Interface as Utopia

The Conclusion looks more closely at the utopian thread that runs through Forest’s artistic practice beginning with an overview of his lifelong preoccupation with immaterial forms of territoriality and his personal preference for more “realistic” forms of utopia. After outlining the symptoms of a postmodern crisis in western utopian thinking in its dominant perspectival form emphasizing visual projection, collective projects, and social-technological progress, it goes on to examine the ways in which Forest’s art represents a fundamental reconfiguration of the notion of utopia that differs from the enfeebled western paradigm in several important respects. Foremost among these differences is that Forest puts utopia in reverse by making utopia (i.e., the everyday pseudo-utopia of the modern mediascape, which he subjects to defamiliarizing realism) the mundane starting point rather than the ideal culmination of his utopian artistic practice. The Conclusion closes with a retrospective look at Forest’s body of work through the lens of the four main types of utopian interfaces he creates: the specular interface, the subversive interface, the metacommunicational interface, and the liminal interface.

Experiments in Cyber-Liminality

Chapter 3 considers Forest’s internet-based art from the mid-1990s through the present, with particular emphasis on ritualistic and festive manifestations of public liminality that take place online or make the internet an integral part of the event, and on more whimsical exercises in parody and the détournement of interfaces reminiscent of his early experiments with print and broadcast media. Works discussed in Chapter 3 includeFrom Casablanca to Locarno: Love Updated by the Internet and Electronic Media (1995),Time-Out (1998), The Techno-Wedding (1999), The Center of the World (1999), Territorial Outings (2001), Meat: The Territory of the Body and the Networked Body (2002), Memory Pictures (2005), The Experimental Research Center of the Territory (2008), The Traders’ Ball (2010), Ego Cyberstar and the Problem of Identity (2010), Ebb and Flow: The Internet Cave (2011), and Sociological Walk with Google Glass (2014). Chapter 3 also explains Forest’s unique position in the acrimonious “Quarrel of Contemporary Art” (Querelle de l’art contemporain) that raged among French intellectuals and in the media in the 1990s and early 2000s and highlights his contributions to France’s annual Internet Festival, which he helped create.

Sociological Art

Chapter 1 traces the early development of Forest’s artistic vocation beginning with his production as a self-taught painter while still working for the French postal service in Algeria and focuses on his work in the 1970s. It places particular emphasis on projects undertaken in the name of Sociological Art (defined as “sociological praxis in the guise of art”) using video, the press, and different modes of public intervention. Works discussed in Chapter 1 include Family Portrait (1967), Senior Citizen Video (1973), Electronic Investigation of Rue Guénégaud (1974), Video Portrait of a Collector in Real Time (1974), Biennial of the Year 2000 (1975), and The Video Family (1976). Chapter 1 also examines different categories of Forest’s diverse work in video and discusses the aesthetic and epistemological ramifications of Sociological Art as theorized by Forest and Vilém Flusser.

Aesthetics of Communication

Chapter 2 examines Forest’s work from the 1980s through the mid-1990s, which was characterized by greater emphasis on simulation, symbolism, and the sensory; a more varied “palette” of artistic production ranging from more conventional multimedia installations to ambitious attempts to create temporary alternative channels of networked mass communication; and a series of conceptual experiments in metacommunication as defined in the Aesthetics of Communication movement. Works discussed in Chapter 2 include The Territory of the Square Meter (1980), The Stock Exchange of the Imaginary (1982), Here and Now (1983), Press Conference of Babel (1983), Learn How to Watch TV with Your Radio (1984), In Search of Julia Margaret Cameron (1988), The Electronic Bible and the Gulf War (1991), Telephonic Faucet (1992), and The Watchtowers of Peace (1993). Chapter 2 also discusses Forest’s greater interest in ecological themes, the ramifications of globalization, and more explicitly political subjects (e.g., the collapse of Communist regimes in Eastern Europe, the Gulf War, and the Yugoslav Wars) in the late 80s and early 90s.

Fred Forest, Troublemaker

The Introduction establishes Forest’s artistic identity as a trickster and troublemaker through some of his most famous publicity stunts and subversive public interventions. Works discussed in the Introduction include 150 cm2 of Newspaper (1972), The City Invaded by Blank Space (1973), The Artistic Square Meter (1977), The Golden Mean and the Force Field of 14,000 Hertz (1987), Fred Forest for President of Bulgarian National Television (1991), and Forest’s unauthorized protest performance at the Centre Pompidou’s Vidéo Vintage exhibition (2012). The Introduction also discusses Forest’s contributions as a theorist and educator, his ties to leading intellectuals and critics like Vilém Flusser and Pierre Restany, and his tense relations with French art institutions, including his epic legal battle with the Centre Pompidou (1994-97).