Les logiciels de l'imaginaire

An original and unprecedented educational experience.

In response to a project launched by the Rector Christian Forestier at the Créteil Academy, which has 50,000 teachers, the artist Fred Forest, with his usual aplomb, has come up with an astonishing proposal that the senior civil servant who was once the youngest Rector in France has accepted, against the advice of his entire entourage... The artist is proposing as part of an educational project that a circular be sent to all the teachers in the Rectorat (50,000) asking them to vote on a piece of software that Fred Forest has just created. 000) of a circular asking them to give their opinion on a software programme that Fred Forest has just created, making it possible to replace art teachers with this revolutionary device thanks to advances in new technologies. The circular suggests that teachers who are willing to test the software should receive the appropriate diskette and in return give their opinion so that it can be rolled out across all disciplines in the French education system. The Rector's entourage will do everything in its power to dissuade him from taking part in this operation, to no avail.

The results will be made public by the Créteil Artothèque at a national seminar to be held three months later. Teachers who so request will receive a confidential diskette on which to carry out the test. A diskette is prepared and packaged to look like an excellent commercial product. But this diskette is in fact a decoy. It was devoid of any valid operational information... In return, the Rector's Office, under the delighted eye of Rector Christian Forestier, received a good deal of indignant correspondence and protests about a diskette that didn't even work! It has to be said that the diskette sent was in fact devoid of all information... Taking care to conceal the names, all these letters of protest were the subject of an exhibition and a publication accompanied by the artist's explanations justifying his operation in a strictly educational way, as well as a conference on sociological art of which he is one of the three co-founders.