FRED FOREST – Upcoming Projects in the US

FRED FOREST Media Artist and Theorist

Upcoming Projects in the US

—French artist and theorist Fred Forest (born in 1933) is one of the earliest pioneers of video and media art. His work with interactive environments using computer and video elements, began as early as 1968. At the forefront of interactive art and new media, sociology, and institutional critique, his work frequently immaterial and relational, raises questions about the nature and function of art in a market-driven age of information. A retrospective of his work was held at the Slought Foundation in Philadelphia in 2007. Forest has exhibited and presented at institutions including, the Centre Georges Pompidou, Espace Pierre Cardin, and the Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.

Currently artist in residence in New York at Residency Unlimited (http://www.residencyunlimited.org/) supported by the Institut Francais (http://www.institutfrancais.com/), Fred Forest is implementing a global interactive project at the Centre d’art Albi, France and has several upcoming projects scheduled in the United States August and September.

UPCOMING PROJECTS:

Feedback, A Participatory Online Experiment at Cuchifritos Gallery, New York, August 6-24, 2011, opening Saturday August 6th, 4 – 6.30pm

Feedback is conceived as an extension of “Flux et reflux: la caverne d’internet”, an interactive, multimedia exhibition currently on view at the Centre d’art Le Lait, Albi, France, from July1 – October 30. In this exhibition that revisits the significance of Plato’s cave in the internet age, Forest invites the audience as well as internet participants worldwide, to become cast members in a continuously evolving film. The shadows of Plato’s allegory are transposed in contemporary forms created by the public strolling through the exhibition space and from people ‘sending their shadows’ through the internet. Participate online: http://www.flux-et-reflux.net.

Organized by Residency Unlimited this exhibition is made possible with the support of Artists Alliance, Inc (AAI): http://www.aai-nyc.org/cuchifritos/Exhibits/ExhibitsFuture.html within the framework of the RU / AAI partnership.

Sociological Walk in Brooklyn (NY), A re-enactment by Fred Forest, Thursday, September 8, 2011, 4pm

Fred Forest re-animates his Sociological Walk in Brooklyn and invites you to join him in exploring the social fabric of the Williamsburg neighborhood. First performed November 1973 in the São Paolo neighbourhood Brooklin, the walk is part performance, part ad-hoc school, and part sociological study and encourages participants to rediscover their everyday environs. The walk will take place Thursday, September 8, 2011; it will begin at the Bedford subway stop at 4:00PM and last about an hour and a half. If you would like to take part in this FREE event, please email SociologicalWalk@gmail.com. Space is limited. Curated by Ruth Erickson, PhD Candidate, History of Art, UPenn.

Fred Forest: The Early Times of Sociological Art, A presentation/discussion at Residency Unlimited, 360 Court street, Brooklyn, NY 11231, Wednesday, September 14, 2011, 6:30pm

This event offers a unique opportunity to reconsider Fred Forest’s early works of sociological art. Since the late 1960s, Forest has deployed interventionist sociological methods and used the video medium as a radical vehicle to not only raise consciousness and challenge dominant culture’s ideologies but also to activate participation and feedback. Through a strategy of infiltration and détournement of the mass media, Forest intends to provoke a shift from a passive model of information transmission to a dialogic, intersubjective mode. In this context, the artist is all at the same time a revealer, a mediator and a transformative agent of the social field.

Organized and moderated by Maud Jacquin

With the participation of Ruth Erickson, PhD Candidate, History of Art, UPenn, Maud Jacquin, Associate Curator, Residency Unlimited, Stéphanie Jeanjean, PhD Candidate, CUNY Graduate Center, and Lauren Rosati, Assistant curator, Exit Art.

From Sociological Art to The Aesthetics of Communication, A lecture by Fred Forest at MIT List Visual Arts Center (*), Cambridge, Tuesday, September 20, 2011, 6:30pm