Fred Forest
Encyclopedia
Fred Forest is a French new media artist making use of video, photography, the printed press, mail, radio, television, telephone, telematics, and the internet in a wide range of installations, performances, and public interventions that explore both the ramifications and potential of media space. He was a cofounder of both the Sociological Art Collective
(1974) and the Aesthetics of Communication
movement (1983).
Forest has taken part in the Biennale of Venice (1976) and the Documenta of Kassel
(1977, 1987) and his work has won awards at the Bienal do São Paulo
(1973) and the Festival of Electronic Arts of Locarno (1995). In 2004, Forest’s archives, including his video works, were added to the collection of the Institut National de l'Audiovisuel
of France. A retrospective of his work was held at the Slought Foundation
in Philadelphia in 2007.
The holder of a state doctorate in the humanities from the Sorbonne
(his 1985 thesis committee included Abraham Moles
, Frank Popper
, and Jean Duvignaud
), Forest has also taught on the faculty of the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Art, Cergy-Pontoise; the University of Paris, Panthéon-Sorbonne; and the University of Nice, Sophia-Antipolis
. He is the author of numerous books on art, communication, and technology including Pour un art actuel: l’art à l’heure d’Internet (1998, For an Art of Today: Art in the Internet Age), Fonctionnements et dysfonctionnements de l’art contemporain (2000, The Inner Workings and Dysfunctionality of Contemporary Art), and L’œuvre-système invisible (2006, The Invisible System Work).
Aside from his artworks, which are often imbedded in the mass media and use publicity as a raw material, Forest is well known in France as a fierce critic of the contemporary art establishment—a critical stance that led him to take the Musée National d'Art Moderne
(Centre Georges Pompidou
) to court (1994–97) over its refusal to disclose the purchase prices of recent acquisitions. He is also one of the founders of the French Fête de l’Internet, or Internet Fest.
A self-taught artist whose formal education ended after primary school (he was later authorized to present a doctoral thesis under special provisions), Forest worked for fifteen years as a postal service employee, first in Algeria and then in France, before deciding to devote himself exclusively to artistic pursuits. In the early 1960s, he worked as an illustrator for the French newspapers Combat and Les Echos and experimented with the projection of moving and still images on tableaux-écrans, or screen-paintings. Having received a Sony
CV-2400 Portapak video recorder in 1967 as part of a promotional campaign by Sony France, he ranks as one of the very first artists in Europe and the world to experiment with video. Forest’s first experimental video tapes, “The Telephone Booth” and “The Wall of Arles,” date from 1967. His first formal exhibition of video art
, “Interrogation 69,” an interactive video installation, took place in May 1969 in the city of Tours.
Influenced by the political and cultural ferment of May 68, Situationist critiques of the society of spectacle, Marshall McLuhan
's writings, Umberto Eco
's concept of the “open work,” and the avant-garde’s proclaimed goal of breaking down the barrier between art and everyday life, Forest stopped producing traditional art objects in 1969 and focused instead on a utopian form of “social praxis” operating “under the cover of art.” Because of its portability, low-fi aesthetic, immediacy, and potential for interactive feedback, video was the tool of choice for such experimental social praxis; however, Forest also became interested in the mass media at an early stage in his career. His first major series of works with the mass media was the “Space-Media” project of 1972, which included a small “parasitic” blank square (“150 cm2 of Newspaper”) published in the January 12, 1972 edition of the daily Le Monde
, which the readers were encouraged to mail back to Forest, filled in with commentary, creative writing, or artwork of their ownhttp://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/20_en.htm#text. “Space-Media” was the subject of a major article by the philosopher and new media theorist Vilém Flusser
, with whom Forest collaborated throughout his career.
, who became a lifelong friend and supporter of Forest and his work.
Forest’s video and video-based installation and performance works from this period include “Gestures in Work and Social Life” (1972–74)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/03_en.htm#text, “Electronic Investigation of Rue Guénégaud” (1973)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/06_en.htm#text, “Senior Citizen Video” (1973)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/07_en.htm#text, “Video Portrait of a Collector in Real Time” (1974)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/12_en.htm#text, “Restany Dines at La Coupole” (1974)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/13_en.htm#text, “TV Shock, TV Exchange” (1975)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/14_en.htm#text, “Madame Soleil Exhibited in the Flesh” (1975)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/16_en.htm#text, and “The Video Family” (1976)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/18_en.htm#text.
In 1973, Forest was awarded the grand prize in communication at the 12th Bienal do São Paulo for a series of provocative actions that included a mock street demonstration featuring marchers carrying blank placards, interactive experiments in the press, and a multimedia installation with an uncensored telephone call-in centerhttp://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/08_en.htm#text. These actions elicited the attention and displeasure of Brazil’s military regime
and Forest was detained by the political police, released only after the French Embassy intervened on his behalf.
Forest’s actions throughout the 1970s and beyond took aim at cultural as well as political power structures. This included the contemporary art
establishment, whose perceived lack of imagination, corporatist logic, arcane traditions, star system, and speculative practices he lampooned in works like “The Artistic M2” (1977)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/20_en.htm#text. For this project, Forest formed a certified real estate development company and placed ads in the national and international press announcing his plans to sell “artistic” square-meters of land—small plots of undeveloped land near the Franco-Swiss border. The ads prompted a police real estate fraud investigation and authorities intervened to halt the sale of the first square-meter plot at a public auction alongside a number of contemporary paintings and sculptures. At the last minute, Forest substituted the tiny plot of land with a square-meter piece of common cloth that had been trampled by the auction attendees as they crossed the threshold and this officially “non artistic” square meter of cloth fetched a usually high price of 6,500 Francs at the auction—thanks, no doubt, to the publicity Forest’s action and the police investigation had attracted. At the auction’s conclusion, Pierre Restany publicly declared that Forest’s m2 was indeed a bona fide work of art.
For actions such as the Sao Paulo experiments and the “Artistic M2” operation, Forest can be considered a precursor of such current countercultural practices as tactical media
, culture jamming
, and hacktivism
.
, Director of the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology
at the University of Toronto, and a wide array of artists including many of the pioneers of telecommunications and telematic art. Among those affiliated with the group at some point were Robert Adrian X, Roy Ascott
, Stéphan Barron, Jean-Pierre Giavonelli, Eric Gidney, Natan Karczmar, Tom Klinkowstein, Mit Mitopoulos, Antoni Muntadas
, David Rokeby
, Christian Sevette, Norman White
, and Horacio Zabala.
Forest himself was the author of the group’s manifesto, “For an Aesthetics of Communication,” published in 1985. This important text laid out his vision of the metacommunicational artwork, whose goal is not to convey any particular message or imagery, but to create experimental micro-environments of communication in which certain salient, normally hidden features of the media themselves may be discovered. This usually involves the artist’s conception of special media configurations of his own, composed of different elements of existing media deviated from their normal uses. The work is created by the users of system; it emerges out of their consciousness-raising interaction with the system and each other. The artist’s role is that of an “architect of information.”
Forest’s own metacommunicational artworks fall into three broad categories. The first involves media performances that are somewhat like technological versions of the koans that Zen
masters ask their students in order to elicit sudden flashes of insight into existence and surrounding reality. In Forest’s case, such works often focus on altered perceptual realities of time and space in the media environment. Notable examples include “Immediate Intervention” (1983), “Here and Now” (1983)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/25_en.htm#text, “Electronic Blue, In Homage to Yves Klein
” (1984)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/28_en.htm#text, “Celebration of the Present” (1985)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/31_en.htm#text, and “The Broken Vase” (1985). Another type of work involves whimsical exercises in telepresence and long-distance agency. Examples include “Telephonic Rally” (1986)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/33_en.htm#text and “Telephonic Faucet (1992)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/44_en.htm#text, in which people contributed to filling a bucket in a Turin exhibition hall by turning on a faucet electronically triggered by their local and long-distance phone calls. Finally, there is a series of ambitious works that present alternative interfaces to the existing media and solicit public participation on a large scale. Examples include “The Stock Exchange of the Imaginary” (1982)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/23_en.htm#text, “The Press Conference of Babel” (1983)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/27_en.htm#text, “Learn to Watch T.V. by Listening to Your Radio” (1984)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/29_en.htm#text, “In Search of Julia Margaret Cameron” (1986)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/36_en.htm#text, and “Zenaide and Charlotte Take the Media by Storm” (1988)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/37_en.htm#text. “The Press Conference of Babel” involved a multimedia installation that was also the set and makeshift studio of a pirate radio broadcast of expert analysis and public opinion over the broadcast of a leading French news interview program.
As the preceding example suggests, Forest’s works of this period were by no means devoid of political implications. Other examples include his installation of LED message boards juxtaposing Bible
verses and Gulf War
news dispatches (“The Electronic Bible and the Gulf War," 1991)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/42_en.htm#text, his public campaign for the presidency of Bulgaria
n National Television (“For a Utopian and Nervous Television,” 1991)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/43_en.htm#text, and his broadcasting of peace messages into the former Yugoslavia
via radio and loudspeakers mounted on towers near the border (“The Watchtowers of Peace,” 1993)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/46_en.htm#text.
capabilities, the opportunities it provides to bypass traditional art venues and to take interactive projects directly to a broader public, its rapid and profound impact on contemporary society and culture, and the mythical aura of cyberspace
and the virtual, the Internet was naturally appealing to an artist of Forest’s interests and practices. His first work utilizing the Internet, “From Casablanca to Locarno,”http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/47_en.htm#text a multimedia public participation redubbing of certain famous scenes from the Humphrey Bogart-Ingrid Bergman
classic, was created in 1995. In 1996, Forest’s web-based digital work “Network-Parcel”http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/49_en.htm#text was sold at a public auction carried live on the Internet—the first event of its kind.
Forest went on to create a number of important online works including “Time Out” (1998, for the inaugural Fête de l’Internet)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/50_en.htm#text, “The Time Processing Machine” (1998)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/51_en.htm#text, “The Techno-Wedding” (1999)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/53_en.htm#text, “The Center of the World” (1999)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/54_en.htm#text, “Territorial Outings” (2001), “Networked Color” (2000)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/57_en.htm#text, “Meat: The Territory of the Body and the Networked Body” (2002)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/61_en.htm#text, “Memory Pictures” (2005)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/64_en.htm#text, “The Digital Street Corner” (2005)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/65_en.htm#text, and “Biennale 3000” (2006)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/66_en.htm#text. Many of these works are concerned with developing new anthropological models for a world in which both individual and community have had to deal with the dual effects of dematerialization and deterritorialization
, processes accelerated by the new digital technologies of networked communication. Some of the works literally constitute rites of passage. This is certainly true of “The Techno-Wedding,” a collaborative project of Forest and fellow digital media artist Sophie Lavaud. The work was in fact the real-life wedding of Forest and Lavaud, which was webcast
live alongside a virtual reality
variant of the ceremony. Another example is to be found in “The Center of the World,” which offered the public an opportunity to make a physical or telepresent pilgrimage
to a shrine-like installation containing a digital relic
of the old territorially centered world.
Beginning in 2008, Forest launched a new series of performances in the environment of Second Life
. The first in the series, “The Experimental Research Center of the Territory” (2008)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/70_a_en.htm#text is in continuity with a lifelong exploration of the notion of territory beginning with “The Artistic M2” (1977) and continuing through “The Territory of the M2” (1980, a simulated independent state on the grounds of Forest’s property in the town of Anserville, near Paris)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/22_en.htm#text and “The Networked Territory” (1996, a hypertext work that Forest considers the Territory’s transposition into cyberspace)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/48_en.htm#text. Each Second Life work is adapted somewhat to the physical location in which it is presented (Nice
, Sao Paulo
, New York
, Beirut
, etc.). In addition to staging debates and discussions at a think tank for avatars and offering public access to a mystical disintegrator of trashhttp://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/71_a_en.htm#text, some of the Second Life performances center on the philosophical musings and personal confessions of Forest’s digital alter ego, Ego Cyberstar.
Sociological art
Sociological Art is an artistic movement and approach to aesthetics created by Fred Forest, Hervé Fischer and Jean-Paul Thénot in 1974.-From 1967 to 1974:As of 1967 Fred Forest began a series of actions that would foreground the Sociological Art movement...
(1974) and the Aesthetics of Communication
Communication aesthetics
Communication Aesthetics was devised by Mario Costa and Fred Forest at Mercato San Severino in Italy in 1983. It is a theory of aesthetics calling for artistic practise engaging with and working through the developments, evolutions and paradigms of late twentieth century communications technologies...
movement (1983).
Forest has taken part in the Biennale of Venice (1976) and the Documenta of Kassel
Documenta
documenta is an exhibition of modern and contemporary art which takes place every five years in Kassel, Germany. It was founded by artist, teacher and curator Arnold Bode in 1955 as part of the Bundesgartenschau which took place in Kassel at that time...
(1977, 1987) and his work has won awards at the Bienal do São Paulo
São Paulo Art Biennial
The São Paulo Art Biennial was founded in 1951 and has been held every two years since. It is the second oldest art biennial in the world after the Venice Biennial , which serves as its role model....
(1973) and the Festival of Electronic Arts of Locarno (1995). In 2004, Forest’s archives, including his video works, were added to the collection of the Institut National de l'Audiovisuel
Institut national de l'audiovisuel
The Institut national de l'audiovisuel , is a repository of all French radio and television audiovisual archives. Additionally it provides customers with a free and immediate access to archives of countries such as Afghanistan and Cambodia...
of France. A retrospective of his work was held at the Slought Foundation
Slought Foundation
Slought Foundation is a not-for-profit organization in Philadelphia that broadly encourages new futures for contemporary life through public programs featuring international artists, architects, and theorists...
in Philadelphia in 2007.
The holder of a state doctorate in the humanities from the Sorbonne
Sorbonne
The Sorbonne is an edifice of the Latin Quarter, in Paris, France, which has been the historical house of the former University of Paris...
(his 1985 thesis committee included Abraham Moles
Abraham Moles
Abraham Moles was an engineer of electrical engineering and acoustics, and a doctor of physics and philosophy. He was one of the first researchers to establish and analyze links between aesthetics and information theory....
, Frank Popper
Frank Popper
Frank Popper is a historian of art and technology and Professor Emeritus of Aesthetics and the Science of Art at the University of Paris VIII. He has been decorated with the medal of the Légion d'honneur by the French Government...
, and Jean Duvignaud
Jean Duvignaud
Jean Duvignaud was a French novelist and sociologist.Duvignaud was a secondary school teacher at Abbeville then at Étampes where he taught Georges Perec. After submitting his doctoral thesis he taught at the University of Tours...
), Forest has also taught on the faculty of the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Art, Cergy-Pontoise; the University of Paris, Panthéon-Sorbonne; and the University of Nice, Sophia-Antipolis
University of Nice Sophia Antipolis
The University of Nice Sophia Antipolis is a university located in Nice, France and neighboring areas. It was founded in 1965 and is organized in 8 faculties, 2 autonomous institutes and an engineering school....
. He is the author of numerous books on art, communication, and technology including Pour un art actuel: l’art à l’heure d’Internet (1998, For an Art of Today: Art in the Internet Age), Fonctionnements et dysfonctionnements de l’art contemporain (2000, The Inner Workings and Dysfunctionality of Contemporary Art), and L’œuvre-système invisible (2006, The Invisible System Work).
Aside from his artworks, which are often imbedded in the mass media and use publicity as a raw material, Forest is well known in France as a fierce critic of the contemporary art establishment—a critical stance that led him to take the Musée National d'Art Moderne
Musée National d'Art Moderne
The Musée National d'Art Moderne is the national museum for modern art of France. It is located in Paris and is housed in the Centre Pompidou in the 4th arrondissement of the city. Created in 1947, it was then housed in the Palais de Tokyo and moved to its current location in 1977...
(Centre Georges Pompidou
Centre Georges Pompidou
Centre Georges Pompidou is a complex in the Beaubourg area of the 4th arrondissement of Paris, near Les Halles, rue Montorgueil and the Marais...
) to court (1994–97) over its refusal to disclose the purchase prices of recent acquisitions. He is also one of the founders of the French Fête de l’Internet, or Internet Fest.
Beginnings
Sony
, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....
CV-2400 Portapak video recorder in 1967 as part of a promotional campaign by Sony France, he ranks as one of the very first artists in Europe and the world to experiment with video. Forest’s first experimental video tapes, “The Telephone Booth” and “The Wall of Arles,” date from 1967. His first formal exhibition of video art
Video art
Video art is a type of art which relies on moving pictures and comprises video and/or audio data. . Video art came into existence during the 1960s and 1970s, is still widely practiced and has given rise to the widespread use of video installations...
, “Interrogation 69,” an interactive video installation, took place in May 1969 in the city of Tours.
Influenced by the political and cultural ferment of May 68, Situationist critiques of the society of spectacle, Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
Herbert Marshall McLuhan, CC was a Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar—a professor of English literature, a literary critic, a rhetorician, and a communication theorist...
's writings, Umberto Eco
Umberto Eco
Umberto Eco Knight Grand Cross is an Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist, best known for his novel The Name of the Rose , an intellectual mystery combining semiotics in fiction, biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory...
's concept of the “open work,” and the avant-garde’s proclaimed goal of breaking down the barrier between art and everyday life, Forest stopped producing traditional art objects in 1969 and focused instead on a utopian form of “social praxis” operating “under the cover of art.” Because of its portability, low-fi aesthetic, immediacy, and potential for interactive feedback, video was the tool of choice for such experimental social praxis; however, Forest also became interested in the mass media at an early stage in his career. His first major series of works with the mass media was the “Space-Media” project of 1972, which included a small “parasitic” blank square (“150 cm2 of Newspaper”) published in the January 12, 1972 edition of the daily Le Monde
Le Monde
Le Monde is a French daily evening newspaper owned by La Vie-Le Monde Group and edited in Paris. It is one of two French newspapers of record, and has generally been well respected since its first edition under founder Hubert Beuve-Méry on 19 December 1944...
, which the readers were encouraged to mail back to Forest, filled in with commentary, creative writing, or artwork of their ownhttp://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/20_en.htm#text. “Space-Media” was the subject of a major article by the philosopher and new media theorist Vilém Flusser
Vilém Flusser
Vilém Flusser was a Czech-born philosopher, writer and journalist. He lived for a long period in São Paulo, Brazil and later in France, and his works are written in several different languages....
, with whom Forest collaborated throughout his career.
Sociological Art
In 1974, Forest joined forces with Hervé Fischer and Jean-Paul Thénot to form the Collectif d’Art Sociologique (disbanded in 1979). The members of the Collective were invited to represent France at the 76th Biennale of Venice by Pierre RestanyPierre Restany
Pierre Restany , was an internationally known French art critic and cultural philosopher.Restany was born in Amélie-les-Bains-Palalda, Pyrénées-Orientales, and spent his childhood in Casablanca. On returning to France in 1949 he attended the Lycée Henri-IV before studying at universities in France,...
, who became a lifelong friend and supporter of Forest and his work.
Forest’s video and video-based installation and performance works from this period include “Gestures in Work and Social Life” (1972–74)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/03_en.htm#text, “Electronic Investigation of Rue Guénégaud” (1973)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/06_en.htm#text, “Senior Citizen Video” (1973)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/07_en.htm#text, “Video Portrait of a Collector in Real Time” (1974)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/12_en.htm#text, “Restany Dines at La Coupole” (1974)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/13_en.htm#text, “TV Shock, TV Exchange” (1975)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/14_en.htm#text, “Madame Soleil Exhibited in the Flesh” (1975)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/16_en.htm#text, and “The Video Family” (1976)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/18_en.htm#text.
In 1973, Forest was awarded the grand prize in communication at the 12th Bienal do São Paulo for a series of provocative actions that included a mock street demonstration featuring marchers carrying blank placards, interactive experiments in the press, and a multimedia installation with an uncensored telephone call-in centerhttp://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/08_en.htm#text. These actions elicited the attention and displeasure of Brazil’s military regime
History of Brazil
The history of Brazil begins with the arrival of the first indigenous peoples, thousands of years ago by crossing the Bering land bridge into Alaska and then moving south....
and Forest was detained by the political police, released only after the French Embassy intervened on his behalf.
Forest’s actions throughout the 1970s and beyond took aim at cultural as well as political power structures. This included the contemporary art
Contemporary art
Contemporary art can be defined variously as art produced at this present point in time or art produced since World War II. The definition of the word contemporary would support the first view, but museums of contemporary art commonly define their collections as consisting of art produced...
establishment, whose perceived lack of imagination, corporatist logic, arcane traditions, star system, and speculative practices he lampooned in works like “The Artistic M2” (1977)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/20_en.htm#text. For this project, Forest formed a certified real estate development company and placed ads in the national and international press announcing his plans to sell “artistic” square-meters of land—small plots of undeveloped land near the Franco-Swiss border. The ads prompted a police real estate fraud investigation and authorities intervened to halt the sale of the first square-meter plot at a public auction alongside a number of contemporary paintings and sculptures. At the last minute, Forest substituted the tiny plot of land with a square-meter piece of common cloth that had been trampled by the auction attendees as they crossed the threshold and this officially “non artistic” square meter of cloth fetched a usually high price of 6,500 Francs at the auction—thanks, no doubt, to the publicity Forest’s action and the police investigation had attracted. At the auction’s conclusion, Pierre Restany publicly declared that Forest’s m2 was indeed a bona fide work of art.
For actions such as the Sao Paulo experiments and the “Artistic M2” operation, Forest can be considered a precursor of such current countercultural practices as tactical media
Tactical media
Tactical media is a term coined in 1997, to de note a form of media activism that privileges temporary, hit-and-run interventions in the media sphere over the creation of permanent and alternative media outlets. Tactical media describes interventionist media art practices that engage and critique...
, culture jamming
Culture jamming
Culture jamming, coined in 1984, denotes a tactic used by many anti-consumerist social movements to disrupt or subvert mainstream cultural institutions, including corporate advertising. Guerrilla semiotics and night discourse are sometimes used synonymously with the term culture jamming.Culture...
, and hacktivism
Hacktivism
Hacktivism is the use of computers and computer networks as a means of protest to promote political ends. The term was first coined in 1994 by a member of the Cult of the Dead Cow hacker collective named Omega...
.
Aesthetics of Communication
Although the social and political concerns first developed within the framework of Sociological Art have remained strong in his work to this day, in the 1980s, Forest became increasingly interested in the “immanent realities” of electronic and networked communication—for instance, issues of space, time, the body, knowledge, and identity. He faulted contemporary art for having largely ignored these means of communication, which had transformed everyday life and added an entirely new dimension to reality: the virtual space of information and communication, which Forest likened to new territory “dredged from the void.” In order to promote artistic research into the sensory, cognitive, psychological, symbolic, aesthetic, spiritual, and social properties of electronic telecommunications media, Forest and Professor Mario Costa of the University of Salerno formed the International Research Group for the Aesthetics of Communication in 1983. They were joined by the media theorist Derrick de KerckhoveDerrick de Kerckhove
Derrick de Kerckhove is the author of The Skin of Culture and Connected Intelligence and Professor in the Department of French at the University of Toronto, Canada...
, Director of the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology
McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology
The McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology started in 1963 as the Centre for Culture and Technology.In 1994, the McLuhan Program became a part of the University of Toronto's Faculty of Information Studies....
at the University of Toronto, and a wide array of artists including many of the pioneers of telecommunications and telematic art. Among those affiliated with the group at some point were Robert Adrian X, Roy Ascott
Roy Ascott
Roy Ascott is a British artist and theorist, who works with cybernetics and telematics. He is President of the Planetary Collegium.- Biography :...
, Stéphan Barron, Jean-Pierre Giavonelli, Eric Gidney, Natan Karczmar, Tom Klinkowstein, Mit Mitopoulos, Antoni Muntadas
Antoni Muntadas
Antoni Muntadas is a multidisciplinary, media artist, sometimes also referred to as Antonio Muntadas or, simply, Muntadas. Since 1971, he lives and works in New York. Muntadas was a Research Fellow at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT,1977–1984, and is currently Visiting Professor with...
, David Rokeby
David Rokeby
David Rokeby is an artist who has been making works of electronic, video and installation art since 1982.His early work Very Nervous System is acknowledged as a pioneering work of interactive art, translating physical gestures into real-time interactive sound environments...
, Christian Sevette, Norman White
Norman White
Norman White is a Texas-born Canadian New Media artist and pioneer of using electronics and robotics in art.-Life:White grew up in and around Boston, Massachusetts, and obtained his B.A. in Biology from Harvard University in 1959...
, and Horacio Zabala.
Forest himself was the author of the group’s manifesto, “For an Aesthetics of Communication,” published in 1985. This important text laid out his vision of the metacommunicational artwork, whose goal is not to convey any particular message or imagery, but to create experimental micro-environments of communication in which certain salient, normally hidden features of the media themselves may be discovered. This usually involves the artist’s conception of special media configurations of his own, composed of different elements of existing media deviated from their normal uses. The work is created by the users of system; it emerges out of their consciousness-raising interaction with the system and each other. The artist’s role is that of an “architect of information.”
Forest’s own metacommunicational artworks fall into three broad categories. The first involves media performances that are somewhat like technological versions of the koans that Zen
Zen
Zen is a school of Mahāyāna Buddhism founded by the Buddhist monk Bodhidharma. The word Zen is from the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese word Chán , which in turn is derived from the Sanskrit word dhyāna, which can be approximately translated as "meditation" or "meditative state."Zen...
masters ask their students in order to elicit sudden flashes of insight into existence and surrounding reality. In Forest’s case, such works often focus on altered perceptual realities of time and space in the media environment. Notable examples include “Immediate Intervention” (1983), “Here and Now” (1983)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/25_en.htm#text, “Electronic Blue, In Homage to Yves Klein
Yves Klein
Yves Klein was a French artist considered an important figure in post-war European art. He is the leading member of the French artistic movement of Nouveau réalisme founded in 1960 by the art critic Pierre Restany...
” (1984)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/28_en.htm#text, “Celebration of the Present” (1985)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/31_en.htm#text, and “The Broken Vase” (1985). Another type of work involves whimsical exercises in telepresence and long-distance agency. Examples include “Telephonic Rally” (1986)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/33_en.htm#text and “Telephonic Faucet (1992)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/44_en.htm#text, in which people contributed to filling a bucket in a Turin exhibition hall by turning on a faucet electronically triggered by their local and long-distance phone calls. Finally, there is a series of ambitious works that present alternative interfaces to the existing media and solicit public participation on a large scale. Examples include “The Stock Exchange of the Imaginary” (1982)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/23_en.htm#text, “The Press Conference of Babel” (1983)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/27_en.htm#text, “Learn to Watch T.V. by Listening to Your Radio” (1984)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/29_en.htm#text, “In Search of Julia Margaret Cameron” (1986)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/36_en.htm#text, and “Zenaide and Charlotte Take the Media by Storm” (1988)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/37_en.htm#text. “The Press Conference of Babel” involved a multimedia installation that was also the set and makeshift studio of a pirate radio broadcast of expert analysis and public opinion over the broadcast of a leading French news interview program.
As the preceding example suggests, Forest’s works of this period were by no means devoid of political implications. Other examples include his installation of LED message boards juxtaposing Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
verses and Gulf War
Gulf War
The Persian Gulf War , commonly referred to as simply the Gulf War, was a war waged by a U.N.-authorized coalition force from 34 nations led by the United States, against Iraq in response to Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait.The war is also known under other names, such as the First Gulf...
news dispatches (“The Electronic Bible and the Gulf War," 1991)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/42_en.htm#text, his public campaign for the presidency of Bulgaria
Bulgaria
Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...
n National Television (“For a Utopian and Nervous Television,” 1991)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/43_en.htm#text, and his broadcasting of peace messages into the former Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....
via radio and loudspeakers mounted on towers near the border (“The Watchtowers of Peace,” 1993)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/46_en.htm#text.
Web Art
With its multimediaMultimedia
Multimedia is media and content that uses a combination of different content forms. The term can be used as a noun or as an adjective describing a medium as having multiple content forms. The term is used in contrast to media which use only rudimentary computer display such as text-only, or...
capabilities, the opportunities it provides to bypass traditional art venues and to take interactive projects directly to a broader public, its rapid and profound impact on contemporary society and culture, and the mythical aura of cyberspace
Cyberspace
Cyberspace is the electronic medium of computer networks, in which online communication takes place.The term "cyberspace" was first used by the cyberpunk science fiction author William Gibson, though the concept was described somewhat earlier, for example in the Vernor Vinge short story "True...
and the virtual, the Internet was naturally appealing to an artist of Forest’s interests and practices. His first work utilizing the Internet, “From Casablanca to Locarno,”http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/47_en.htm#text a multimedia public participation redubbing of certain famous scenes from the Humphrey Bogart-Ingrid Bergman
Casablanca (film)
Casablanca is a 1942 American romantic drama film directed by Michael Curtiz, starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman and Paul Henreid, and featuring Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre and Dooley Wilson. Set during World War II, it focuses on a man torn between, in...
classic, was created in 1995. In 1996, Forest’s web-based digital work “Network-Parcel”http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/49_en.htm#text was sold at a public auction carried live on the Internet—the first event of its kind.
Forest went on to create a number of important online works including “Time Out” (1998, for the inaugural Fête de l’Internet)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/50_en.htm#text, “The Time Processing Machine” (1998)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/51_en.htm#text, “The Techno-Wedding” (1999)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/53_en.htm#text, “The Center of the World” (1999)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/54_en.htm#text, “Territorial Outings” (2001), “Networked Color” (2000)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/57_en.htm#text, “Meat: The Territory of the Body and the Networked Body” (2002)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/61_en.htm#text, “Memory Pictures” (2005)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/64_en.htm#text, “The Digital Street Corner” (2005)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/65_en.htm#text, and “Biennale 3000” (2006)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/66_en.htm#text. Many of these works are concerned with developing new anthropological models for a world in which both individual and community have had to deal with the dual effects of dematerialization and deterritorialization
Deterritorialization
Deterritorialization is a concept created by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in Anti-Oedipus , which, in accordance to Deleuze's desire and philosophy, quickly became used by others, for example in anthropology, and transformed in this reappropriation...
, processes accelerated by the new digital technologies of networked communication. Some of the works literally constitute rites of passage. This is certainly true of “The Techno-Wedding,” a collaborative project of Forest and fellow digital media artist Sophie Lavaud. The work was in fact the real-life wedding of Forest and Lavaud, which was webcast
Webcast
A webcast is a media presentation distributed over the Internet using streaming media technology to distribute a single content source to many simultaneous listeners/viewers. A webcast may either be distributed live or on demand...
live alongside a virtual reality
Virtual reality
Virtual reality , also known as virtuality, is a term that applies to computer-simulated environments that can simulate physical presence in places in the real world, as well as in imaginary worlds...
variant of the ceremony. Another example is to be found in “The Center of the World,” which offered the public an opportunity to make a physical or telepresent pilgrimage
Pilgrimage
A pilgrimage is a journey or search of great moral or spiritual significance. Typically, it is a journey to a shrine or other location of importance to a person's beliefs and faith...
to a shrine-like installation containing a digital relic
Relic
In religion, a relic is a part of the body of a saint or a venerated person, or else another type of ancient religious object, carefully preserved for purposes of veneration or as a tangible memorial...
of the old territorially centered world.
Beginning in 2008, Forest launched a new series of performances in the environment of Second Life
Second Life
Second Life is an online virtual world developed by Linden Lab. It was launched on June 23, 2003. A number of free client programs, or Viewers, enable Second Life users, called Residents, to interact with each other through avatars...
. The first in the series, “The Experimental Research Center of the Territory” (2008)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/70_a_en.htm#text is in continuity with a lifelong exploration of the notion of territory beginning with “The Artistic M2” (1977) and continuing through “The Territory of the M2” (1980, a simulated independent state on the grounds of Forest’s property in the town of Anserville, near Paris)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/22_en.htm#text and “The Networked Territory” (1996, a hypertext work that Forest considers the Territory’s transposition into cyberspace)http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/48_en.htm#text. Each Second Life work is adapted somewhat to the physical location in which it is presented (Nice
Nice
Nice is the fifth most populous city in France, after Paris, Marseille, Lyon and Toulouse, with a population of 348,721 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Nice extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of more than 955,000 on an area of...
, Sao Paulo
São Paulo
São Paulo is the largest city in Brazil, the largest city in the southern hemisphere and South America, and the world's seventh largest city by population. The metropolis is anchor to the São Paulo metropolitan area, ranked as the second-most populous metropolitan area in the Americas and among...
, New York
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, Beirut
Beirut
Beirut is the capital and largest city of Lebanon, with a population ranging from 1 million to more than 2 million . Located on a peninsula at the midpoint of Lebanon's Mediterranean coastline, it serves as the country's largest and main seaport, and also forms the Beirut Metropolitan...
, etc.). In addition to staging debates and discussions at a think tank for avatars and offering public access to a mystical disintegrator of trashhttp://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/en/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/71_a_en.htm#text, some of the Second Life performances center on the philosophical musings and personal confessions of Forest’s digital alter ego, Ego Cyberstar.
External links
- Web Net Museum, an online museum started by Fred Forest, incorporating a full and up-to-date retrospective of his work and an archive of critical texts.
- A list of Fred Forest's artistic actions.
- A list of Fred Forest's online actions.
- Integral slideshow from Fred Forest's retrospective at The Slought Foundation of Philadelphia.
- Art And Society: The Work of Fred Forest at the Slought Foundation of Philadelphia.
- May 2009 issue of Flusser Studies including an interview (in French) with Annick Bureaud and an article by Priscila Arantes.
- Ferdinand Corte text on Fred Forest in Winter 2009-10 issue of Artscape.
- Website of Fred Forest's "Biennale 3000" operation.
- Location of Fred Forest's "Experimental Research Center of the Territory" on Second Life (must have Second Life account to access)