TERRITORY FRED FOREST

TERRITORY FRED FOREST
GALERY CHRISTIAN DEPARDIEU

FEBRUARY 28 2008
Creation of Fred Forest on second Life

2008

Experimental center of Territory & social laboratory

PROMENADE DES ANGLAIS, NICE, France

Opening in 28 February 2008 at 18h00

Gallery of Christian Depardieu, Nice

& on Second Life

One week before Common elections, Fred Forest runs his project of thoughts’ laboratory to the future.
First theme of this occasion in Aesthetic, ethic, philosophic and social approach: " The durable development "



CONCEPT

In the form of a model of simulation, appealing collective imagination, Fred Forest carries on with his project of Territory of the artistic square meter:
- Initiated in Anserville in a physical space since 1977

target=_new>http://www.fredforest.org/territories/


- Converted into network of territory on the Net (Imagina 1996),

target=_new>http://www.webnetmuseum.org/html/fr/expo-retr-fredforest/actions/48_fr.htm#text


- Moved in the virtual space (Second Life 2008)

target=_new>http://slurl.com/secondlife/Conway%203/71/40/27



To access to this address, you must be in Second Life and made yourself as an Avatar.


Functioning:

Politic personalities are invited to express and debate their points of view in this space about this theme, as it appears in their electoral program (the interventions calendar will be the object of a later press release. Journalists must ask to get accustomed to make their Avatar present in real time). Out of politic personality’s interventions, the visit of Experimental Center of territory and social laboratory is free (see Access practical modalities below)

Over times, after elections, the Experimental Center of territory will put other themes of debate that constitute a brainstorming form at the planet’s scale by resort to computer resources, with the implementation of the authentification card : C@pucine.net



Moral authority

The reflexion is with the authority and wisdom of the philosopher Platoon whose cave shadows (in fact they are objects and mathematics entities) always present in debate’s room, mustn’t prevent his clarity and his authenticity.

PARTICIPATION
The Internet users visitors of the Center will have the possibility of appropriating of interactive plots of land of the Territory, shown on the ground, to make their own message pass, in the form of a page URL, dealing with the discussed problem. This page will be archived in a data bank. It will fill one of the free plots of land of the Territory. The Internet users are invited to communicate their URL with the following address: territoire@capucine.net. Only the answers dealing with the subject will be installed (settled) on one of the plots of land available.

The pink quadrangle, in the center of the Territory, established by active plots of land, represents the original historic matrix of the Territory Fred Forest's matrix

INTERNATIONAL PARTNERS OF the PROJECT
THE LABORATORY OF THE ARTS OF TORONTO ........... (CANADA)
THE SLOUGHT FOUNDATION OF PHILADELPHIA ........ (USA)
THE MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART OF SAO PAULO ....... (BRAZIL)
The ACADEMY OF THE FINE ARTS OF BEIRUT (LEBANON)
The UNVERSITE OF SALERNE ........................ (ITALY)
LEGROUPE AMI..................................(FRANCE)
ASSOCIATION CAPUCINE--------------- (France)

1er BIENAL DEL FIN DU MONDE FRED FOREST USHUAIA TIERRA DEL FUEGO

FRED FOREST PROJECT
Bienalfindelmundo march/april 2007
The Sentinel at World's End
A Message of Warning for Humanity from the Land of Fire


CONCEPT

Like a sentinel placed at the end of the world, the lighthouse of hope makes a call to save the world from its programmed disappearance. The race of men who believe themselves superior to all other species of life on the planet is pushing the world to extinction with its brash disregard. Global warming, the sapping of natural resources, religious and racial conflict, intolerance, fanaticisms, violence of all sorts, genocide, terrorism, the vanishing of basic living conditions, the unchecked spread of AIDS, famine, the arms race, economic pitfalls, financial scandal, wanton squandering while hunger strikes entire populations.

The Sentinel at World's End erected between sky, sea and land offers its message of wisdom and intelligence so that man, finally nearing its death rattle, reacts. Technology will cease to be a mechanism of surveillance, oppression and death and will allow the Sentinel at World's End to transmit positive wavelengths. That is, wavelengths enveloping the world from latitude to longitude with light and sound to illuminate our minds. Each of us will be able to offer our bodies to these beneficent waves by turning on our computers, no matter what our GPS coordinates, our geographic location or country of connection throughout the world, Gaia, mother of us all.

MECHANISM

1. In a symbolic fashion, a shortwave transmitter will be placed atop of the lighthouse (see photo.) It will send out a looped message recorded in a number of languages.
2. Fred Forest will create a website allowing for the worldwide distribution of this message. This message is illustrated by the image of the lighthouse, a mythical entity between earth and sky dubbed "The Sentinel at World's End." Via an animated graphic, concentric mobile wavelengths emanate from the upper part of this totem-figure raised in the sky. Audio messages are emitted in time with the site's graphic. One interactive toggle allows the user to send out wavelengths while another allows them to leave a message.

ON SITE INSTALLATION
a. A shortwave radio transmitter, the sort favored by amateur radio, will be installed atop the lighthouse, sending out a continuous audio feed. This feed will also be linked to an Internet Podcast.
"To all men of good will: stay not within the prison of your own thoughts and behaviors."

b. In an abandoned cell within Ushuaia prison, a computer with an internet connection and a large digital screen will be installed allowing visitors to go online to visit and participate at:
target=_new>http://www.fredforest.org/ushuaia



OBJECTIVES:
To create an artistic, symbolic and planetary action using new media and linking North and South poles from Tierra Del Fuego.

This action, as is always the case with Fred Forest's work, is of a critical, if not political, nature posing questions at a time of crisis and emergency for the future of our planet.
The Sentinel at the End of the World thus created indefatigably calls forth a message of reason, intelligence, wisdom and solidarity. This message is pronounced from a unique locale at the end of the earth (Ushuaia) where the four elements are brought together: earth and fire, sky, ocean… and electronics.
Once the installation is created, the artist will engage the online communication mechanism, thus making it an event of positive international consequence

MECHANISM

1. In a symbolic fashion, a shortwave transmitter will be placed atop of the lighthouse (see photo.) It will send out a looped message recorded in a number of languages.
2. Fred Forest will create a website allowing for the worldwide distribution of this message. This message is illustrated by the image of the lighthouse, a mythical entity between earth and sky dubbed "The Sentinel at World's End." Via an animated graphic, concentric mobile wavelengths emanate from the upper part of this totem-figure raised in the sky. Audio messages are emitted in time with the site's graphic. One interactive toggle allows the user to send out wavelengths while another allows them to leave a message.

ON SITE INSTALLATION
a. A shortwave radio transmitter, the sort favored by amateur radio, will be installed atop the lighthouse, sending out a continuous audio feed. This feed will also be linked to an Internet Podcast.
"To all men of good will: stay not within the prison of your own thoughts and behaviors."

b. In an abandoned cell within Ushuaia prison, a computer with an internet connection and a large digital screen will be installed allowing visitors to go online to visit and participate at:
target=_new>http://www.fredforest.org/ushuaia



OBJECTIVES:
To create an artistic, symbolic and planetary action using new media and linking North and South poles from Tierra Del Fuego.

This action, as is always the case with Fred Forest's work, is of a critical, if not political, nature posing questions at a time of crisis and emergency for the future of our planet.
The Sentinel at the End of the World thus created indefatigably calls forth a message of reason, intelligence, wisdom and solidarity. This message is pronounced from a unique locale at the end of the earth (Ushuaia) where the four elements are brought together: earth and fire, sky, ocean… and electronics.
Once the installation is created, the artist will engage the online communication mechanism, thus making it a positive event of an international scope.

FOREST SAYS: "THE PRISON IS ONLY IN OUR HEADS. WE ARE PRISONERS OF OUR SUICIDAL AND CONSUMERIST BEHAVIOURS THAT PUSH US TO DESTROY THE WORLD'S NATURAL BOUNTIES. THE SOLUTIONS IS NOT TO BE FOUND IN SCIENCE; TO SAVE THE WORLD WE MUST BEGIN WITH AN ECOLOGY OF OUR OWN MINDS. IT IS ON THESE GROUNDS THAT ARTISTS MUST ACT IN THIS THIRD MILLENIUM, NOT IN THE PERVERTED SYSTEM OF THE ART MARKET AND ITS COMPLACENT INSTITUTIONS."

As a pioneering artist always having avoided the dictates of the art market and as an artist-theoretician placing himself on the front line with a critical mind, Fred Forest's perseverance has earned him a central place in contemporary art. In North America (with a planetary happening at the Bass Museum in Miami in December 2005 for Art Base Miami Beach, a retrospective at the Slought Foundation in Philadelphia in February 2007) and in Latin America (Communication Prize at the 12th Biennale of São Paulo in 1973, his actions at the Biennale of the year 2000 at the MAC in 1975, his retrospective at the Paço des Artes as well as his critical Biennale of the year 3000 at the MAC in 2006) he finds himself today in a privileged position. He is also undoubtedly the most well-known and celebrated contemporary European artist in Brazil, and yet in spite of all this he continues to maintain a marginal position in the face of an official art system that he cannot brook.

To further ground this stance, he has been invited along with Argentinean and Brazilian artists to participate in the Biennale of the End of the World (Bienalfindelmundo.) This Biennale has been organized conjointly on Tierra del Fuego by the city of Ushuaia, the Fundación Patagonia Arte & Desafió and the Fundação Memorial da América Latina de São Paulo. The event's objective is to create a technological museum of the polar arts. This event aims to bring together the extremes of the North and South Poles through different artistic actions via an axis linking electronic stations on site in Ushuaia and equipment set up in northern Canada and in Finland. Our humble communications artist, Fred Forest, could not have imagined a better occasion to call on his skills and appetite!

Indeed, the thought of this invisible line surpasses any dream Fred Forest could have had. This line that links the pack ice of the South with the pack ice of the North will suddenly be infinitely recomposed, multiplied in chunks and fragments, transformed into a web of tight knots, and all thanks to the magic of networks. These will be tight knots, inseparable one from another ensuring that the continuous flow of an irrigation of collective meaning wends its global transit.

Now more than ever, humanity is in need of meaning and wisdom so as to rise to the challenges of this third millennium, so as to reach a superior phase of evolution. That is, indeed, if we wish to believe that such an ascension is in our destiny, that this slow chaotic march through the ages is to face the target, or should that be utopia, of one day reaching a quasi spiritual condition. The condition of our humors (in the proper and figurative sense) where there would be no contradiction between scientific advances and the peaceful equilibrium of our interior logos.

CHANGER LE MONDE DE FRED FOREST

FOREST SAYS: "THE PRISON IS ONLY IN OUR HEADS. WE ARE PRISONERS OF OUR SUICIDAL AND CONSUMERIST BEHAVIOURS THAT PUSH US TO DESTROY THE WORLD'S NATURAL BOUNTIES. THE SOLUTIONS IS NOT TO BE FOUND IN SCIENCE; TO SAVE THE WORLD WE MUST BEGIN WITH AN ECOLOGY OF OUR OWN MINDS. IT IS ON THESE GROUNDS THAT ARTISTS MUST ACT IN THIS THIRD MILLENIUM, NOT IN THE PERVERTED SYSTEM OF THE ART MARKET AND ITS COMPLACENT INSTITUTIONS."

As a pioneering artist always having avoided the dictates of the art market and as an artist-theoretician placing himself on the front line with a critical mind, Fred Forest's perseverance has earned him a central place in contemporary art. In North America (with a planetary happening at the Bass Museum in Miami in December 2005 for Art Base Miami Beach, a retrospective at the Slought Foundation in Philadelphia in February 2007) and in Latin America (Communication Prize at the 12th Biennale of São Paulo in 1973, his actions at the Biennale of the year 2000 at the MAC in 1975, his retrospective at the Paço des Artes as well as his critical Biennale of the year 3000 at the MAC in 2006) he finds himself today in a privileged position. He is also undoubtedly the most well-known and celebrated contemporary European artist in Brazil, and yet in spite of all this he continues to maintain a marginal position in the face of an official art system that he cannot brook.

To further ground this stance, he has been invited along with Argentinean and Brazilian artists to participate in the Biennale of the End of the World (Bienalfindelmundo.) This Biennale has been organized conjointly on Tierra del Fuego by the city of Ushuaia, the Fundación Patagonia Arte & Desafió and the Fundação Memorial da América Latina de São Paulo. The event's objective is to create a technological museum of the polar arts. This event aims to bring together the extremes of the North and South Poles through different artistic actions via an axis linking electronic stations on site in Ushuaia and equipment set up in northern Canada and in Finland. Our humble communications artist, Fred Forest, could not have imagined a better occasion to call on his skills and appetite!

Indeed, the thought of this invisible line surpasses any dream Fred Forest could have had. This line that links the pack ice of the South with the pack ice of the North will suddenly be infinitely recomposed, multiplied in chunks and fragments, transformed into a web of tight knots, and all thanks to the magic of networks. These will be tight knots, inseparable one from another ensuring that the continuous flow of an irrigation of collective meaning wends its global transit.

Now more than ever, humanity is in need of meaning and wisdom so as to rise to the challenges of this third millennium, so as to reach a superior phase of evolution. That is, indeed, if we wish to believe that such an ascension is in our destiny, that this slow chaotic march through the ages is to face the target, or should that be utopia, of one day reaching a quasi spiritual condition. The condition of our humors (in the proper and figurative sense) where there would be no contradiction between scientific advances and the peaceful equilibrium of our interior logos.