Le mariage de deux fleuves

This installation was produced in Cologne at the Galerie Françoise Friedrich, whom I would like to thank for the permanent and unselfish support they have given to my video practice by offering me the opportunity to hold several exhibitions.

The theme is Ecology. Three videos are shown on three televisions + a minitel that allows the pollution levels of the Seine to be measured remotely from Paris in real time. The artist is symbolically marrying the Seine and the Rhine, adding up their pollution levels.

Two monitors placed side by side bring together the water from the Seine and the Rhine, while a third monitor below mixes the two, revealing black streams of pollution. A cleverly devised tap was fitted to this monitor, allowing a trickle of water to flow through an iron funnel before pouring into a bucket with an appalling noise. A contact microphone was attached to the iron frame of the funnel to amplify the sound.

It so happened that a few days before the opening, Dr Klaus Töpfer, the Minister for Ecology, had carried out a major publicity operation by swimming across the Rhine (wearing a special wetsuit to prove that the Rhine was in no way polluted). Quick to seize every opportunity to give his critical approach the media coverage it deserved, Forest sent him the attached fax, which was widely picked up by the German press (see the letter he sent him).

At the same time, a similar installation was placed in the entrance hall of the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, thanks to the support, at the time, of its Curator of Photography, Reinhold Misselbeck, who took a great interest in Fred Forest's video work.