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                   Manifests 
                    of sociological art (1974) and the Aaesthetics of the communication. 
                  MANIFEST 
                    I OF THE SOCIOLOGICAL ART * 
                  Hervé 
                    Fischer, Fred Forest, and Jean-Paul Thénot decided 
                    to constitute a collective of sociological art that 
                    can function like a structure of reception and of work for 
                    all those having for fundamental theme of the research and 
                    of the artistic practice the sociological fact and the link 
                    between art and the society. 
                  The 
                    collective of sociological art notes the apparition 
                    of a new sensitivity for the given social, bound to the process 
                    of massification. The present settings of this sensitivity 
                    are not anymore those of the link of the individualized man 
                    to the world, but those of the link of the man to the society 
                    that produces him. 
                  The 
                    collective of sociological art, by his artistic practice, 
                    has the tendency to put the art in question, to put in evidence 
                    the sociological facts and to "visualize" the elaboration 
                    of a sociological theory of the art. 
                  The 
                    collective of sociological art fundamentally resorts 
                    to the theory and to the methods of social studies. He also 
                    wants, by his practice, to create a field of investigation 
                    and experience for the sociological theory. 
                  The 
                    collective of sociological art takes into consideration 
                    the traditional ideological attitudes of the publics to which 
                    he asks. He resorts to the methods of animation, inquiry and 
                    pedagogy. At the same time that he puts the art in relation 
                    with its sociological context, he attracts the attention on 
                    the channels of communication and diffusion, new theme in 
                    the history of the art, and that implies also a new practice. 
                  Hervé 
                    FISCHER, Fred FOREST, Jean-Paul THÉNOT, Paris, October 
                    7, 1974 
                  *Published 
                    in the Journa1 Le Monde, October 10, 1974. 
                    
                    
                  MANIFEST 
                    II OF THE SOCIOLOGICAL ART* 
                  The 
                    sociological art, that we were again alone to defend a few 
                    months ago, cause various obstructions, that tempt to get 
                    involved in the confusion. Therefore, its time to make 
                    some recalls and to reaffirm the sense that we always gave 
                    to the concept of sociological art. 
                  Indeed, 
                    the sociological art distinguishes itself as much 
                    as the sociology of the art as the conceptions laxistes of 
                    a "social art". 
                  On 
                    the one hand, as active practice in the social field, here 
                    and now, resorting to the approaches theoretical that it submits 
                    to the prove of the action, putting in work of the strategies 
                    in relation to the real, but also in relation to the institutions, 
                    to the power, inventing the techniques of its experiences 
                    - the sociological art comes out of the setting of the scientific 
                    and academic speech. If it resorts necessarily, as to a knowledge, 
                    instrument of the action and if it presents in return, with 
                    every new experience new materials of analysis, it goes past 
                    it dialectically in the elaborated practice. 
                  On 
                    the other hand, the sociological art, by the specificity of 
                    its relation to the sociology, have nothing to see with the 
                    cultural carryall of the theme "art and society", 
                    in which some stretch abusing of their authority as critical 
                    of art, to dilute it to recover it. Others, as us, today, 
                    understand this danger. This confusion cleverly kept constitutes 
                    currently the more insidious threat against our process. 
                  Politically 
                    committed, our sociological practice distinguishes itself 
                    of traditional militant art with which one also wants to confound 
                    it. This last express again with the aesthetic formalisms 
                    and the pictorial middle-class, to which we want to substitute 
                    an active practice of critical questioning. The militant painting 
                    was an important stage but prisoner of the clichés 
                    and the cultural conformisms who made it inoperative, it lets 
                    appear today its limits and its failures with too evidence, 
                    so the sociological art binds it on others ways, implying 
                    the new media, of the critic educational methods and the fundamental 
                    recourse to sociological analysis. 
                  We 
                    have defined the sociological art by its epistemologic necessary 
                    relation with the sociological science. This relation is dialectic. 
                    It founds the artistic practice that experiments it and that 
                    objects it in return the force of the social reality. This 
                    relation is specific to the sociological art: it distinguishes 
                    it of all other traditional steps or avant-gardists. It means, 
                    against the traditional expression, the art as mystifying 
                    ideology of the irrationality, the will to resort to the scientific 
                    speech of sociology and to confront our practice to the rationality 
                    of this speech. 
                  The 
                    sociological art is a practice that founds on the reversal 
                    of the sociology of the art against the art itself, and that 
                    takes into consideration the sociology of the society that 
                    produces this art. It probably constitutes one of the first 
                    tentative (excepts some experiences of socio-dramas), of implementation 
                    of a sociological practice known beyond the traditional 
                    concept of art. Indeed, sociology, unlike the other sciences 
                    as economy, the mechanics, the psychology or the biology, 
                    has caused no practice, only establishment to the level of 
                    the social field.  
                  The 
                    project of the sociological art, its at the end to elaborate 
                    the sociological practice itself. 
                  But 
                    unlike these sciences and their applications, the sociological 
                    art doesn't aim to manage the real, present or to come, but 
                    to exercise in relation to the social reality and to ourselves, 
                    a function of questioning and disruption. This interrogative 
                    and critical function implies not to make the questions and 
                    the answers. Indeed it aims not at all to justify a dogma, 
                    nor to reinforce its bureaucracy, but to cause some non-alienating 
                    awareness. It forces to establish, where reign the one-sided 
                    diffusion of the information, dilogics structures of communication 
                    and exchanges, implying reciprocal engagement of the active 
                    responsibility of each one.  
                  The 
                    sociological art tempts to put in question the ideological 
                    superstructures, the system of values, the attitudes and mentalities 
                    conditioned by the massification of our society.  
                   	Its 
                    in this goal that it resorts to the sociological theory, to 
                    its methods and that it elaborates a educational practice 
                    of animation, of inquiry, of disruption of the communication 
                    channels. 
                  The 
                    concept of sociological art, as we proposed in 1972, as we 
                    practiced it since longer again, in an almost general indifference 
                    at that moment, imply today as yesterday the rigor of its 
                    constituent relation with the materialistic sociological theory, 
                    of which it is at the end the consequence and of which it 
                    marks the passage to the act as practice operating in the 
                    social field. 
                   	Hervé 
                    FISCHER, Fred FOREST, Jean-Paul THÉNOT, Paris, May 
                    1975  
                  *Published 
                    in the catalog of the Galliera museum, Paris for the exposition 
                    of the collective sociological art. 
                    
                  MANIFEST 
                    III OF THE SOCIOLOGICAL ART : METHODOLOGY AND STRATEGY* 
                  The 
                    practice of the sociological art substitutes for the affirmative 
                    and aesthetic traditional finalities of the art of the objectives 
                    bound to the transformation of the ideological attitudes, 
                    in the sense of an awareness of the social alienation. Its 
                    not to propose new models of social organization, but to exercise 
                    the dialectic power of a critical questioning. This conscientisation 
                    must permit, in the moments of rupture of the social system 
                    (economic and bureaucratic structure crisis) to put forward 
                    the fundamental questioning susceptible to orient the steps 
                    of those that want to transform the social links. Such is 
                    our deliberated project. The philosophical question of the 
                    sense, in a social system that doesn't tolerate its setting 
                    in question, is inevitably subversive.  
                  It 
                    implies that the collective of sociological art considers 
                    the methodology and the strategy as two fundamental concepts 
                    of his practice.  
                  	1. 
                    The methodology of the sociological art. Its fundamental 
                    goal is the setting up of deviance devices. Its action field 
                    is directly the one of the interpersonal subjective relations. 
                    It cant hardly borrow to the official sociology, in 
                    this sense that this one aims to note and to manage, to manipulate 
                    the attitudes of the electors/consumers in relation to the 
                    alternative and fictitiously propositions of the social system 
                    itself, and not to put in question these propositions. The 
                    story of this methodology of establishment and bureaucratic 
                    is bound to the demands of the governmental and economic organism 
                    that financed the social investigations in the goal to assure 
                    the exercise of their power. Only the practice of a critical 
                    questioning can allow us to use these methods, diverting them.	 
                     
                  Our 
                    methodology is entirely to invent It aims to make appear 
                    concretely the reality of the social relations that determine 
                    the individuals, but that the dominant ideology occults variously 
                    to the level of the imaginary in the individual consciences, 
                    by its political, moral and cultural speech. The sociological 
                    art visualizes the social relations that reveal the theoretical 
                    sociological analysis and the practice; it makes emerge his 
                    abstract structures to the conscience of each, object of the 
                    sociological speech, ideologically blinded to the level of 
                    the daily lived. This subversive educational practice reveals 
                    the working of the real social relations between the social 
                    categories, the modes of exploitation, the political logic 
                    of the dominating systems of values, their daily mystification, 
                    allowing thus to each an critical exercise critical of his 
                    judgment and his liberty in comparison with to a social 
                    order that presents itself falsely as natural and necessary. 
                    This self-management of the thought can be gotten thanks 
                    to multiplied effect of different techniques: displacement 
                    or transfer of information in comparison with their 
                    places or the supports of cultural process belonging to levels 
                    or social spheres usually partitioned, synthetic steps 
                    provoking subversive short circuits, everywhere where 
                    the dominant ideology divides and breaks up carefully to avoid 
                    the dialectic confrontations, in short a combinative deviant 
                    of the real cultural elements, putting in question their social 
                    logic and therefore making appear what their consistency owes 
                    to the dominating and repressive political power. 
                  	Questionings, 
                    debates, energizations, disruptions of the affirmative 
                    circuits of communication, provocations, refusal, critical 
                    counter-uses fictions, anti-institutions can constitute 
                    this transforming practice. 
                  Its 
                    not only direct action, but also an experimentation of which 
                    the partial or deferred effect is so important as the confrontation 
                    with the hypotheses of the theoretical research theoretical 
                    of a critical sociology.	 
                  	2. 
                    The strategy of the sociological art. Realism and diversion 
                    are its two principles. It practises specifically against 
                    the institutions in place of the dominant system, that it 
                    wants to put in question. Constituted in collective, 
                    we don't only meet some individuals, we are also confronted 
                    constantly to these institutions, that are on the one hand 
                    artistic and cultural (galleries, museums, critical of art, 
                    magazines, biennials, fairs of the art, etc.), on the other 
                    hand politic and administrative (mass media, political parties, 
                    unions, townships, polices, organisms of control, of censorship, 
                    groups of pressure etc.). The recuperator processes of the 
                    market of the art and the justification of our activities 
                    by these different institutions make problem. With regard 
                    to the market of the art, the collective took the decision 
                    not to participate and to contest it radically; with regard 
                    to the parties to be held outside and to question all of them 
                    refusing the dogmas. Our critical interrogative function is 
                    against all militancy. 
                  	The 
                    strategy of the sociological art aims to rest on the artistic 
                    institution permissiveness, to widen its activity to a sociological 
                    practice wider than the category of art. The goal is to lay 
                    hands on the power of the institutions in place either in 
                    resting on some of the men exercising some responsibilities 
                    there, either thanks to the logic of the acquired power, to 
                    divert this power, so possible to overflow the 
                    processes of neutralization of our action that makes in principle 
                    the institutional executing of the e micro-environment of 
                    the elite, and to return this power against the institutional 
                    system that we want to question.  
                  In 
                    a society dominated by economic and technocratic high-class 
                    to which the majority middle-class delegated its political 
                    power, it is possible to rest our strategy on a part of the 
                    intellectual class that contests the power of the administrators 
                    and their finalities.  
                  The 
                    realism of our strategy constantly implies a calculation of 
                    the risks in the game of the  
                  institutional 
                    guaranties, of the mechanisms of neutralization and recuperation, 
                    and of the possibilities 
                  of 
                    experimentation or of effective setting in question. If the 
                    short-term is not negligible the long-term is a perspective 
                    of hope that necessarily legitimizes all will, as derisory 
                    that it appears to transform the social contemporary relations. 
                    Its maybe the will to continue in spite of all, that 
                    will give its strength to our refusal of a society of men/objects 
                    controlled by the cybernetic. 
                  Hervé 
                    FISCHER, Fred FOREST, Jean-Paul THÉNOT, Paris, March 
                    1976, 
                  * 
                    Published in the international catalog of the 37th 
                    Biennial of Venise, June 1976 
                    
                  MANIFEST 
                    IV OF THE SOCIOLOGICAL ART: ART AND ECONOMY 
                  The 
                    art is a complex merchandise. Its market in the industrialized 
                    countries is organized to 
                  several 
                    levels: speculation of the elite on unique pieces or to limited 
                    print, massive diffusion of reproductions (disks, post cards, 
                    copies...), packing or conditioning of commodities of consumption 
                    (food, house...). This market secreted a network of modern 
                    and varied information, and an efficient institutional system 
                    (galleries, museums, centers of art and of culture...). World 
                    capital of finance and economy, New York detains on this market 
                    an imperial power and exports its local culture at the same 
                    time as its dollars. 
                   
                    1. The market of the art. Banks, Stock-exchanges, bids, 
                    assurances, industry, galleries made of the "supplement 
                    of soul" of our civilization a commercial activity to 
                    high output, very comparable to all other, with a supplementary 
                    function indeed, the one to legitimize spiritually our industrial 
                    and commercial society and the class that dominates there. 
                    The art recovers there its traditional affirmative power. 
                  The 
                    collective sociological of art refuses a society where the 
                    art is money and where money is divine. By his interrogative 
                    and critical practice, at the opposite of the art merchandise 
                    and the culture of consumption, it questions the social conscience. 
                  2. 
                    The communication. Confronted to the mercantile and 
                    official network of the art (magazines of art financed by 
                    directors of galleries, controlled by representatives of the 
                    State, published by captains of industry), the collective 
                    sociological of art poses the problem of the communication. 
                    He must invent marginally his own network of information, 
                    against the economic and political powers. 
                  3. 
                    The institutions of the market. Opposite the galleries, 
                    museums and of the monumental symbol that reigns henceforth 
                    on this system in Paris - the Center of Art and of Culture 
                    Georges Pompidou - the collective of sociological art must 
                    invent a strategy of diversion. He must create his counter-institutions, 
                    such the Interrogative Sociological School, to oppose the 
                    conscience to the consumption. 
                  4. 
                    New York. To the United States also, the cultural regionalism 
                    of New York holds the language and the power of the universality. 
                    The too near Canada undergoes the yoke, cant discover 
                    its own cultural identity even. Everything that comes from 
                    New York is god on the market of the art. The galleries installed 
                    their head office at Broadway. They test their products in 
                    their European branches, before possible investment on the 
                    North American market. Spellbound by New York, the European 
                    artists, of United-States and from Japan make the art of imitation 
                    to be in the spiral of the before-war. The Centre Pompidou 
                    to reach the international statute believes necessary to announce 
                    at its opening an exhibition New York/Paris. Unconscious of 
                    the economic character of their power, the "stars" 
                    of New York ignores superbly the ideas that live elsewhere 
                    - to their eyes a way of third hulls cultural. 
                   	 
                  Yet 
                    the crisis reached the imperial capital, and while the prudent 
                    merchants welcome temporarily some foreign artists and galleries, 
                    the time to pass a crisis they want brief, we throw a third 
                    front out New York capable to organize a strategy out 
                    of the international market and to invent variously our consciences 
                    and our identities, without depending of the windows of bank 
                    of New-York.  
                  The 
                    market of the art, its system of information and of diffusion, 
                    its institutions the Centre Pompidou, the New Yorker imperialism 
                    exist. They are there. As characteristic products of our bargain 
                    society and of consumption The collective of sociological 
                    art hasnt the power to suppress them. Therefore, his 
                    strategy will be to divert them, so that the art is not the 
                    sublime expression and the supplement of soul of the economic, 
                    political and military power..., but the interrogative conscience 
                    of all.  
                  		The 
                    collective of sociological art, 
                  		Hervé 
                    FISCHER, Fred FOREST, Jean-Paul THÉNOT, Paris, February 
                    1977 
                    
                    
                  CHRONOLOGY 
                    OF AN ACTION 
                  10-10-1974	Creation 
                    of the Collective of sociological art 
                  	Manifest 
                    1 (publication in the	 Le Monde newspaper). 
                  1975		Organization 
                    to the initiative of the Collective of the thematic exhibitions 
                  		sociological 
                    art: 
                  January 
                    1975	1) The arts and its socioeconomic structures, 
                  Gallery 
                    Germain, Paris (with documents of: Art et Language, Willy 
                    Bongard, Hervé, 
                  Fischer, 
                    Fred Forest, Hans Haacke, John Latharn, Les Lévine, 
                    Lea Lublin, 
                  Jacques 
                    Pineau, Adrian Piper, Klaus Staeck, Bernard Teyssèdre, 
                    Jean-Paul Thenot). 
                  	 
                  March 
                    1975	2) Problems and methods of the sociological year. 
                     
                  Gallery 
                    Matthias Fels,	Paris (with documents of: Art et Language, 
                    Jean-François Bory, 
                  Jacques 
                    Charlier, Hervé Fischer, Fred Forest, Hans Haacke, 
                    Les Lévine, Léa Lublin, Antonio Muntadas, Joan 
                    Rabascali, Maurice Roquet, Jean Roualdes, Sanejouand, Sogno, 
                    Jean-Paul Thénot, Tomeck, Horacio Zabala). 
                  May 
                    1975	3) art and Communication, Institut Français, 
                    Cologne.  
                  June 
                    1975 4) Sociological art, Galliera museum, Paris. 
                  April 
                    1975	I.C.C. Antwerp: The collective of sociological art. 
                  May 
                    1975	Manifest II of the sociological art. 
                  June 
                    1975	Wspolczesna gallery, Warsaw. 
                  July 
                    1975	Center of art and of communication (C.A,Y.C.), Buenos 
                    Aires, 
                  		Argentina. 
                     
                  August 
                    1975	Museum of contemporary art of the University of São 
                    Paulo, Brazil. 
                  September 
                    1975 Museum of Modern Art of Rio of	Janeiro, Brazil. 
                  March 
                    1976	Manifest III of the sociological the art. 
                  April 
                    1976	Sociological animation of Associations: Kunstverein, 
                    Cologne. 
                  May 
                    l976	Opening of the Interrogative Sociological School, 
                    Paris. 
                  July 
                    1976	Biennial of Venise: Bombardment of Venise. Device 
                    of cultural implosion.  
                  September 
                    1976 Urban Intervention, Perpignan. 
                  February 
                    1977	Manifest IV of the sociological art. 
                  June 
                    1977	Intervention documenta 6. 
                    
                  INDICATION 
                    & BIBLIOGRAPHIC: 
                  Manifest 
                    I of the Collective, October 7, 1974 (Le Monde, 10-10-1974). 
                  	Sociological 
                    art I: Texts of Hervé Fischer, Fred Forest, Jean-Paul 
                    Thénot, Bernard  
                  Teyssèdre 
                    (Gallery Germain, Paris).  
                  	Sociological 
                    art II: Talk of the Collective of sociological art with Otto 
                    Hahn (Gallery 
                   
                    Matthias Fels, Paris). 
                  	Sociological 
                    art: Fischer, Forest, Thénot ("+ O" March 
                    1975, Belgium). 
                  	Catalog 
                    Collective Sociological Art (I.C.C. Antwerp, April 
                    1975). 	 
                  	File 
                    on the sociological art: introduction of Bernard Teyssèdre, 
                    (Opus internatinal), special  
                  number, 
                    April 1975.  
                  	Catalog 
                    Collective Sociological Art : Museum Ga1liera, 
                    June 1975 (Pierre Restany, Edgar  
                  Morin, 
                    Marshall Mac Luhan, Jules Gritti, Jean Duvignaud, Vilem Flusser, 
                    René Berger).  
                  	The 
                    Collective of Sociological Art, by Vilem Flusser, Galeria 
                    publication, Wspolczesna,  
                  Warsaw, 
                    Poland, June 1975). 	 
                  	The 
                    Collective of Sociological Art, by Claude Bouyeure 
                    "DU" N° 415, Zurich, 1975. 
                  	The 
                    Collective of Sociological Art (Magazin Kunst, 1975, 
                    N° 67/68). 
                  	Arte 
                    Sociologica (Domus, N° 548, July 1975, Milan, by 
                    Pierre Restany).  
                  	Photo-Movie-Video 
                    catalog: Clarification of the Collective of sociological 
                    art "Museum  
                  Modern 
                    Art", ARC 2, Paris, November 1975. 
                  	Catalog 
                    Biennial Venise 1976. Manifest III of the Collective of 
                    Sociological Art.  
                  	The 
                    Collective of Sociological Art. La Opinion cultural, 
                    Buenos Aires, October 5, 1975. 
                   	The 
                    Interrogative Sociological School. Documenta 6, Cayc Editions, 
                    1977. 
                    
                    
                  SOCIOLOGICAL 
                    ART I ORGANIZED BY THE COLLECTIVE OF SOCIOLOGICAL ART, THE 
                    ART AND ITS SOCIOECONOMIC STRUCTURES 
                  (preface 
                    by Bernard Teyssèdre/Exposition Gallery Germain, Paris, 
                    January 1975). 
                  The 
                    art sociological is not a vanguard. 
                  A 
                    vanguard, in art, shoot the other one, hunt the other one. 
                    A vanguard, in art, has this of strange, it doesn't include 
                    rearward, nor troop. Why? Because to throw a vanguard, in 
                    art, its provide for the speculators goods with increase 
                    rating and for the usurer guarantee after amortization of 
                    the stocks. Thus, what follows a vanguard, in art, that won't 
                    ever be the army, devalued by its number. It will be another 
                    vanguard, whose main merit will be to defer the previous, 
                    because this difference is what even allows a new investment, 
                    instead to immobilize the capital in the maintenance of an 
                    outdated equipment, without competitive advantage in the race 
                    to the maximal profit. 
                  The 
                    art sociological dont raise the souls toward beauty. 
                  Beauty, 
                    from where the beauty comes? This absolute is the Genius's 
                    grant. "Voice of the silence", "Dialogue with 
                    the Invisible", teach us the aesthetic, because its 
                    not without interest to offend, under the aesthetic clouds, 
                    his real genealogy to know that his mother to the name Ideology 
                    and his father Fang-To-Phynances, both of honest bourgeois 
                    birth. To raise the souls toward beauty, it is translated: 
                    to attract people (body and soul) toward this grant of the 
                    sky that is the domination of the bourgeois taste, in order 
                    to better divert the struggle (abjectly material) that would 
                    change their conditions of life. "Artistic education" 
                    and the "giscardienne involvement " raising 
                    of a same strategy. That the good people "participates". 
                  Yes, 
                    under condition, only a power of decision! That the good people 
                    initiates himself to the beaux-arts, yes, as the slaves domesticate 
                    themselves, as the fawns tames themselves, to lick the 
                  master 
                    instead of eating it! 
                  The 
                    art sociological dont help to pour out the Culture. 
                  Nowadays, 
                    the relation of the men to what surrounds them is canalized 
                    by them "Mass Media". The "nature" doesn't 
                    designate anymore an idyllic nostalgia or the prospecting 
                    of the domestic budget for holidays by the leisures industry. 
                    The social life, with the class conflicts, is "sublimated" 
                    by the dominant ideology in a humanist community, an Eden 
                    of peace. So the culture, losing all link with concrete action, 
                    unfolds. On the one hand the creators, on the other hand the 
                    receptors. Here the teachers, there the pupil. The information 
                    flows in an unique way in the way of the power. The relation 
                    of contradictory that it was, becomes hierarchical and it 
                    is permitted to whoever to climb the degrees - it is sufficient 
                    to him to grow rich, to cultivate himself.  
                  The 
                    art sociological is not to the taste nor masses, nor of the 
                    elite.  
                  	Let's 
                    better observe how the culture unfolds in double. 
                  To 
                    one of the extremes, there is the culture of mass. The masses 
                    are not deprived of art, on the contrary, never in the history 
                    they have been bathed to this point, flooded by the art: the 
                    TV serial, the "music" of Sylvie Vartan, the "literature" 
                    of the ex-minister Druon or the ex-convict Papillon. To return 
                    the art (the "true" ) accessible to the masses, 
                    its forget that the dominant class, if he remains dominant, 
                    its because he knew how to instill to the dominated 
                    masses his own tastes, his own ideas. Its because he 
                    is expert to model them by his press, his radio, his television, 
                    his urbanism, his advertisement. In France, to make the art 
                    accessible to the masses, insofar as the tastes of the masses 
                    are the most often only the belated repercussions and damaged 
                    of the bourgeois taste, it will be produce an art that, even 
                    politically	 argumentative, reinforce on the masses the 
                    ascendancy of the bourgeois taste. 
                  	To 
                    the other extreme, her "true" culture is the privilege 
                    of the experts. A handful of artists leads, parade with his/ 
                    cortege, directors of galleries, civil servants of museums, 
                    criticals of specialized magazines. This co-opted elite detains 
                    the knowledge, therefore the power. This elite detains by 
                    intimidation and intellectual terrorism, the right of "to 
                    see" and "to declare", what in art is living, 
                    of international range, of universal value. "Living" 
                    art because, believe me, this newborn of the fashion that 
                    I throw will become big. "International", because 
                    my appetite of glory doesn't tolerate any shabby borders. 
                    "Universal" because such is my personal taste, to 
                    me the possessor of the universal knowledge. Of this art, 
                    them "masses" dont have to do, it is without 
                    link with what they can and want to make: to change their 
                    conditions of life. Them "masses" prefer to "Support 
                    surface" the pictures of Paris-Match, to whom the mistake? 
                    They havent read Art Press, Opus, Artitudes, Art Vivant! 
                    They disregarded to learn to the contact of the elite! Only, 
                    that elite dont appreciate that we disassemble the cogs 
                    of his power. 
                  The 
                    sociological art is not beautiful. An art that dares to say 
                    the truth on the art, this is not beautiful. 
                  The 
                    artists of the past had a holy boss: Chéri-Bibi. They 
                    lived "surrounded" of contradictions - "Fatalitas"! 
                    They succeeded, or they failed, for motives that didn't depend 
                    weakly of their work, well more of the merchants, of the criticals, 
                    of the collectors, suddenly they saw themselves either carried 
                    or released by the fashion	"Fatalitas"! The essence 
                    of the sociological art its that the contradictions, 
                    from outside and passively undergone, became interior. The 
                    sociological art puts the art in question. It makes 
                    it while returning the art to its ideological, socioeconomic 
                    and political context. It makes it while attracting 
                    the attention on the channels of communication (or non communication), 
                    on the circuit of diffusion (or eclipse), on their possible 
                    disruption or subversion. It doesn't intend to be pleasing 
                    to the tastes such they are of the public such he is, but 
                    to modify the public and his tastes. This is not beautiful. 
                     
                  	The 
                    exhibition "the art and its socioeconomic structures" 
                    opens a cycle of demonstrations of sociological art in France 
                    and out of France, in the galleries and out of the galleries. 
                    One won't see here of "beautiful pictures", that 
                    would please to the "masses"; nor even "surprising 
                    works", exciting a "elite" with the blasé 
                    taste. One will find some documents there, and not works, 
                    only if this treated as document. Materials of a put in question. 
                    Instruments for an awareness. And it must be noted, nothing 
                    to sell. 
                  MANIFEST 
                    V SOCIOLOGICAL ART by Fred Forest(published by 
                    the Le Monde newspaper February 7, N° 10894, 1980) 
                  The 
                    sociological art takes for materials the sociological data 
                    provided by its environment. It acts on these data by a multimedia 
                    practice. It reveals the features of the society by a methodology 
                    and a critical questioning. The own characters of the sociological 
                    art have been defined, put on work, experienced, verified 
                    in a first phase by the collective of sociological art. 
                  TODAY 
                    THE SOCIOLOGICAL ART ENTERS IN THE SECOND PHASE OF ITS DEVELOPMENT 
                  >From 
                    now, it affirms in priority its symbolic function within the 
                    society in the domain of the representations of its time (convenient 
                    of the semblance and critical distance), in relation to its 
                    first picture, too exaggeratedly scientist, it operates a 
                    displacement toward a bigger sensualization of the lived, 
                    the playful exaltation, the human exchange quality. It resorts 
                    to three concepts in function of which it reorients its step 
                    in a meaningful way. 
                  CONCEPT 
                    OF RELATION. 
                  A 
                    new mental attitude encourages interference between the partitioned 
                    sectors. A will of indisciplinarity gave birth in the domain 
                    of the sciences to the theory of the "systemic". In the artistic 
                    field, this relational "data" also affirms itself. The work 
                    like open structure introduces uncertain and involvement of 
                    the public in interactive processes of communication. The 
                    artist doesn't impose himself anymore as the manufacturer 
                    of an artistic object materialized but founds his step on 
                    a particular relation that settles between himself and his 
                    context. Agent of communication, working on this one, the 
                    artist becomes a beneficiary of service. 
                  CONCEPT 
                    OF ORGANIZATION. 
                  In 
                    sociological art all is played in this relation to the context. 
                    Each of the projects requires the creation of an operational 
                    device and the development of a strategy adaptable to different 
                    scripts. This practice leans therefore, entire, on the setting 
                    up of "systems of actions". The achieved work is embodied 
                    in a conceived device, programmed, animated within the daily 
                    reality. This type of work is called to substitute itself 
                    for the physical art object (sculpture, painting, photograph, 
                    strip video) or to the event isolated art in the micro-environment 
                    (performance, happening). Who says device, says organization. 
                    Art of organization, the sociological art is more attentive 
                    to the functions that to the objects. 
                  CONCEPT 
                    OF INFORMATION. 
                  The 
                    successive apparition of the techniques of transformation 
                    of the material, of the techniques of the energy and today 
                    of the techniques of information hired the being human in 
                    multiple shapes of expression. The most recent, the technique 
                    of information doesn't produce a material object but messages. 
                    Broadcast, receipt, arrangement (diversion) of messages, the 
                    sociological art is production of messages, thought, provocation. 
                    Imagination on the social communication of its time. 
                  The 
                    sociological art is an art of information. 
                   
                     
                       
                         
                           
                             
                               
                                 
                                   
                                     
                                       
                                         
                                           
                                             
                                               
                                                 
                                                   
                                                     
                                                      Fred 
                                                        Forest 
                                                       
                                                         
                                                    
                                                  
                                                
                                              
                                              Managing 
                                                the Territory of the M2 
                                                
                                                
                                                
                                                
                                                
                                            
                                          
                                        
                                      
                                    
                                  
                                
                              
                            
                          
                        
                      
                    
                  
                  - 
                    Manifest of the aesthetics of the 
                    communication. (Mercato san Severino October 29, 
                    1983). 
                  - 
                    The " reality " is today constituted of a varied and simultaneous 
                    multiplicity of functions of exchanges. 
                  - 
                    The content of the exchange becomes more and more secondary 
                    in relation to the mechanism of the exchange. 
                  - 
                    Without excluding the possibility to explore the universe 
                    of "the implosion" and "hybridization" of the "meant" , we 
                    sustain the preponderance of the networks and functions on 
                    information itself. 
                  - 
                    Information coincides with its "system of sense". 
                  - 
                    On this principle we found a first group of work and research 
                    on "the aesthetics of the communication and systems, in the 
                    perspective of an international platform continued by all 
                    those that work meaningfully and operate in this sense". 
                  Mario 
                    Costa, Fred Forest, Horacio Zabala, 
                  In 
                    the weeks that follow, the artists: 
                  Roy 
                    Ascott (G.B.), Jean-Claude Anglade (France), Roberto Barbanti 
                    (Italy), Stéphane Barron (France), Bure-Soh (China), 
                    Marc Denjean (France), Éric Gidney (Australia), Jean-Pierre 
                    Giovanelli (France), Philippe Hélary (France), Nathan 
                    Karczmar (Israel), Derrick of Kerckhove (Canada), Tom Klikowstein 
                    (U.S.A.), Jean-Marc Philippe (France), Wolfgang Ziemer-Chrobatzek 
                    (Germany) join to the constituted work group. 
                  This 
                    group of work on the Aesthetics of the communication will 
                    develop, from 1983, the theoretical aspects as the artistic 
                    practices that the group initiates in the setting of the university 
                    of Salerne: Chair of aesthetics and demonstrations " Art Media 
                    " organized by Mario Costa, and to Paris I, la Sorbonne: Seminary 
                    "art/communication/new technologies", managed by Fred Forest, 
                    then in Nice in the MAMAC (Museum of Modern Art and Contemporary 
                    Art) between 1995 and 1998. 
                    
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