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