Exhibition

  • s/he would rather do FICTION MAKER
    FRAC Centre, Orleans
    Nov 10, 2016 to Mar 26, 2017
  • GRANTEE
    François Roche
    GRANT YEAR
    2016

This event retraces and traces more than 50 years of work, scenarios, projects, controversies, and foresights. It presents the prolific production of the Avatar, a hybrid figure digitally generated in 1993 to stand in for the jackboot or masterfull figure of the “architect/author” and to synthesize his multiple collaborations—BoyeRoche (1989); Roche (1990); Roche & François (1991); R-F-L-H-R-P (1992); Roche, DSV & Sie (1993–97); R, DSV & Sie. P (1998); R & Sie. D/B: L(1999–01); R&Sie(n) (2001 to 2011), and [elf/b_t/c] (2011–16)… All of these partnership, labels, and systems constitute the fragments of the New-Territories matrix, which has alternately generated, activated, and put them on standby since 1993. s/he would rather do FICTION MAKER (eILe Pr_FAIRE la FICTION), the title of the exhibition, immediately points to the two premises that underpin the proposition: on the one hand, the figure of the androgyne, of Aphrodite; a being who refuses gender and therefore refuses to dominate territories or to dominate both through form and matter. On the other hand, “Faire la Fiction” (Making Fiction/FICTION MAKER) functions as a mode of operation to model the world, to script it. By refusing any form of imprisonment, New-Territories lives in a state of permanent migration; always elsewhere—elsewhere geographically, but also (and always) at the very centre of architecture as a collaborative magnetic zone that combines architecture with cinema, writing, and sharing with artists, philosophers, biologists, mathematicians, and sometimes other architects… It is a porous structure opened to the world.

François Roche refuses any form of imprisonment, and lives in a state of permanent migration; always elsewhere—elsewhere geographically, elsewhere in practice—architecture, film, collaborations with artists. But still he asserts the permanence of his commitments and thoughts. Thoughts that are always offbeat to avoid becoming caught up in formalistic, technological or computational dogma… Architecture is not a matter of projection; it is a matter of “distortion of reality”.