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.
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“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Quicho reminds us of the exhilarating disorientation when art makes the bizarre, cruel, and occasionally sumptuous tech-mediated present somehow feel more real.”