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Alex Quicho
Alex Quicho is the author of Small Gods (Zero Books, 2021), a book on the terror and transcendence of drone technology. She has written for the White Review, the New Inquiry, Wired, Vogue, Bookforum, and others, and worked with institutions including Singapore Art Museum, Power Station of Art (Shanghai), Julia Stoschek Collection (Berlin), Somerset House (London), Rennie Museum (Vancouver), and Nationalgalerie (Berlin). She is an associate lecturer in speculative futures at Central Saint Martins.

Articles Available Online


Without World

ESSAY

June 2023

ALEX QUICHO

ESSAY

June 2023

‘I had to create a world of my own, like a climate, a country, an atmosphere in which I could breathe, reign, and recreate...

ART REVIEW

December 2020

End Times: Heather Phillipson’s ‘The End’

ALEX QUICHO

ART REVIEW

December 2020

A huge swirl of whipped cream, garnished with a drone, a fly, and a maraschino cherry: so insistent that...

Source Material   Her story is widely known At first she stayed in heaven, then she followed a man down below, and that was her descent to earth As the illustration shows, later on she returned once more to the heavens To be precise, she flew to the moon Chang’e Escapes to the Moon As you will realise at once, this is Chang’e She has many names: Chang’e, Heng’e, Changxi, Shangyi, Changyi, the Jade Rabbit, the Spirit of the Moon beyond these, there are the unpleasant ones, such as the Toad, the Cleft-lip Rabbit, etc[1] Now she has descended to the world again   Many have written poems about her in each and every dynasty Li Shangyin[2] wrote the finest:   A mica screen, deep shadows cast by the candles, the long river[3] slowly falls, the dawn stars sink Chang’e regrets stealing the marvellous potion[4]— jade-green waters, blue-black sky — at night in her heart   Statistical data indicates that the men who have written poems to her are too numerous to count Yet none describes her appearance; not because she is embarassingly ugly, but because she is too lovely From ancient times to the present day, among all lovely women, she is the only one to enjoy this honour: everyone knows she is very beautiful, without the poets needing to waste words or ink Incidentally, while no one wrote down the details of her beauty before, to do so today would be impossible The present is an ugly age, when the task of the poet is to write about ugliness As to what comes after — oh, don’t bring that up People everywhere know that the next age will be called the post-ugly era       Essay on an Assigned Topic   I am writing this essay on a topic assigned by Hou Houyi [5] Hou Houyi is an important historian, as well as my academic advisor He instructed me to make a record of the descent of Chang’e to the world He also

CONTRIBUTOR

July 2018

Alex Quicho

CONTRIBUTOR

July 2018

Alex Quicho is the author of Small Gods (Zero Books, 2021), a book on the terror and transcendence of...

Emily Pope, The Sitcom Show

ART REVIEW

July 2018

ALEX QUICHO

ART REVIEW

July 2018

Emily Pope’s five-part web series, The Sitcom Show, is a throwback to the chameleonic class-consciousness and wry pessimism-as-realism embodied by the vein of British pop culture...

READ NEXT

feature

Issue No. 1

On the Notoriously Overrated Powers of Voice in Fiction or How To Fail At Talking To Pretty Girls

D. W. Wilson

feature

Issue No. 1

On a Tuesday afternoon in July, not too long ago, a friend of mine struck a pose imitating a...

poetry

September 2012

Crossing Over

Eleanor Rees

poetry

September 2012

As he sails the coracle of willow and skins his bird eyes mirror the moon behind cloud. Spring tide...

Art

March 2013

Beyond the Mainstream and into the Digital

Vid Simoniti

Art

March 2013

Claire Bishop. Everywhere I go, some curator or artist wants to be rid of this turbulent critic.   In 2006...

 

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