Most recently, Iezzi has been putting stray plush animals in uncomfortable situations, often digitally manipulating these grotesque images and videos to enter the realm of the surreal (or 90s rave flyer). Sonically, the artist has repurposed failed bids to the Eurovision Song Contest: they released the album EUROVISION 2020 last May, when the international TV spectacle was supposed to take place in Rotterdam before its ultimate cancelation. In premiering the track »Netherlands - Take a Wise Decision,« AQNB described its looped strings and cut-up vocals as »relentless in their forward momentum, resurrecting the feverish anti-pop of our current and crumbling reality.«
Itchy Cherub pt. 2 - A figure appears on the screen in the corner, dressed in costume from the artist’s wardrobe; a sweater and bucket hat. Henrietta Müller, an artist who has previ- ously collaborated with Iezzi in sound and as a performer, gamely sniffs, tastes, and comments on the petri dishes of mould, undergoes attempts to make her sneeze, and dances with a yellow velveteen figure that she has named Tapioca. The footage is cut together with synths and chopped screwed samples from songs which lyrically relate to bacteria, though the most recognisable formula- tion is the pre-chorus of Britney Spears’ Toxic, which accompanies footage of Tapioca animated by strings and flashing lamplight.
Itchy Cherub - The works that constitute Alexander Iezzi’s exhibition itchy cherub can be seen to move on a similar axis of tropes – so within this (unendorsed) comparison, we can see Iezzi as pantomiming the role of the doctor, whose assembled coterie drag bespoke dining furniture for dessert in the ambience of a basement. Three diminutive fondant devils can be seen to be supportively bracing ladders made of skewers, or their limbs could be contorted to proffer and tear away at out- size walls. Scale is uneasy, with three dolls constructed from repurposed textiles perch on this furniture, which sensibly elevates them off the ground.
Aminals (with Viktor Timofeev) - The demolition of boundaries, not only between humans and other animals, but also between living and non-living nature, is certainly an important theme to which this exhibition has brought me. It has been clear for some time now that the basic elements that make up our bodies and those of animals are the same as the rest of the cold, inanimate universe. Perhaps, to some extent, the arbitrarily drawn boundary between living and non-living nature depends on something as romantic as attaching certain elements to a carbon atom, resulting in (simplifying) the inanimate, immovable, and inert becoming a moving, animated, living animal. Who, moreover, in special cases still manages to see himself and to recognize all others as the same consciousness.
Otherkin: A Social Software - »Otherkin – A Social Software« is a role-played experimental radio performance that takes place through the lens of a fiction theory narrative centred around the idea of Otherkin and the notion of companion species – human beings entangled with other animals, organisms, landscapes, and technologies. The work brings up questions of new animism, translocality, and how to leave behind the notion of human exceptionalism.
Through the language of Otherkin, the piece opens the door to a collective investigation into the possibilities of identities between being human and something else. The work aims to raise awareness to the complex entanglement of direct physiological effects of frequencies and the psychological effects of narratives, role-playing, and Othering. By speaking in tongues, the players subvert and mutate reality, opening alternative and transformative landscapes of existing together.
The work is sonically presented within CTM Cyberia as a radio play. The characters' voices and calls have been extracted from a live role-played session where participants explored new identities and collectively generated methods to perform their companionship species / technologies. The narrative is honed by Omsk Social Club and Portals Cashmere Radio, and Alexander Iezzi.
Beati Babies - He steps off the bus with shopping bags carried over his shoulders, digging into his white windbreaker. The bags are stuffed with mixture of Aldi promotional newsletters and glass jars filled with an orange-brown semi-transparent liquid. Empty electronics boxes are taped to a simple cart. Inside the boxes, small sculptures are fastened to the interior carton walls to prevent movement and breakage. A half-step jostles one bag, which begins to ooze, leaving a smelly trail.
What is a process? Like music, it is the happening of things through a series of distortions. In the work of Alexander Iezzi, things unravel, are transformed and mutated, and are remade. A scurrying line doubles back on itself.
What if pilgrimage could be thought of as a scurrying? To drop the point-of-view from roughly 5ft in the air to 1ft off the ground. The journey of the pilgrim becomes a textured, errant, looping movement, like an animal in the undergrowth. A living intention that undoes and remakes itself.
The Beati Babies are the blessed ones. Beatification is the process by which certain deceased are recognised by the Catholic Church as “blessed”. This means if you pray to them in heaven they can intercede on your behalf. The beati were ordinary religious people who dedicated their lives to the underserved. Beatification is an interesting state because it focuses on the earthly: the sourness of the world.
In the gallery we smell the sweet and acrid odour of homemade apple vinegar. Vinegar, literally "sour wine” is a natural preservative made from a fermentation process, today used as a condiment, a pickler, a cleaner. Although the profile of vinegar is as much brutal sensation (coughing) as flavour, it has interesting properties beyond that. Hildegard von Bingen, celebrated medieval mystic, thought that vinegar caused food to journey through the human body “as it should”. Vinegar opens up the palate to fully experience flavours and acts as a vehicle for flavours to comingle. Vinegar, then, is an opener, a carrier, a balancer that brings us to a state of “enhanced things-as-they-are”. A tang of beatitude.
What is a process? We are floor height, we are a mid-sized invisible animal. The perspective brings us to our feet, like a devotional crouch. To inspect the earth and the creatures that run amongst the dirt, and trash, scurrying in and out until the feeling of boundary is mushy rather than solid. A digestion, when a festering pile of apples becomes more than just putrid, but alcoholic. These apples, gathered by a traveller, are folded into a sack and stuffed into jars to brew, becoming sour and wonderful.
