beings from fantasy or horror films or games are intentional, and trigger corresponding attributions of function onto the sculpture, which stands as a guardian figure in front of the video room where it appears again on screen. Its visible construction from glued-together 3D-printed parts makes it all the more homunculus-like, while also producing a glittering sense of value and the haptic appeal of its semi-transparent surface.
In the video, we follow the protagonist and his reflections on the fantastical world he has ended up in after being killed by a drone. It seems to correspond to his own escapist fantasies, and he must now assert himself within it, moving through the typical imagery of depopulated, catastrophe-marked landscapes and spaces, against an overwhelming enemy. This is a role the sculpture, among others, can be seen to occupy in the film. The title of both parts of the work, PERMADEATH LOGIC, references a gaming mode in which a character can die permanently, making a more careful and deliberate experience of the game world necessary: something we can trace throughout the video.
With PERMADEATH LOGIC, Leon Sahiti makes clear that the future is not something yet to come, but is already operating as a structural condition of our present. The transposition of digital game mechanics into the space of physical experience exposes the "fantastical" as the aesthetic surface of an algorithmic logic long since internalized. What appears to be speculation is, in truth, the normal state of affairs: simulation, iteration, and strategic self-optimization shape our relationship to the world. Ironically, permadeath is the inescapable fact of our analogue existence.
Text by Ingmar Lähnemann
📸 Jens Weyers
