Alex Quicho
Alex Quicho
writer & researcher

 

2024 -TRANSMEDIALE

She’s Evil

She’s Evil, Most Definitively Subliminal sees Alex Quicho and Noura Tafeche enter the theatre of psychological operations online – because physical wounds heal – and lay out the girl artillery, from IDF e-girls to DIY subliminals. At this intersection of asymmetrical warfare and individualistic self-development, the battle is fought via seduction, influence, disruption, and confusion.

Commissioned for Transmediale 2024: You’re Doing Amazing Sweetie. Reviewed by Spike Magazine.

Collaborative performance with Noura Tafeche
Two-channel projection with found subliminal audio, 30 mins
Photography by Laura Fiorio
With thanks to Jade Barget, Nóra Ó Murchú and Kasia Wlaszczyk

2024 · VARIOUS

Prey Mode

A theoretical model and visual poem that patterns bottom-of-the-food-chain tricks—like total sensing, tactical passivity, and ecstatic surrender—for securing more life. Individual survival may not be the answer. After all, love is vore.

First published as an essay on Dazed and expanded at BODYSTACKED and To New Entities. Interview on Logged On. Part of the Girlstack.

Essay & lecture with found trailcam imagery, 35 mins

 

2023 · VARIOUS

GIRLSTACK

The ‘girl’ inhabits no one person, body, or gender. She is a technology of subjectivity composed of symbolic, consumer, and inhuman elements. The ‘girlstack’ models the ultrasmooth, cybergothic, and angelic dimensions of the ‘girl’s natural habitat. She might be our only way out of the platform trap.

First published as an essay on Wired and expanded at BODYSTACK and Creamcake 3HD. Interview on New Models. Ongoing investigations on Substack.

Essay, lecture & platform, ∞ mins
Visuals by Şiir Bicer

 

2023 - ESPACE NIEMEYER

Reality Surf

Two-headed carabao calf Eleuterio Jr. — preserved by an ecocult and reanimated as the mascot of a demilitarised Mischief Reef — recounts his devotion to the super-storm that killed him. The second live sequel to Alley to Heaven, performed using a projected low-poly environment, voice transformer and vroid avatar.

Commissioned for Daisy World at Espace Niemeyer, Paris as part of The Well Tempered, a programme of atmospheres and atmospherics curated by Jade Barget with Saki Hibino.

Performance with video projection, 23 mins
Score · Libya Montes & Rayce Vaughn ☾ Virtual Cinematography · Carlo Quicho ☾ 3D Artist · Farid Mammadov ☾ Environment Design · Sagar Chavda ☾ Photography · Martin Lazlo Rouillé

2023 - SOFT POWER

Bad Omens

Disaster-sensing nanosatellite MAYA-8 experiences machine psychosis and falls in love with all her data labellers at once. The first live sequel to Alley to Heaven, performed using a projected low-poly environment and livestreamed avatar.

Commissioned for Omen Central at Soft Power, Berlin as part of The Well Tempered, a programme of atmospheres and atmospherics curated by Jade Barget with Saki Hibino.

Performance with livestreamed projection, 17 mins
Score · Mercyboyz ☾ Virtual Cinematography · Carlo Quicho ☾ 3D Artist · Farid Mammadov ☾ Environment Design · Sagar Chavda ☾ Photography · Sonia Rybak

 

2023 · STANLEY PICKER

Alley to Heaven

Three nonhuman agents — a coral polyp swarm, a two-headed carabao calf, and a sparrow-nanosatellite hybrid — reflect on an artificial island’s ecology, history, and geopolitical status within the contested territory of the South China / West Philippine Sea.

Commissioned for A World of Islands, an exhibition curated by Ligaya Salazar at Stanley Picker Gallery, London. A World of Islands considers the movement of indigenous knowledge, practices, materials and people, and historical and current fabrications of tropical utopia and dystopia.

Exhibited at Sérum Radiance, curated by Jade Barget at Fondation Fiminico, Paris. The exhibition brings together a selection of works on the development and study of ecosystems, with works highlighting the toxic ecologies of which humanity is an integral part.

Single-channel video with CGI, vroid avatars, and found footage, 19 mins
Directed by Alex Quicho & Carlo Quicho
Design · Javier Syquia ☾ Score · Libya Montes ☾ Virtual Cinematography · Carlo Quicho ☾ 3D Artist · Farid Mammadov ☾ Environment Design · Sagar Chavda ☾ Additional Score and Sound Design · Rayce Vaughn ☾ Colourist · Cam McCutcheon

 
 
 

2022 · SOMERSET HOUSE STUDIOS

Demonic Cognition

A video-augmented lecture-performance on the animistic, modernist, and authoritarian spirits that haunt the archipelagoes and peninsulas of the tropics — drawing and departing from the research behind Small Gods.

Commissioned for New Worlds, an experimental series curated by Alice Bucknell at Somerset House Studios. The performances merge magic and technology to explore the interconnected topics of sound and ritual, myth-making, non-linear storytelling, ecological futures, and more-than-human narratives. Reviewed by Elephant.

Performance with video projection, 25 mins
Video direction & production · Carlo Quicho ☾ Score · Mercyboyz ☾ DP · Matt Young ☾ Stylist · Camilla Lesyk ☾ Type design · Liam Morrow ☾ 3D animation · Chrome Destroyer ☾ Colourist · Cam McCutcheon ☾ Model & MUA · Kiera Castro

 

SELECTED ESSAYS

For Arvida Byström — Cut the Cake
Dunkers Kulturhus · 2023

Do-it-yourself subliminal messaging.
Zora · 2023

Latent pleasures of surrender.
Dazed · 2023

Forced feminisation of technology discourse.
Wired · 2023

World-building and what comes next.
The White Review · 2023

Folkloric infohazards in the age of permanent dynasty.
C · 2023

For Korakrit Arunanondchai — A Machine Boosting Energy into the Universe
Singapore Art Museum · 2022

For Stephanie Comilang & Simon Speiser — Piña, Why is the Sky Blue?
Julia Stoschek Collection · 2022

Futures from the Third World.
Wired · 2021

Contaminate me!
C · 2020

Insurrection and infernal loops.
The New Inquiry · 2019

Death from above.
Real Life · 2017

Daylight horror.
Real Life · 2016

 
 

2021 · ZERO BOOKS

Small Gods

Small Gods deconstructs the mythology of the drone: as soothing sound, aerial spy, and killing machine. Each chapter focuses on the work of an artist with a unique understanding of drone technologies, illuminating myriad facets of these entangled entities. Empty metal becomes a future-facing spirit, a ride into the afterlife, a god or a ghost.

Global · Librarystack
UK · Hive · Bookshop · Waterstones · Foyles
USA · Indiebound · Barnes and Noble

Developed with generous support from Canada Council for the Arts.

—

“Alex Quicho approaches her vivisection of the new, droning flesh with Ballardian playfulness, Mark Fisher’s ethical backbone, and Mary Shelley’s hunger for new visions.”
— Aleš Kot, author of Days of Hate
“Surprising, delightful, engrossing, disturbing, and ultimately inspiring, Small Gods is a thoughtful and and urgent meditation on the ways that life is being re-constituted by technology, rightfully [placing] these powerful new entities in the long history of a world forged through empire.”
— Vincent Bevins, author of the Jakarta Method
“A luminous exploration of drone technology in the gallery and in open air, Alex Quicho gives form to the machinic gaze and asks what we see when we self-surveil, what view of the human is conjured by the drone’s-eye perspective. Haunting and revelatory, this book will have you searching the skies above you for the unseen presence of these small gods, their hidden reach.”
— Alexandra Kleeman, author of You Too Can Have A Body Like Mine
“Quicho reminds us of the exhilarating disorientation when art makes the bizarre, cruel, and occasionally sumptuous tech-mediated present somehow feel more real.”
— Esmé Hogeveen, Bomb Magazine

Image credit: Nadine Fraczkowski for Anne Imhof (2016)

 
anne-imhof.jpg