The Unmovable Mover is a visual investigation into the power dynamics within the – social and physical – infrastructure of the factory. The project attempts to combine visual references taken directly from archaeology and museography, as well as overlapping reflections on the image as document, as truth and as fiction.
The aesthetic and conceptual starting point of the work was the discovery of a photograph in a Swiss antiquarian bookshop (1), which was later reworked and altered. The year is 1972, and sitting at the desk of a very modest office is an unidentified director of a local factory for spare parts and specialised machinery that no longer exists. The project attempts to excavate the private past of this small reality and reconstruct a hypothetical hierarchical structure by showing openly staged photographs from the year 2022. Such an operation guarantees not only the universalisation of the context and the same infrastructure through different spaces and times, but also the exaltation of the work of specialised production, that of the present, whose products become glittering exhibition objects endowed with almost sculptural qualities. On the other hand, the restoration and visual reinvention of the figures who run these production centres and their offices appear as ghost images.

Alessandra Leta (*1997, IT) is a visual researcher and photographer. Her practice lies at the intersection of archival archaeology and speculative narrative as a tool to rethink the past in the present. She holds a BFA in New Technologies from the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera and is currently completing an MA in Critical Urbanisms at the University of Basel.