New-Territories, with...

New-Territories


est. 1993, Paris, France

New-Territories is the architecture studio co-founded by Francois Roche. 

New-Territories closed the office in Paris in 2011 and moved to Bangkok. The office is run by a transgender avatar with multidisciplinary studies including mythomania, psychotropic, paranoia, amnesiophobia, bipolar and fregoli symptoms. Roche’s interest in a new type of democratic architecture allows New-Territories to explore issues of ecology, urban density, city planning, pollution and food waste. 

For Bangkok Art Biennale, New-Territories combine multiple aspects of disciplines regarding Bangkok as a city facing immense transformation that has impact on art, culture and ways of life. Fortune Shelt(ell)er (2020) is a multidisciplinary apparatus that reflects the precarious balance between hope and fear, truth and fake, security and paranoia. New species of growing mycelium and mushroom at Thai Anon Biotec Centre are experimented in the art space/laboratory with assistance of the robot-gardener. Installed at Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, the pseudo-art lab is full of creative activities ranging from growing mycelium, data collection, gardening, performance related to the super natural and fortunetelling. 

Quirky and farcical, the robot transforms bacteria, pollution, dust and mushroom for consumerism during the pandemic. Performance by a mumbling dancer digesting the mycelium to cure amnesia through hallucination. The fortuneteller whispering (mis)fortunes of the future offering momentary comfort as escape routes.

Fortune Shelt(ell)er is an escapetopia where sanity and insanity co-exist together with all forms of delirium, stupor, inertia, despair and melancholia.