THE
ACTIONS OF FRED FOREST
25
MULTIMEDIA
INSTALLATION / EVENT
STOCK EXCHANGE OF THE SENSATIONAL
CENTRE
GEORGES POMPIDOU, PARIS
JUNE 1982
For
a period of five weeks, the artist turns an exhibition space in
the Centre Pompidou into the nerve center of a nationwide exchange
of fictitious news items that are composed by members of the public.
It is equipped like the headquarters of a news wire service with
a phone bank (handling up to 8,000 calls a day), a computerized
database, video production facilities, and a full range of office
equipment. Working 24 hours a day, its staff of 15 are responsible
for gathering, editing, displaying, archiving, and rating the news
items—tabloid-type stories with an emphasis on sex, death,
transgression, the unusual, and the absurd (not unlike much of modern
art)—that are sent in from outside “correspondents”
and produced on the spot by visitors. A national toll-free number
set up so that interested members of the public can find out the
highest rated story of the day. The operation lays bare the blurring
of the boundaries between information, art, commerce, and the collective
subconscious that is so characteristic of postmodern culture.
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