THE
TELEPHONE BOOTH
THE WALL OF ARLES
ARLES
AND L’HAŸ LES ROSES
1967
These are Fred
Forest’s very first works on video. They were produced using
Sony Portapak ½ inch black-and-white camera donated to him
by the manufacturer. Forest went on to use this equipment in his
work for over 10 years.
A precursor
of Sociological Art’s investigations into everyday environments,
“The Telephone Booth” was shot in real time from the
third-floor window of the artist’s apartment in L’Haÿ
les Roses. The object of the video was the drab suburban neighborhood’s
only public telephone booth and the local residents who used it
during the course of the experiment, whom the artist filmed in relationship
to the nearby tree that dwarfed the telephone booth like a giant
antenna.
“The Wall
of Arles” is case study in the curiosity of pedestrians in
busy city street, attracted by some mysterious events that seem
to going on behind a wooden barricade.