formAxioms

formAxioms was started in 2018 by Eva Castro and Federico Ruberto as a research framework, agency and teaching cluster. The laboratory promotes research on space, selfhood, performance, art, planetary structures, and economy-ecology. The (trans-)media lab prototypes quasi-objects (spaces-interfaces-infrastructures), working to re-discover the emancipatory potential of art and design. FormAxioms produces physical-digital dyads, trans-media operations that welcome critical queering, where digital models and computational tools are strangely connected to physical prototypes. Our projects are spaces of retention and immersion, part of our research is questioning the archive through memory palaces-theatres spaces that are accessible through games, installations, diagrams, sound and video interfaces, an-architectures, objects, audio-visual performances. We are critical generalists, masters of none, we are explorers of techno-diversity. As such our OSs are developed through DIY synthesis of digital and analog tools. Prototyping and testing collaborative and participatory frameworks build physical and digital frameworks. The group experiments with a mix of design strategies and critical frameworks (philosophical, media-theoretical) to pursue alternative forms of world-building. Our interest is questioning the relation real/ideal, post post-modern thought, through a framework carried forward by engaging critical fiction and by adhering to an ontology of modelling: two pathways for creating syntaxes that allow for both, the constitution of (a shared) structure and the divergence from it. We promote critical diversity and openness, curating practices in which neither the individual nor the collective are subject to the powers of the other, as their are both negotiated thresholds, membranes, field of attractions and repulsion. FromAxioms is one of the three curatorial cores of HotHouse.