| 69
EXHIBITION AND INSTALLATION
THE WATCH TOWERS OF THE PEACE
15 YEARS AFTER
SARAJEVO, GALERIJA 10 m2
JUNE 2007
We recall today that in May 1993, while Sarajevo was in the
grips of a merciless war, Fred Forest erected his "Watchtowers
of Peace" along the mountains of the formerYugoslavia.
http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/fr/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/46_fr.htm#text
The exhibition taking place in Sarajevo in June 2007, fifteen
years later, can be seen as a symbolic extension of this action.
The young people and artists who have invited Fred Forest
belong to a different generation and are consciously extending
their hands to him to celebrate an event that has painfully
marked their collective memory. Theirs is a tiny gallery space,
indeed, it even bears the name of its surface area: Gallery
10m2.
Fred
Forest was one of the first to understood that a ground surface
area, even one as self-aware as "the square meter",
a notion that he has thoroughly explored in the past, must
no longer be the one and only substrate for the creation and
distribution of art. What counts first and foremost today
is the immaterial space of worldwide networks, an-other space.
This space irreversibly restructures our social and professional
activities, our behaviors, our preferences, our lifestyles
and our imaginations. It's therefore up to the official contemporary
French art world, its institutions and its market to wind
their watches if they want to be with the times.
The
entire world is invited to the ten square meters of Gallery
10m2 in Sarajevo. What's more, the entire world can be present
and included in the space thanks to its being interfaced with
the Internet. This interfacing established by the artist provides
the medium that he shall use, test and experiment with as
evidence that our relationship to the world has changed, that
traditional and physical borders have been displaced, if not
abolished.
To
sum it up in Fred Forest's own words: "Throughout the
duration of the exhibition, the gallery's 10 square meters
will expand digitally. My intent is that the concomitant spread
in communication will be enough to rattle our own cognitive
enclaves. My hope resides in the firm belief that by expanding
our own mental space, each and every one of us will one day
be able to recognize others, indeed, to recognize the other
as being an-other ourselves. This ardent belief is, I believe,
all the more applicable here in Sarajevo
http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/pt/expositions/fredforest-retrospective/actions/46_en.htm#text
^ |
