new york NEW YORK

suckerPUNCH: Describe your project.

lluis alexandre CASANOVAS & hualin SHI: password _ _ _ _ [The resistance of the minotaur/ The thread of Ariadne]

the resistance of the Minotaur [g o i n g i n]: As in all cities, some inhabitants are in strong ideological conflict with their political authorities. Their opposition leads to prosecution. Thought of as a perfect panoptical system, the city has few opportunities where resistors can hide. The scenario pretends to solve this situation by creating new spaces where rioters and resistors can organize their illicit activities.

Utilizing the waste material that the city has rejected, the resistors extend the urban process of matter digestion by creating a new labyrinthic shelter, untraceable by the government and the forces of authority, operating autonomously from the city’s logic.

A slime-mold like structure hangs from the city’s dumps, hidden under a hairy curtain exposed to the wind. From the trash, the rioters pretend to build a pure heterotopia contrasting against the city’s true organization. The scenario addresses several questions. Is it possible to turn garbage, evidence of the city’s opulence, into a shelter for those who resist its pressure? Is it possible to move from a material corporeality to a concealing lightness? Articulating the transition from the profuse RGB spectrum into nihilist invisibility traces which interfer in the labyrinth resolution, a plethora of illegal activities can flourish in new covert spaces.

the thread of Ariadne [g o i n g o u t]: As a potential refuge for all resistors, the new system becomes the cave of the forty thieves: it can be colonized from a population ranging from political opponents to illegal dentists. The colonists of the new structure defy the effect of gravity that affects the whole system. Continuously going down, the resistors are forced to migrate all the time, always going up. To scape of this the trap of gravity, they just need to follow a simple code, their particular thread of Ariadne that will guide them back to the city again*.

*_ _ _ _ S [straight] / U [u-turn] / T [turn left] / G [go up].

sP: What or who influenced this project?
lC & hS: Francois Roche, Ezio Blassetti, Miranda Romer, Harry Potter and his invisibility cloak, Occupy movement, Wim Delvoye.

sP: What were you reading/listening to/watching while developing this project?
lC & hS: Antonio Negri; Robert Silverberg’s The World Inside / El Petit de Ca l’Eril; Devendra Banhart; Thai Buddhist Choirs / Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.

sP: Whose work is currently on your radar?
lC & hS: Francois Roche, Pierre Huyghe, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Beatriz Preciado.

Additional credits and links:
New-Territories