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Ilinca Fechete

Unfoldable Arch

The epic constitution of the Unfoldable Arch in all its playfulness begins with a desire to reveal “cross-space”. To [un]frame space as a dynamic process of endless becoming in an innately changing environment, rather than a fixed state of being. Presence and absence are not mutually exclusive states, but rather mutually dependent concepts. Spaces are not mere windows upon reality but complex structures of metadata. Can space be, publicized, declared, defined, marketed, or exchanged as a commodity or must it be unpretentious and understated? What is virtual space? What lies between mediated information exchange in a hypermedialized world?

Drawing from the imposing effects of the information society on the basic structures of human existence and freedom, specifically the technological production of image and virtual space in photographic practice, Unfolding Arch is a takeaway window upon space. One you are confronted with through the frame of a painting, an ancient IMac screen, a photograph, a medieval fortress. Each foldable section is an unrealized potential of space, it can be taken and cut up and glued and taped up. Anything goes because it has to. Each set of instructions are playing critically on the limits of truth-telling and the beginnings of ambiguous space. Unfoldable arch is precisely unfoldable, it is the unfolding of the logic of being produced. Seeking to reveal the intricacy of the virtual language of photographs, the challenges posed to any definition of art, fiction, or society by investigating the unmediated boundaries between knowledge and perception. Relevant to everyday digital university life, Unfoldable Arch tracks the evolution of information, data, the implications of its accessibility as well as how information is transformed across the internet. It raises the ethical question of meaning and metaphor and reflects poetically on why it is our most urgent mission to begin a new relationship with the autonomous agency of the information age, to analyze our own intentions, and raise cross-spatial practice to the level of consciousness by exposing this crisis of representation. Unfoldable Arch addresses an urgency to take responsibility and gain a deeper awareness as young students and individuals on the social, physical, and philosophical shifts towards virtuality and thereby transmute it into actual power.