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INSTALLATION + WEBSITE
THE SENTINEL AT WORLD'S END
1ST BIENNIAL OF THE END OF THE END OF THE WORLD
USHAÏA, PATAGONIA
Warning message for all humanity from the Land of Fire
This year like every other, Fred Forest made sure to mark
the occasion of the Fête de l'Internet, an event to
which he was one of the initial contributors. And now, in
the wake of interventions in Brazil and the USA, the multimedia
artist has been called on to represent France during this
the International Polar Year at the first Biennale of the
End of the World in Ushuaia, Patagonia, at the heart of the
Land of Fire. Known for his critical approach and his mindful
independence from the official contemporary art market, he
represents an emerging category of artists refusing compromise
with the dominant artistic system. Fred Forest's ambition
is to have artists be exemplary new actors in direct contact
with social, economic and political realities whose purpose
is to "pacify" the world thus giving it back its
meaning. Dubbed "The Sentinel at World's End," a
lighthouse equipped with varied communications equipment will
stand at the brink of the sea in Ushuaia, turned towards Ushuaia,
and emitting distress signals. The primary objective of these
signals is to warn the world of the peril that mankind's blind
madness places it in. Mass extinctions, the pillaging of natural
resources, pollution, human violence of all breeds, fanaticisms,
fundamentalisms, terrorism, economic disparities, ever-encroaching
world mafias, gangrenous democracies, political and ethical
obsolescence. "The Sentinel at World's End," propped
between earth and sky, between pack-ice and the luminescence
of The Land of Fire, will incessantly transmit this warning
message along with other wavelengths. The beneficent fluctuations
of these wavelengths will envelop the world in a light shawl,
a shawl which would embody the precursory signs of a new consciousness.
This emerging consciousness, wisdom, and intelligence will
allow humanity to finally move towards a next level of individual
and collective evolution at this time of crisis at the beginning
of the third millennium
For Fred Forest, changing the world begins in your own front
garden. Without an ecology of the mind, ecology its in classical
sense is an empty promise, instrumentalized by politics, scientists,
industry, and soon, no doubt, big business.
http://www.fredforest.com/ushuaia
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