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Fred Forest's utopia : media art and activism / Michael F. Leruth.
Author
Leruth, Michael F.
[Browse]
Format
Book
Language
English
Published/Created
Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press, [2017]
Description
xii, 245 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.
Availability
Copies in the Library
Location
Call Number
Status
Location Service
Notes
Marquand Library - Remote Storage: Marquand Use Only
N6853.F62 L47 2017
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Details
Subject(s)
Art and social action
—
France
[Browse]
Forest, Fred 1933-
—
Criticism and interpretation
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Series
Leonardo (Series) (Cambridge, Mass.)
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Leonardo
Summary note
The innovative French media artist and prankster-provocateur Fred Forest first gained notoriety in 1972 when he inserted a small blank space in Le Monde, called it 150 cm 2 of Newspaper ( 150 cm 2 de papier journal), and invited readers to fill in the space with their own work and mail their efforts to him. In 1977, he satirized speculation in both the art and real estate markets by offering the first parcel of officially registered "artistic square meters" of undeveloped rural land for sale at an art auction. Although praised by leading media theorists -- Vilem Flusser lauded Forest as "the artist who pokes holes in media" -- Forest's work has been largely ignored by the canon-making authorities. Forest calls himself "France's most famous unknown artist." In this book, Michael Leruth offers the first book-length consideration of this iconoclastic artist, examining Forest's work from the 1960s to the present. Leruth shows that Forest chooses alternative platforms (newspapers, mock commercial ventures, video-based interactive social interventions, media hacks and hybrids, and, more recently, the Internet) that are outside the exclusive precincts of the art world. A fierce critic of the French contemporary art establishment, Forest famously sued the Centre Pompidou in 1994 over its opaque acquisition practices. After making foundational contributions to Sociological Art in the 1970s and the Aesthetics of Communication in the 1980s, the pioneering Forest saw the Internet as another way for artists to bypass the art establishment in the 1990s. Arguing that there is a strong utopian quality in Forest's work, Leruth sees this utopianism not as naive or conventional but as a reverse utopianism: rather than envisioning an impossible ideal, Forest reenvisions and probes the quasi-utopia of our media-augented everyday reality.
Bibliographic references
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents
Introduction: Fred Forest, troublemaker
Sociological art
Aesthetics of communication
Experiments in cyber-liminality
Conclusion: interface as utopia.
Show 2 more Contents items
ISBN
9780262036498 ((hardcover ; : alk. paper))
0262036495 ((hardcover ; : alk. paper))
LCCN
2016054828
OCLC
964698473
Other standard number
40027471412
Statement on language in description
Princeton University Library aims to describe library materials in a manner that is respectful to the individuals and communities who create, use, and are represented in the collections we manage.
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Fred Forest's utopia : media art and activism / Michael F. Leruth.
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