The lost work of Fred Forest or the lawsuit as pretext to artistic creation (1)

Harald SZEEMANN (by plane, January 1992)

Theorician of art, promoter of exhibitions, co-director of the Kunsthalle of Zurich

In art - and one knows it, among other things, by the practice and the nature of the artistic work engaged by Fred Forest - there are no certainties. There are no certainties to only one exception: everything that is exposed in a museum having passed the usual ritual (the museum invites the artist, the artist accepts or refusesÖ) becomes Art! And this without distinction, it is a picture, a sculpture, a found object and signed, a tip of paper, a gram of radium put on the roof the Museum, drawings and texts of authors of the population invited by an artist. Just as a lot of pages of newspapers presented in a folder, a relation of communication under the shape of a postal packet put under way by an artist. In short, everything that exists and that had be chosen by an artist, all becomes art in the Museum. And because it is art, there is in this case: presentation, exhibition and maybe purchasingÖ Even when it is about a temporary exhibition or the entry of the thing become art in the heritage, and therefore in the collections, there is always the responsibility of the museum institution that is engaged. Therefore, inventory, protection, conservation, restoration and especially the work must necessarily always to be covered by the insurances.

To assure everything that he shows is one of the main duties of a director of museum or a promoter of exhibition. And even if the invited artist is often enemy of all bureaucracy, and manifests a holy horror to fill the contract that must represent the sum representing the objects to assure. But, if he had, instead of imposing his abuse of authority, accepted the demand legitimate of Forest to compensate him of the loss of his file with the drawings of the "others" ... maybe this one would not have created with his own pen, what he called "the lost work", a work constituted of about hundred original correspondences that articulate with different media and parodical actions that he led against the state of Vaud during several years. A way of "Research of the unknown Artwork" where Balzac flies to the help of our mediatic "desesperados".

In conclusion: we will say that morally, ethically, juridically, Fred Forest has the right for him and the laughing; and he is right on the whole line in his fights of artist and his critical positioning against the representatives of the political and cultural power and the bureaucracy. The famous last word that ends the affair without appeals, and the end of no to receive of the political power, constitute in his case a characterized abuse, a loud injustice. We can consider that the political Power in this position is not even "nasty". He simply proves to be stupid! The proofs are obvious. The proofs are oppressive.

Harald Szeemann, January 1992

Note

- (I) media Action that took place between 1978 and 1991. To see "The lost work", edition Gallery Jacqueline Rivolta, Lausanne.

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