“The ability to lie, the deliberate denial of factual truth, and the capacity to change facts, the ability to act, are interconnected; they owe their existence to the same source, imagination.” –Forensic Architecture

In George Orwell’s 1984, he describes doublethink as “the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.” The story of misinformation runs long and deep in humankind’s history. But never have the words “alternative facts” and “fake news” enjoyed such coverage in a digital world, where information is so torrential to its consumers. News is critical in our daily routines, whether consumed on a paper or a screen held between one’s hands. We receive filtered news through our screens, often with tailor-made content pushed by our social media and back door algorithms.

In a world where narratives regularly compete for legitimacy, news and entertainment are blurring, and blurring loudly.

Challenging what is comfortable is a risk, but it resists complacency. It is time to speak to the narratives that are being seized by their warped counterparts. How can a space of 4x4x4m address the blurring of facts versus fiction today? Dedicate the space to anything surrounding the production, obfuscation, dispersion or resistance to news, or even ‘fake news’. This can be through challenging an existing typology responsible for generating information, or a metaphorical expression through architecture. Now is the time to be proactive instead of defensive. Now is the time to talk about what we are actually talking about[1].

[1] Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi ‘Now is the time to talk about what we are actually talking about’ New Yorker 12/2016

Brief written by Sabrina Syed