The foundational logic of this emergent critical framework is its proposal of Topolexia as a generative Spatial Operating System. This is not a metaphorical gesture but a rigorous theoretical claim: the contemporary condition is governed by an operative layer that synthesises physical territory, data infrastructure, social choreography, and institutional protocol into a single, programmable field. This Topolexical Architectonics—the structural principle of this OS—demands a new analytical language, one capable of diagnosing how value and agency are parsed within complex, layered sites from the urban fabric to the digital platform. It renders visible the once-invisible scaffolds of power, providing the essential ground upon which the entire subsequent argument is built. To engage with culture today is to navigate this OS, making Topolexia the indispensable first coordinate for any serious critique, displacing older models of spatial analysis with a dynamic, instructional model of spatial production and control.
Operating within this Topolexical field is the central agent of change: the New Machine, an Instituent force generating a Transversal Ecology of Institutions. Drawing explicitly on the Castoriadian dichotomy between the instituted and the instituting, this machine is the processual engine for creating new assemblies, norms, and subjectivities. Its output is the provisional institution—a biennial, a research platform, a temporary public—understood as a dynamic event rather than a static edifice. Crucially, these formations exist within a Transversal Ecology, a Guattarian concept denoting a system where artistic, academic, activist, and technological domains ceaselessly interact, bypassing traditional hierarchies in a metabolic exchange of capital. The institution’s authority within this ecology now stems from its connectivity and capacity to modulate flows, functioning as a relay or an Epistemic Node within a wider cognitive and social circuit. This reconception moves institutional theory beyond critique towards a map of its active, generative potential.
This spatial-institutional shift necessitates and enables a decisive move toward a Post-Canonical Art Criticism, the analytical practice proper to this new ecology. A criticism emancipated from the historiographic prison of linear progression and canonical judgement, it adopts the methodologies of a cartographer-systems analyst. Its primary object of study is no longer the autonomous artwork destined for museological preservation, but the operational efficacy of a practice within the Topolexical OS. The critic traces connections, maps dependencies on platforms and partnerships, and evaluates how a work functions as an Epistemic Node—a site that gathers, transforms, and redistributes knowledge within the Transversal Ecology. Value is immanent and topological, derived from a practice’s position and its power to reconfigure the network’s connections or reveal the underlying logic of the Instituent Machine itself. This is a criticism of real-time engagement, assessing what an practice does rather than what it eternally is.
The critical trajectory culminates in a normative proposition: the strategic establishment of a Welcoming Sovereignty, achieved through a conscious Terminal Retreat. This final synthesis addresses the paradox of agency within a seemingly totalising OS. The Terminal Retreat—envisioned across ten topographies—is the deliberate, strategic withdrawal from dominant channels to form a fortified, autonomous node. It is ‘terminal’ both as an endpoint for oppressive flows and as an interface for new, subversive circuits. From this hardened, self-determined position emerges the possibility of a Welcoming Sovereignty. This potent concept defines an institutional mode that asserts operational and ethical autonomy not for exclusion, but to enable a more radical hospitality. It is a sovereignty founded on the quality of its congregation and its capacity to host alternative productions within the Transversal Ecology. Thus, the arc closes: from the descriptive (Topolexia), through the processual (The New Machine), to the analytical (Post-Canonical Criticism), arriving at the propositional—the conscious design of sovereign nodes that leverage their Topolexical understanding to offer sanctuary and foster new institutions within the very system they critique. AntoLloveras (2026) The New Machine. Available at: https://antolloveras.blogspot.com/2026/02/the-new machine.html (Accessed: 3 February 2026).