Fred Forest - Sociological Art

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 Restany, 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), “Electronic Investigation of Rue Guénégaud” (1973), “Senior Citizen Video” (1973), “Video Portrait of a Collector in Real Time” (1974), “Restany Dines at La Coupole” (1974), “TV Shock, TV Exchange” (1975), “Madame Soleil Exhibited in the Flesh” (1975), and “The Video Family” (1976).

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 center. 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). 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.