“Race of a Hippie” by Alessandro Di Pietro

2024 · colour · IT, USA · En · 11’ · In competition

The short film “Race of a Hippie” draws inspiration from Paul Thek’s iconic installation, The Tomb (or Death of a Hippie), from 1967, which exists only in fragments. The Tomb consisted of a life-size cast of the artist’s body laid-out in the interior of a ziggurat, in a self-conscious staging of his death and resurrection. In the spirit of Ghostwriting Paul Thek: Time Capsules and Reliquaries, resulting from a dialogue with Thek’s estate, Di Pietro confuses reality and fiction in the creation of new evidence, nourishing a speculative narrative emerging out of existing documents. He follows the flight of Thek’s revived corpse through a forest, even as he tracks down a group of recently rediscovered works attributed to the artist. In a continuous present stretching from the 1960s to today, Di Pietro draws on grunge and LSD-inspired sources, including the films of Gus Van Sant and Ishiro Honda, photographs by Peter Hujar, and virtual reconstitution of Thek’s sculptures through the technique of photogrammetry. An off-screen voice narrates a text composed of Thek’s own words along with those of Mike Kelley, Chris Kraus and Susan Sontag, witnesses to his work and the ghostly impact of his work on several generations of different artists. “Race of a Hippie” was produced in collaboration with the studio No Text Azienda. Filming took place between 2020 and 2023 in Italy and the United States, at Villa Imperiale (Pesaro), Fondazione Nicola Del Roscio (Rome), Open Care (Milan), and the Watermill Center (New York).

The entire project “Ghostwriting Paul Thek: Time Capsules and Reliquaries,” supported by the Italian Council (2022), Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity, Italian Ministry of Culture of which the film “Race of a Hippie” is a part, was developed in dialogue with the artist’s estate and the Watermill Center international partner in the Italian Council project.

Director’s biography

In 2023 he won the Italian Council XI with the project GHOSTWRITING PAUL THEK – TIME CAPSULE AND RELIQUARIES was shown between 2023 and 2024 at the Watermill Center (NY, 2023), CAN Centre d’art Neuchâtel (Neuchâtel – CH), Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo with the screening of the video Race of a Hippie (Turin), at Palazzo Monti (Brescia) and at Fondazione Nicola del Roscio (Rome) in 2024. The entire body of works has become part of the permanent collection of MADRE in Naples.

Among the most important solo shows, in 2025 LONG STORY SHORT at Galleria Zazà (Naple, 2023); in 2024 ESSENTIAL – CONFIDENTIAL at Case Chiuse (Ferramenta Drovetti, Turin, 2024); in 2023 THE PROJECT MANAGER SYNDROME at Galleria Zazà (Milan, 2023) and between 2021 and 2022 OCCULT DESSERT at All Stars (Lausanne, 2022); HOBOBOLO at Gelateria Sogni di Ghiaccio (Bologna, 2021) now part of the permanent collection of MAMBO – Museo d’Arte Moderna Bologna; LO SPAVENTO VINSE IL GIORNO at MEGA (Milan, 2021)