85

STREET PERFORMANCE

SOCIOLOGICAL WALK

WILLIAMSBURG BOOKLYN

September 8 2011

French artist 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 Paulo neighborhood Brooklin as part of the Biennale, the walk is part performance, part ad-hoc school, and part sociological study, and it encourages participants to rediscover their everyday environs through conversation and observation. Talk with a family who has been running a neighborhood hardware storeor decades, ask an old man working in a bodega about his daily tasks, learn about a young women’s dream to open her own nail salon, find out the most unusual bagel topping at a local cafe, observe the culture of the bathroom line, and take part in this reanimation of social space.

The walk will take place Thursday, September 8, 2011 and will begin at the corner of Bedford Ave. And North 7th in Williamsburg (L train, Bedford stop) at 4:00PM lasting 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.Fred Forest (born 1933 in Algeria, lives in Paris, France) is a pioneer of video art and a theorist, who created the first interactive environments in France simultaneously using computer and video as early as1968. 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 marketdriven age of information. He has authored dozens of books and exhibited widely at the Slought Foundation, the Centre Georges Pompidou, Espace Pierre Cardin, and the Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. He is currently living in Brooklyn, NY, as a resident artist at Residency Unlimited, NYC.

The exhibition curator, Ruth Erickson, is an independent curator and a PhD candidate in the history of art at the University of Pennsylvania. Her work focuses on the intersections of politics, social sciences, and art. She has published in such journals as Framework and via and presented her work in the USA,France, and England. From 2004-2007, she was Curator at the BCA Center, Burlington, VT, where she organized over two-dozen exhibitions.

This walk is part of a suite of events with Fred Forest this August/September. For more information visit:

 

CURATOR : RUTH ERICKSON