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Small Gods (first edition, 2017)

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.

Developed with generous support from Canada Council for the Arts.

Press in Bomb, Spike, Carhartt WIP and AAWW.
Excerpts in Real Life and Triangle House.

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
 
 

Small Gods (mass edition, 2021)

 

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.

READING 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