Alex Cecchetti

Tuesday 26 May 2015 7-7.30 pm

Admission free, booking essential Fiorucci Art Trust info@fiorucciartrust.com/ +44 20 7590 0933 10 Sloane Ave - London SW3 3JE

Fiorucci Art Trust presents Lezioni d’Italiano

Chef Lucas Dominguez

Curated by

Stella Bottai

Lesson #7 Performance by

STELLA BOTTAI: I ’d l ike to begin this conversation recal l ing the f irst t ime we met. You were dead. I don’t mean this metaphorical ly to say that you were t ired. You told me you had died the year before. You do not remember how or why it had happened. How did your own death affect your relationship with the world of the l iving - and also with yourself? Do you miss being al ive? How many t imes can one die?

ALEX CECCHETTI: Death is nothing, consciousness is the real big deal . The self is the most refined invention of our wicked trickster master, the brain. And believe me, i t does not die so easi ly. Otherwise, there is not so much difference between being dead or al ive, even though I feel much more comfortable in being dead. When I get t ired I just stand up. I ’ l l stand up on Tuesday night; I ’ l l do a stand-up again every t ime I ’ l l feel the itch.To die also gave me the unique occasion to have a solo show in Heaven or whatever you want to cal l i t . They invited me because they saw my name somewhere, they st i l l don’t get what I do, they don’t pay fees or for travel . They have no budget, but they do miracles. Many more advantages have come from this new situation in which I have found myself . Since my death, I am able to go to Hell every t ime I want to go and come back. I earn my l iving by giving guided tours of the Otherworld. If you think that money does not rule here, you are right, money doesn’t , but people keep paying anyhow. Stupid habits are hard to lose. I always missed l i fe, i t runs too fast and I l ike breakfast .Everyone has died once, i t just happens much more before you can notice i t .

SB: Your performance at FAT is t i t led Tamam Shud and is inspired by an in-explicable, unsolved case from 1948, when a man was found dead on a beach in Adelaide, Austral ia. His identity is st i l l unknown as nothing could be used for i ts identif ication. The labels of his clothes, f ingerprints, even the size of his shoes had been carefully removed, deleted, bleached out. A t iny piece of rol led-up paper with the words “Tamam Shud” printed on it was found deep

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FIORUCCI ART TRUST PRESENTS LEZIONI D’ITALIANO

Alex Cecchetti Lesson #7

Curated by Stella Bottai26 May 2015, 7 pm10 Sloane Ave, London SW3 3JE

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in a pocket sewn within the dead man’s trousers. The text was identif ied as a phrase meaning “ended” or “f inished” from the last page of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam , a col lection of Persian poems from the XI century. How does your work engage with this mysterious history? Is i t important for you to understand who this man might have been?

AC: This is a nice story, where did you hear i t? All I know is that I do not remember anything and I am afraid the cleaner has done too much clean-ing here. Look: where there must be blood it smells of lavender, where there must be shit i t smells of cinnamon. Where is the l i fe we l ived? I wouldn’t worry that much about the man on the beach, his name or his l i fe. To die with no history is the unique privi lege of our epoch, not so many are so ski l ful in deleting their traces. Unfortunately the number of detectives is terribly increasing nowadays, and great confusion reigns among criminals as they realise they now do that same job. The only thing I remember about the Rubaiyat is that nothing is what i t seems, wine is not wine, bott les are not bottles and especial ly women are not women and of course men are not men.

SB: When speaking about this performance in the past, you mentioned the Egyptian Book of the Dead – a col lection of texts that would assist a dead person’s journey toward their afterl i fe. For the Egyptians, death was simply a temporary interruption, rather than complete cessation, of l i fe . They also believed that someone’s identity would be highly influenced by the objects included in their burial , which is why these items were selected very care-ful ly. For me this idea is very fascinating, how the objects surrounding a person may become the makers of that person’s identity. Do you happen to remember what was put in your burial? Or perhaps what was in your own pocket when you died?

AC: As a material ist I am a very spiritual person, I trust things more than objects. Spells are ideas, therefore objects, therefore real , and their task is to preserve a constructed world through the eternity. There is an ancient Egyptian spell that forces a clone of the self to do the labour, the work. The homunculus is made of clay and is supposed to be the slave of i ts owner. I am afraid that spell was put in my burial and I cannot f igure out whether I am the owner or the slave.

SB: Why did you want to be accompanied by a chorus including a Contralto and Countertenor for this performance? The Contralto is the lowest and most rare of the female voices. Historical ly, this term was also used to indicate a Castrato singer. Likewise, the Countertenor is tradit ionally known as the

male equivalent of a Contralto. As we have been speaking a lot about identity, I f ind it interesting that you chose to work with singing voices of different genders yet somehow mirroring each other.

AC: In the beginning, in Mesopotamia, long before Babylon, before tow-ers and kings, people, men and women, were having sex without giving too much attention to gender but to what was suff icient for having fun. Then these two guys came, with tablets and al l , and they started staring at the lovers, watching and scribbling, watching and nodding and scrib-bling.What are you doing? A couple asked.We are inventing writ ing, the scribe said while he kept watching and scribbling.Hun, hun, the couple said.It ’s a system to l ist down things and remember facts, and is good to sel l wheat, l ist kings and know who the owner of the beans is .Hun, hun, the couple said.It works with vowels and consonants. Vowels are open and soft , l ike when you say “Hi!” And consonants are rigid and hard, as when you say “Prime Minister”. We say vowels are female as they look l ike the female sex and consonants are male as they look l ike the male sex. This is what the scribes said while watching and scribbling.Hun, hun, said the couple while fucking.And we are going to write a book, not now but soon, in which only conso-nants wil l be written and vowels wil l be virtual – as keys to open a code, and this, we swear, wil l fuck up your brain completely. But i t won’t be the end; we have many more plans, the scribes said.Hun, hun, said the couple while fucking.We wil l separate the land from the heavens and the women from the men, and you’ l l become so convinced of your differences that we can add more things and facts to our l ists . One day we’ l l sel l much more than just wheat.Hun, hun.The couple kept fucking, the scribes kept scribbling.

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Alex Cecchetti (1977-2014) was an artist , a poet and a choreographer. Diff icult to classify, his work can be considered as the art of the unpresentable: tacti le and po-etic, aesthetic and material ist ic , i t produces situations that exist inside and outside the exhibit ion system. It is only from this double movement “towards and away from” representation that several of his sculptures, performances, writ ings and poems take shape. Died for the f irst t ime in 2014 for unknon reasons, the artist continues to pro-duce new works, present new performances and publish new poems