O. B. De Alessi

White Moon’ is a yet-to-be-released horror film. Woman, the main character, becomes the femme fatale Salomè and the femme fragile Ophelia as she struggles to cope with loss of control and frustrated desire. ‘White Moon’ is surrounded by mystery as the director has never been identified and only two scenes of the original script remain. Nobody knows how the film was intended to begin or to end. For the first time, you will be shown the few existing scenes and the original trailer.

There’s Nothing Wrong, performance, Arthouse, Deptford, as part of the event ‘Askew: Wild, WIcked and Wanton’. 2010

‘There’s Nothing Wrong’ combines Louis Malle’s 1979 film “Pretty Baby” with Michael Jackson’s unreleased song “Scared of the Moon” to talk about loss of innocence.

There’s Nothing Wrong from o.b. de alessi on Vimeo.

That’s Where’s You’ll Find Me, video black and white, sound, 2′ 44”, 2010

This video was created for the event Askew: The garden of Desire, London 2010, and it was subsequently shown in the group show ‘Distress’ curated by Lucia Pizzani as part of the Bienal Internacional de Arte Contemporàneo Ula - 2010, Mérida, Venezuela, 2010

That’s where you’ll find me from o.b. de alessi on Vimeo.

Il Mistero Del Doppio Dubbio, installation, Casa Orioles Arte Contemporanea, Palermo, Italy, 2010

A superstition.

Better By You Better Than Me, Performance and video, Guest Projects Space, London, 2010

Asked to think of a performance about the theme of the scapegoat in contemporary society, I decided to focus on the frequent use of heavy metal culture as a scapegoat for teenagers’ fascination with violence and death. With my face made up in a “black metal” fashion, I sang a slower, a cappella version of the Judas Priest’s song “Better By You, Better Than Me” which was accused of containing subliminal messages that push the listeners to commit suicide. In front of me was a toy gun used for playing Nintendo Wii. In the background, found footage of teenage boys playing with a gun.
View the videos here

Written In The Stars, Performance and site - specific installation, 2009

This performance, which takes place as part of a site - specific installation created in Chelsea College of Art& Design,wants to suggest the obsessive atmosphere created by an individual who completely identifies with a celebrity.
The starting point for this work is a notebook I wrote when I was a young teenager and obsessed fan of Michael Jackson. This notebook has been kept secret until now, when, having asked my parents to send it to me, I decided to transpose it into visual language.
The result is a fictional space which I have inhabited for several hours every day throughout the duration of the MA Fine Art final show. While there, I impersonate an unnamed individual whose most powerful desire is to be another individual ( namely not Michael Jackson, whose influence is nonetheless narrated through a number of references ) but Peter Pan, the eternal spirit of youth.
The use of certain icons can be interpreted both as an attempt to mythologize oneself and as a symbol of a specific time and place.

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The Storms and Longings of Oscar Scar. Stills from video DVD, 12′00”, 2009.

This video focuses on the use of alter egos to explore personal and cultural identity.
It also aims to research the codes or Romanticism in a contemporary context. The title itself refers to the German term ‘Sturm Und Drang’, a name chosen by 19th century German poets to describe their state of longing and despair.
This feeling has here been channeled through the fictional character Oscar Scar, an ambiguous teenage like figure, and transposed to the contemporary world of YouTube videos and Black Metal.
A series of video diary episodes is combined with footage from Laurence Olivier’s “Hamlet”, with an obsessive description of the face of Arthur Rimbaud as portrayed by Carjat in 1973, and with images of Oscar’s own avatar on a 3D chat.
The video is divided in five chapters and it utilises a method of expression which can be compared to that of a collage, or of pastiche. The character Oscar Scar portrays himself, his dreams and his pains, through a continuous reference to other characters.
He is a fictional character who wants to find his real self, and he does so trying to become other fictional (or fictionalised) characters.
The looping movement of each chapter, and the fact that each chapter begins with the same (borrowed) motif, very much like a tv series, suggests that his quest is unlikely, that he himself has been created as being part of a fiction, and he will play his role over and over again.
Oscar moves through (virtual) time and space,he playfully and rather superficially takes up one mask or another, and his life seems to have the non narrative, zapping quality of TV rather than of a novel. And yet, it is only through these masks, that he can be Oscar.

In this installation, several elements contribute to the narration of different episodes of Oscar’s life and, in particular, his attempt to understand himself through heavy metal music and the identification with ‘tortured’ characters such as Hamlet and Dead, the vocalist of Norwegian black metal band Mayhem. The installation includes the video ” Portrait of Oscar Scar as Per Yngve Ohlin, aka Dead, leader of the black metal band Mayhem from 1988 to 1991″ and the graphic novel ” Becoming Oscar Scar”.

As Oscar, who has by now adopted the nickname Oscar ‘Scar’, I have explored the various possibilities of performing one’s identity, or various identities, online through the use of blogs, avatars and chats. To take the idea of fiction to an extreme and, at the same time, to further explore the use of cultural references, I have been rewriting Goethe’s “ The Sorrows of Young Werther” (18…)using the typical internet slang, and have proposed it as Oscar Scar’s own reports of his everyday experiences on his blog. I also played with Oscar Scar’s gender and sexual identity by turning the female character Werther is in love with in Goethe’s novel into a male. Since a blog is, fundamentally, an online diary in which anybody can participate with comments, the plot of novel could be given, according to said participation, a different development. In doing this, I am especially interested in the possibilities inherent to the re – interpretation of a classical novel in the fragmented, non - linear world of the internet.

Becoming Oscar Scar. Graphic novel, 2009.

A parallel project to the blog is the graphic novel Becoming Oscar Scar ( 2008/9), which narrates the story of the character Oscar Scar through the use of a mixture of quotations from classical literature ( Virginia Woolf, Shakespeare, Wilde), YouTube comments, scientific articles, teenagers’ poems, and Wikipedia pages.

Full-time Daydreamer. Solo show at Galleria 18,Bologna, Italy, 2009.

Oscar. performance and site specific installation at Chelsea College of Art&Design, PgDip final show, 2008.

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I am (not)there

Towards the end of 2008 I started an attempt to transpose Oscar, a fictional character which had initially been conceived as a 19th century Dandy, to a contemporary context. His dreamy and volatile nature immediately delegated the ‘new’ Oscar to the role of eternal adolescent. For this site specific project, which took place in the Quarticciolo Library in Rome on occasion of an event curated by the SeDiciCuratori group from IED, I simply re-created Oscar’s bedroom. Oscar the boy does not want to grow up; he is in no hurry to choose - to be or not to be is not a problem anymore, as being is always another. Oscar’s bedroom is small, and yet, it is endless: it spreads everywhere and anywhere. Past and future intertwine in a present which, only there, can be perceived as real - precisely because it is imagined.

Lebab fo yrarbil eht . Performance included in the group show “Thirst” at Oblong Gallery, 2008

Having to present a work for a group show called ” Thirst”, I decided to interpret the idea of being thirsty as an infinite desire for knowledge. I then made connections between this concept and Borges’ s story ” The Library of Babel”, which I had just finished reading. During the performance thus conceived, which lasted three hours, I kept copying over and over Borges’ s story on any piece of paper available. The physical strain and the obsessively repeated action contributed in creating a sense of expectation which was destined never to be satisfied.

Drawings 2008-2009

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Paranoid Park ( series of works ).mixed media on board, 2009

My Sixth Birthday, wood, paint and paper, 2007

34, 600. Audio and mixed media installation, 2007

Je Est un Autre. Stills from video, DVD, 6′00”, 2006