Since 2005, Étienne Cliquet has been exploring the computers world through origami. When asked what texts influenced him he mentions Origami Design Secret, by Robert Lang and Le Pli by Gilles Deleuze. He informs us that French terms "implicite" (implicit), “explicite” (explicit ), “appliqué” (applied), “complexe” (complex) or “impliqué” (involved) all come from the Latin term “plicare”, “fold”, before reminding us that the English word “folder”, recalls as well the action of “folding”, before finally adding, a simple fold and a sheet become a folder.
Understanding machines
Everything really started back in 2004 when Benjamin Weil approached Téléférique, co-funded by Étienne Cliquet in 1999, for them to take part in the exhibition Zones de Confluence during the biennial festival Villette Numérique. To better outdistance himself from technological escalation, he decides then to make origami – without scissors nor glue, nor scotch – with components of computers: motherboard, keyboard or Ethernet card… Later on he made more folds representing technologies around us documenting them scrupulously, as for assimilating them better, on his website ordigami.net.
Apprehending networks
What’s the point of understanding machines if we don’t understand networks? So Étienne Cliquet folds, again and again, tirelessly. One day to figure out the Penetration rate of Internet in thirteen countries, under the form of statistics, another day anticipating the transition from norm IPv4 to the very promising IPv6 theoretically authorizing the attribution of 667 132 000 billion addresses a mm². And then, he investsSecond Life in 2007 under the name Étienne Joubert, an artist with no head who wanders endlessly in the virtual world while his brain, in origami, lies at the Hotel d’Albret, in the fourth arrondissement of Paris.
Entertaining and political
Most of the time Étienne Cliquet authorizes downloads of his origami folds, where the valley folds are red and the mountain folds are blue or black. Doing so, he spreads the source codes of his creations that then become “Open Source”. In 2006 he’s even going to broadcast the fold called ? without letting anyone see the result. The following year, during the festival Mal au Pixel, he turns the Ars Longa gallery into a folding studio where people are invited to make their own Origami x26, a replica of the Taser x26. And the artist recalls us that this weapon called "un-lethal" has in fact been put in service in France by the Brigade anti-criminalité (homicide brigade) despite the condemnation of Amnesty International!
Excesses
In May 2008, Étienne Cliquet invests the garden of the Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris tracing on the ground huge origami folds. I remember having asked myself what could be the sport that was generating these strange things on the ground. As for the artist, he confessed to me his surprise when he noticed that the students, lying down on the grass in little groups, seemed to respect those white lines naturally going more near the centre of the zones recently demarcated. Already convinced that the practice of folding allowed understanding the world better, he then noticed his capacity to act, via origami, on others, without even approaching them.
From deceat to disappearance
Sometimes Étienne Cliquet hides his origami as he did in Lisbon in 2006 or in Paris in 2007. But he then takes care to leave some indications to the possible searchers under the form of GPS coordinates or maps to fold. Just enough information to preserve a part of mystery inherent to his work. A part of mystery that is at its peak when the artist, during a studio performance, creates Air Origami: a camera takes his hands while he folds an imaginary paper sheet. And his moves, though, are strangely precise.
Dominique Moulon
Website : www.ordigami.net
Not to be missed : the association N’habite Pas à l’Adresse Indiquée (NPAI) organizes a personal exhibition of Étienne Cliquet, on the occasion of the festival Electroni[k], that will take place from the 15th to 25th October in Rennes. Information http://npai-npai.net |
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Digital Art
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