FOLDED IN

FOLDED-IN, June 9th - June 27th 2008

Crossing the borders of a WEB 2.0 reality


Project Curator: Personal Cinema & the Erasers
Presentation: Ilias Marmaras, Gülsen Bal und Daphne Dragona

Contributing artists: Alison Williams, Robert Aliaj Dragot , Nikolas Kozakis, Dimitris Dokatzis, Fotini Georgakopoulou, The Centrals, Koen Wastijn, Kostas Beveratos, Babis Kandilaptis, Genco Gulan, Reggy Timmermans, Beatrijs Albers, Irena Paskali


The reason for such an undertaking is that we live in a moments of rupture that regulates the transformations of “demographic politics” and politicisation of life. The main idea behind this involves a concern for affairs that are brought to the attention to bio-politics. We’re not only talking about the culturally specific conditions within shifting modalities, but towards far broader issues that reaches its debates around cross border dialogue, cultural intersections, crossings and/or networks which are profoundly rooted in a “disappearance” of subtle, ‘concrete’ boundaries.

By problematising the “transitory character” where different visions are converging and moving in defining and redefining the borders within new forms of articulation, the question we wish to raise is: what is this really referring to? What would happen when we encounter with a discursive space that produces a reality in which “there is no state in Europe” beyond its borders.

This exposes the imaginary geography and imaginary history which establishes a landscape by bringing together different modes of representation that are usually kept apart. And this coming to presence is by no means a certain matter as the definition of ‘folded-in’ refers a condition of existence.
This is why FOLDED-IN, an online multi-user platform that combines videogame basic elements with the possibility of a constant data flow, addresses the creation of an online community that will not only be part of the game but will create the networking that conveys the world in our absence in its multiplicity.
Thus the concept of becoming minor in its orientation; the project FOLDED-IN aims to take videos out of the context of the Greek-Turkish war (or any similar war or conflict situation in every part of the world) and of the Youtube framing and to re-register them, assigning to them a new role, that of a composing active element in a gameplay. In other words, the aim is their deterritorialization from the broadcast space of Youtube literally, but also metaphorically as signs, transforming the videos from mere screens, to game elements of a further play. FOLDED-IN project is an effort to interrupt the dominant process of propaganda re-production to be an ‘’affinity to infinity’’ an affinity for an always needed redefinition of its products. This generates specific impulses that form the recognition of reality where this manifests a progressive approach to a critical engagement within a creative practice.

The key to understanding this question is related to the concept “yet-to-come” (virtuality) that belongs to ‘being-in-the-world’.

Lecture/talk by Ilias Marmaras and Fahim Amir with Gülsen Bal will cover the presentation of the project and further some extends to the web 2.0 social politics.

Sponsoring and kind support provided by:

BM:UKK
Interkulturelle und Internationale Aktivitäten
Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien