The Facebook event "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All Of Us" started in July as a joke. The organisers of the raid, scheduled for today, 20th September, urged alien and UFO enthusiasts to gather in the area of the U.S Air Force's secret base in Nevada, Las Vegas, and Naruto-run into the high-security military base to meet and rescue the aliens held there.
The tongue-in-cheek events soon sparked a viral craze and turned into something even more serious when people started showing an interest. And while the main event was cancelled after a Military spokesperson warned people not to enter the area, a variety of events including music festivals were planned in remote locations to celebrate alien madness. At the time of writing, the TV cameras also filmed a member of the crowd Naruto-running in the area.
But what will you do if you're an alien enthusiast and you can't go to Area 51 as you're in Milan for the local fashion week? Well, take a break and go and meet Aldo Lanzini's aliens.
The Milan-based crochet artist and fashion lecturer at the Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti Milano (NABA) has been developing a collection of hand-sewn felt alien creatures since the mid-90s and more recently Lanzini transformed his aliens into a photographic project on Instagram.
Most of Lanzini's aliens have elongated bodies, they have no mouths but large ears as if they were more interested in listening rather than talking and at times their heads seem to sprout multiple spikes or disturbing protuberances.
The creatures are made entirely of felt, a symbolical material linked with the definition of "smooth space" by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Felt is a textile material produced by matting, condensing and pressing fibers together and represents for Lanzini a metaphor for the modern world.
The Pokémon-like characters aren't just fun and collectable creatures (will Prada turn them at some point into bag charms? After all, they do seem to embody Miuccia's "ugly chic" concept...), but they are actually a way for Lanzini to make a statement about society.
The main inspiration for this project came indeed came from Lanzini's personal experiences: the artist and designer lived and worked in New York for quite a few years and the expression "illegal alien" - commonly used to indicate a person without a residence permit of a different nationality from the country they are in - always made him cringe.
How do we define indeed what's "foreign"? After all, we live in a magnificently vast universe, "so what is the minimum distance required to call someone foreign?" Lanzini wonders.
The artist decided therefore to pay tribute to all forms of clandestinity with his creatures, reckoning we are all aliens; his characters become therefore also a way to discover and reconcile with what Julia Kristeva calls "our own stranger-divided selves" or "the stranger within".
Seen from this point of view these innocently looking aliens become a medium to approach a wider and very contemporary debate about migrants, identity, traditions and boundaries.
Last but not least, like all of us, these aliens are neither good nor bad (after all, we are all oxymoronic creatures, capable of the meanest horrors and as well as of the kindest gestures...), but each and everyone of them represents a way to celebrate individual skills and the power of the collectivity as well, that's why they are different one from the other, but they are often pictured by Lanzini in packs, colonising domestic spaces or venturing out in public parks.
How do you get to meet them? Well, you don't need to do a Naruto-run to get one of his aliens as Lanzini often gives these creatures to adoption to worthy souls in the hope of turning them into "resident aliens" à la Quentin Crisp. The artist and designer is up for challenges and commissions, so, if you want to bring his UFO madness and paranormally conceptual invasion to your runway or you want a customised alien, you can contact him at this link.
Comments