SOCIETE REALISTE

 

 

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PROFILE:    
 

Société Réaliste is a Parisian cooperative created by Ferenc Gróf and Jean-Baptiste Naudy in June 2004. It works with political design, experimental economy, territorial ergonomy and social engineering consulting. Polytechnic, it develops its production schemes through exhibitions, publications and conferences.

Société Réaliste: curriculum non-vitae.
     
     
CURRENTLY:

Throughout miscellaneous exhibition & publication projects, Société Réaliste is currently developping the second stage of Empire, State, Building, to be on view from March, 8, 2012 at Ludwig Muzeum, Budapest.

 
     
     
PROJECTS:

since 187!, since 19?9

October 2010 portfolio (pdf, 6.1 Mo).
     
 

Artist Pension Trust
2011

Empire, State, Building
2011 > 2012

L'avenir dure longtemps
2010

EU Green Card Lottery
2006 > ongoing

Ministère de l'Architecture
2006 > ongoing

Almanach de Thélème
2008 > ongoing

Marka
2008 > ongoing

Transitioners
2006 > ongoing

Cabinet Société Réaliste Conseil
2008 > ongoing

Ponzi's
2006 > 2007

 
     
Artist Pension Trust    
 

Artist Pension Trust (APT) is the first investment program created specifically to provide emerging and mid-career artists with a long-term financial planning opportunity through the collective contribution of their artworks. The purpose of the organization is to provide long-term financial security to artists who otherwise may not have a retirement plan.

Each Trust consists of up to 250 arti...sts, signing 50 artists per year over a five-year period. APT consists of eight individual Trusts, developed around 8 major art centers: New York, Los Angeles, London, Berlin, Mumbai, Beijing, Mexico City and Dubai.
Participating artists deposit 20 works of art over a fifteen to twenty-year period. The ownership of the artworks is retained by the artists, while the APT Collection is stored and insured by APT until the work is sold. The collection can be viewed online, and is made available to curators and institutions for exhibition during this period. Artists do not have to pay for any of these services up front. The APT model ensures that upon the sale of artworks every artist benefits from participation on an annual basis: 40 percent of the net proceeds derived from the sale of an artwork will go straight to the artist whose work was sold; 32 percent will go into a Pool from which all artists will receive a pro-rata share tied to their artwork investments; 28 percent is retained by APT to cover operational costs.

The growing collection currently stands at 4,000 artworks and represents more than 1,000 artists from over 50 countries. APT Curatorial is an artwork lending program and exhibition planning service that offers curators and museums access to APT's extensive holdings of contemporary art from around the world. APT Curatorial simplifies the exhibition process by providing a diverse selection of artworks to lend as well as fully curated exhibitions. Through the APT website at www.aptglobal.org, curators can browse the collection, research artists, and initiate the loan process.

Artist Pension Trust is made by The Institute of Social Hypocrisy, Jason Hwang, Chris Sharp & Société Réaliste.

 
     
     
Empire, State, Building    
  Société Réaliste's empire, state, building is coproduced by the Jeu de Paume, Paris and the Ludwig Múzeum, Budapest. Its exhibition will go from March 1st ? May 8th, 2011 in Paris and from February 2nd ? April 22nd, 2012, in Budapest.
The title evokes the famous New York skyscraper, a ?Gesammtkunstwerk? that since its completion in 1931 has been a mythological emblem of the United States as much as a source of artistic inspiration: Cooper&Schoedsack's King Kong (1933); Andy Warhol?s silent Empire (1964).
The exhibition explores the possibilities of punctuation, insofar as it can be used to order or disorder discourse. The name of the myth, when altered by the disorder of signs, becomes something different, a grid decreasing the scales of perception and power, from empire to building, via the state. These three perspectives underlie this exhibition of the latest work by Société Réaliste, articulated around two pivotal pieces: The Fountainhead (2010) and Cult of She-manity (2011).
Images of Empire, State, Building,
March 2011:
View #01
View #02
View #03
View #04
View #05
View #06
View #07
View #08
View #09
View #10
View #11
View #12
     
 


 
L'avenir dure longtemps    
 

L'avenir dure longtemps, Appendix, Rennes.

Within the frame of the 2nd Rennes Biennial dedicated to the topic of "future", Société Réaliste has presented a newly produced in situ work, entitled "L'avenir dure longtemps, Appendix, Rennes", that attempts through a repeated typographical and vandalistic act to turn the former convent hosting the exhibition into a collective tomb. Out of a complete list of the 167,000 registered adult and legal inhabitants of the city, the cooperative has designed a plan of the convent and extracted from it 4,200 names, in order to write them in the concrete floor of its exhibition room.

L'avenir dure longtemps, Appendix, Rennes: plan of the convent (pdf, 212 Ko); general view of the sculpture; partial view #1; partial view #2; detail #1; detail #2.
     
     
EU Green Card Lottery    
 

http://www.green-card-lottery-eu.org/

To address the issue of global immigration management, Société Réaliste has devised a three-part project consisting of a website, a promotional campaign and a physical installation. The EU Green Card Lottery website mimics a very specific type of website - ?parasite? websites - which exploit aspiring migrant workers hoping to apply for the American Green Card Lottery system. These sites encourage migrant candidates to apply to the U.S. State Department Lottery through them and pay for this service which is actually free. These parasite websites are designed to resemble official U.S. Sites complete with star-spangled banner, bald eagle, statue of liberty, etc. but are really just frauds ? another component of the vast engine of the migration business. The EU Green Card Lottery promotional campaign drives people to the website. Usually displayed in various contexts, the physical installation is a meticulously created and totally fictional EU Green Card Lottery Registration Office. The idea is to stay as close as possible to what could be an official EU program, in order to engage with the main problems and principles of the generalized migration business.

EUGCL website: screenshot.

EUGCL Promotional Campaigns: Chicago; Casablanca; Istanbul; Kiev.EUGCL

Registration offices: Chicago; Stavanger; Paris (a); (b); Völklingen; Zagreb.

Some points about the project: Tarif d'entrée, lecture, January 14, 2010, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Bruxelles (online video).

 

The Lagos File

In 2009, Société Réaliste has produced a first installation publically presenting a section of the EU Green Card Lottery project's database, within the frame of Living Together, a collective exhibition hosted by Montehermoso (Vitoria-Gasteiz), and then by MARCO (Vigo). The installation has been reformulated for its exhibition within the frame of the 10th Lyon Biennial.

The Lagos File: view (installation at Montehermoso);installation for the 10th Lyon Biennial (outside view; inside view) - photo by B. Robert.

     
     
Ministère de l'Architecture    
  MINISTÈRE DE L?ARCHITECTURE (MA) is an ongoing project developed by Société Réaliste under the form of an administration and a production unit, devoted to work on various aspects of the politics of the space. This administration produces studies, public presentations for the results of its inquiries ? sometimes under the form of exhibitions -, and advertisement or communication material. MA: logotype.
 

MA: Sansar Khan

MA: Sansar Khan has been the first intervention of Ministère de l?Architecture, under the form of a video projection in the public space in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Mongolia is the territorial result of a nomadic civilization. To approach the Mongolian context, such questions as those of transitory spaces, outlandish dynamics, moving power, organization of the limits, were and remain central. MA: Sansar Khan is an advertisement video, projected on a huge pixel screen installed in Suchbaatar, the Ulaanbaatar?s central square. This video informs the Ulaanbaatar?s population of the very soon beginning of the transformation of Suchbaatar square into a Mongolian ?city of space?. This city of space is named Sansar Khan. Sansar Khan means ?Cosmos Emperor? in Mongolian. This astrodrome project is named in tribute to Jugderdemidiin Gourragtcha, the first and only Mongolian cosmonaut that spent 7 days, 20 hours and 43 minutes in space for Mission Soyouz 39, in March 1981. Gourragtcha chose the surname of ?Sansar? after coming back from his space travel.

 

MA: Deuxième contact

The purpose of MA: Deuxième contact has been to put together edges of various scales: What is the common place to Lake Lugano, Dubai, Mexicali, Andorra, Tulkarm? Can circulating margins be an answer to the politics of outsides? Is there a common point between Philolaus' cosmology and Charlemagne?s political nearshoring? Do security fences and their covered ways have the same shape? Is there a ?becoming-transnistrian? of Parisian suburbs? On Friday October 27, during a ?finissage?, Société Réaliste has presented the results of its work.

(During a solar eclipse, the second contact (?Deuxième contact?) is the instant when the Moon's disc is entirely surrounded by the Sun's or the instant when the Sun's disc disappears completely behind the Moon's. During a lunar eclipse, the second contact is the instant when the Moon enters completely into the Earth's umbra. This is the beginning of totality.)

 

MA: Volksballast der Republik

This phase of the Ministère de l'Architecture project consists in the exhibition of a ministerial statement about the blocks as a perception unit. The ministerial statement is a fax (10 A4 pages, official headed paper, black&white), in the Ministère?s characteristic font, Uni0553. This ministerial statement intends to be the scenario of an exhibition to come.

 

MA: Volksballast der Republik (The Seminar)

The previous ministerial statement became the first topic to be approached by the Educational Program set up by Ministère de l'Architecture. This piece consists on one side in an algonigram of ministerial disciplines, on the other in the detailed program for the first semester of Ministère de l'Architecture's Master of Arts and Science in Politics of the Space (PS-MASc).

 

MA: Soliton

MA: Soliton is a typological inquiry about Solitonism, commissioned by Ministère de l?Architecture. In this research, Ministère de l?Architecture has demanded to continue the work of some eminent physicists about non-linear waves, by proposing to extend the analysis of Solitons to the field of the politics of space, and more precisely for reading activities like design or the erection of buildings.

MA: Soliton has been produced for Multitudes Icones, a collective website contributing to the Documenta 12 Magazine project.

 

MA: Culture States - Exposition des Arts et Techniques appliquées à la vie moderne

The "Culture States - Exposition des arts et techniques appliquées à la vie moderne" project takes its subtitle from the historical "Exposition internationale des arts et techniques appliquées à la vie moderne", held in 1937 in Paris. This fair has been one of the most spectacular example of the relation between Culture and Nation, from the confrontation between Nazi and Soviet pavilions to the display of imperialist cultural conceptions of France or UK through their colonial pavilions. Seven decades after this key-moment, what is the relation between political and cultural entities in nowadays Europe?

In its ability to inquire about the politics of the space, Ministère de l'Architecture (MA) has commissioned a research and production study in the field of territorial ergonomy. This study focuses on the multi-layered principle of spatial re-qualification, that continues to affect any cultural zone. Intending to curate a world exhibition on the model of the 1937's one, "Culture States" is dedicated to disappeared states of the European peninsula, and examines the state as a constructed level of space representation, an thus as a deconstructable one.

Scale of control in itself, the state obstructs territorial observation and restrict cultural patterns. "Culture States" designs analyse devices aspiring to disclose the nocuous dependence of cultural constructions on the logic of states. This logic vitally calculates the extension, the maintenance and the lengthening of the state's exercice of inclusive power. The instrumentalisation of cultural forms is plainly part of this exercice. This instrumentalisation is the core theme of "Culture States".

MA Sansar Khan: screenshots (a); (b); (c); (d); video (.mov, 4,4 Mo)

MA Deuxième contact: exhibition view; Paris map; Biennale de Paris catalogue excerpt (french, pdf, 824 Ko); portfolio of the project.

MA Volksballast der Republik: fax (pdf, 880 Ko)

MA: Volksballast der Republik (The Seminar): algonigram (.jpg, 604 Ko); PS-MASc program (.gif, 496 Ko); exhibition view.

MA Soliton: full-text; lecture at Documenta XII (video capture).

MA Temporary Free Zones: full-text; map (.pdf, 760 Ko); executive membrane (.pdf, 52 Ko).

MA Culture States: some views of the preliminarily exhibition at Labor Galéria, April 2008 (a); (b);drawings extracted from the project and published as a portfolio (pdf, 524 Ko); Transections for a definition in absentia (Mucsarnok, view of the installation); four maps extracted from the project (Tri Postal, Lille, view of the installation); six images extracted from the project (Nova Galerija, Zagreb, view of the installation); views from the installation for the 11th Istanbul Biennial.

     
     
Almanach de Thélème    
 

Almanach de Thélème is a new compendium, projected to become a book, to be printed soon. This work in development plans to be a topography of Thelema (?Thélème?), the fictitious utopia imagined by François Rabelais, twenty years after Thomas More?s book, in its 1535?s masterpiece, "The Very Horrific Life of Great Gargantua, Father of Pantagruel". But relating to the author?s own life-long concern with publishing formats, the book will take the shape of a classical Almanach, just as the one designed by the same Rabelais under the title of "Almanach pour l?an M. D. XLI" (1540). This publication is introduced by a text entitled Introductory dialogue between an educated philanthropist, living in the countryside near Paris, and Jacques, his gardener (delivered on January 2009 at Academie Jan van Eyck, Maastricht) and by an exhibition, Pligatures, presented at Galerie Martine Aboucaya (February-April 2009).

Almanach de Thélème: Fac Quod Vis, aerial view of the Abbey (a).
 

Pligatures is the title of a text published by Société Réaliste in the Winter 2009?s issue of Multitudes, a Paris-based review for radical philosophy. As a contribution to this issue, Société Réaliste also devised four visual objects, extracted from its recent corpus of cartographic experiments. Pligatures takes this contribution as a departure point for an exhibition. Société Réaliste proposes to relate a range of 18 artworks, both ancient and re-instanced or produced for this specific exhibition, on a formal basis; the one standing in between the two elements composing the French neologism Pligatures.

?Pli? means in English the ?Fold?, and ?ligatures? remains unchanged. Thus, Pligatures concerns the plastic processes of folding an object to transform it and producing ligatures to relate heterogeneous objects. In the exhibition, Société Réaliste intends to make coherently interfere its research on glyphs and graffitis, on classical and experimental cartography, on logotyping, heraldry and vexillology or on frontiers on a less derivative point of view. While producing bonds between such differential materials, Société Réaliste intends to pragmatically overcome its current state of plastic interrogations, as presented in its most recent conferences Glyphs & Strata (San Francisco Art Institute, October 2008) and Xenos / Xenia (Montehermoso, Vitoria-Gasteiz, February 2009).

Pligatures: Barbarus; Cartophony of the Land of the Free; Dymaxion Palace; Esprit; Cosmopolites de tous les pays encore un effort (graphic view); EUGCL: résultats questionnaire; Eugonics; Limes New Roman (detail); Prototype of frontier; Rockall; United Nations Brown.
  Under the name COuNterFORMISM, Société Réaliste has proposed a mural work within the frame of the exhibition Typopass, an exhibition dealing with conceptual typography and experimental design, held at Dorottya Galéria, Budapest, in Fall 2009. This work consists in an articulation of various inscriptions and writing techniques, extracted from the ongoing constitution process of Almanach de Thélème. COuNterFORMISM: installation views (a; b; d; detail); poster produced for the exhibition; Crisis as/vs order; Counterformism in Hexatopia; New alphabetical order in experanto.
     
     
Marka    
  Marka is the umbrella title under which Société Réaliste develops an enquiry about the relations between the objectual money and the specific history of geopolitical strategies inherited from Charlemagne. Starting from the etymological origin of the word marka, meaning "sign of a frontier" in Gotic language, that gave words such as march, margin, trademark, to mark, etc, this ongoing research tries to confrontate various range of signs through the historical constitution of the European empire, from its Carolingian militaristic conception to its contemporary economical shape. Marka: 1-euro coin (a); (b); (c); installation view, Paris (d); installation view, Budapest (e); (f); (g); Invisible Hand (h); East Bank (i); Euro-related World Map (j); ; (l); installation view, Vienna (m).
 

Archivolt of straits

For the specific context of the Athens Biennial 2009, Société Réaliste has designed Archivolt of Straits, an entrance door for its respective exhibition. This door is an intertwining of doors as represented on the Euro banknotes, in different architectural style and colour, from the « classical » gray 5 euros banknotes to the « baroque » green 100 euros banknotes. Playing with a potentially infinite perspective made out of doors leading to doors, Archivolt of straits is a proposal for an Entrance Gate of the European Union.

By using the overall shape of this door, Société Réaliste has devised a tiling system on the door?s pediment, in which, by putting aside some of them, the cooperative has written a welcome message for the EU newcomers. This message is a pastiche of the illustrious verse written on the door of Hell following Dante Alighieri?s Inferno. Dante?s "Lasciate ogne speranza voi ch?intrate" ("All hope abandon, ye who enter in" ? Canto III, verse 9) has been turned into "Lasciate ogne stranezza voi ch?intrate". "Stranezza" in Italian means strangeness, in the same time what is strange and what is the characteristic of the foreigner.

Archivolt of straits: presentation of the door; display for Athens Biennial (a); (b).
     
     
Transitioners    
 

In 2006, Société Réaliste has launched Transitioners, a trend design agency, specialized in political transitions. Transposing the principles of prospective design, generally used by professionals in the field of fashion, to the field of politics, the project questions the revolution (transition?) as a central category for contemporary Western society. How can a "democratic transition" be produced? What is the role of design in the permanent conversion of political flux into mythology? How can the effect of an event on citizens be transformed into a controlled affect?

Depending on present atmosphere, Transitioners defines the general climate, in which future social transformation movements will take place, in order to maximize their efficiency. Like any other trend design bureau, Transitioners' clients are designers, who can use the bureau's proposals to design the revolutions to come: logotypes, color charts, lexical fields, etc. For each new step in the project, Société Réaliste conceives a new trend collection, originated by a precise historical event.

Transitioners: logo; Chirurgie de l'illusion, a text by Hajnalka Somogyi for Art21, about the Transitioners project (french); Scanned version.
  Aperiodic bulletin.
Aperiodically, the Transitioners trend agency publishes an information bulletin about contemporary political design facts worldwide.
Aperiodic bulletin: issue n°1 / Division; issue n°2 / Secession; issue n°3 / Reunification; monochromatic presentation of issue n°3, Ernst Museum; issue n°4 / Switchdrawal; presentation of issue n°4, exhibition Splav Meduze.
 

Bastille Days Collection.

If the first collection designed by Transitioners has been dedicated to the French Revolution, it is mainly because it represents a founding myth for modern revolutions. It is the first ?democratic revolution? in the western history. It left us a broad heritage of political lexicon (notions like ?political left? and ?right?, ?activist?, ?radical?, ?terrorist?, ?civil society?, ?universal republic?, ?modern citizenship??). It is a primitive drama, full of heroes, anti-heroes, revolutionary archetypes, feats of arms, actions and sudden developments? This revolution can be read as a kind of paradigmatic structure for modern revolutions: an oppressive regime overthrown, the war between revolutionary factions, the temporary reign of terror, a moderate renovation of order and then the birth of a new oppressive system. This typical quaternary structure is used to structure this collection: tradition, transgression, pacification, renovation.
But the French Revolution also represents the historical link between the production of a revolutionary form and its instrumentalization. The history of revolutions is full of actors that can be compared to various styles or attitudes defined by the French Revolution. A way of behaving during a revolution is understood here as a ?canovaccio? in the Commedia dell?arte, a sort of predefined plot for predefined characters. The design of some postures inherited from the French Revolution constitutes the core proposal of this collection.

Bastille Days Collection: Trafo Gallery, Budapest (a); (b); (c); Kunstpavillon, Innsbruck (d); (e); (f); (g); ; (i); (j); MKTTK, Moscow ; Mains d'Oeuvres, Paris ; (m); Ze dos Bois, Lisbon (n); (o); (p); (q); (r); (t); (u); (v); Galerie Martine Aboucaya, Paris (w); (x); (y).
 

Le Producteur.

The 2008 collection, entitled Le Producteur is based on the utopias developed during the first three decades of the 19th century, by thinkers such as Fourier, Enfantin, Rodrigues, Cabet, Owen, or Saint-Simon. The central question of the 2008 collection is related to the progressive separation of liberalism and socialism. While they have a common origin and were not differentiated by major utopist thinkers, the events of 1830 and 1848 progressively opposed them. This binary confrontation between liberalism and socialism still constitutes the basis of our common representations. For Transitioners, the interrogation of this ideological chasm, of its accuracy and its contradictions, is central. The stake of the collection Le Producteur consists in knowing how these movements share a common ideological base, and how the later can nourish the design of future transitions.

Le Producteur: advertisement (a); (b); La Synagogue de Delme ; (d); (e); Transmediale 08 (f); Utopia Transfer (g); (h); (i); Module presentation at your-space / Van Abbemuseum (j); ; installation view at NCCA, Moscow.

London View.

London View and has been inspired by the 1848 European Revolution, also known as the Spring of the Peoples. This 2009 collection approaches the very specific context of 1848 and the new political paradigm experienced in those days: the scheme of a synchronous and continental revolutionary attempt. Indeed, from the first students and workers demonstrations in Paris at the beginning of February 1848 to the end of the Hungarian Civil War in December 1849, forty revolutions took place in Europe. Amsterdam, Ballingarry, Berlin, Bern, Bologna, Bratislava, Bucharest, Cologne, Craiova, Copenhagen, Chemnitz, Dresden, Frankfurt, Iasi, Kiel, Lucerne, Lviv, Mannheim, Milan, Munich, Naples, Novi Sad, Palermo, Ploiesti, Plzen, Poznan, Prague, Rome, Split, Stuttgart, Timisoara, Torun, Trento, Trieste, Venice, Vienna or Wiesbaden have been the theaters of major collective events that continue to interrogate nowadays political context: collective spontaneity, polycentric organization, international collaboration by means of communication and "glocal" networking.
Moreover, in February 1848, Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx published for the first time the Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei ("Manifesto of the Communist Party"), an essay that will completely transform the history of the social movement in terms of philosophical basis, means of organization, both local and global tactics, leading to the transformation of the Communist League (mainly based on utopian socialist theoretical references, such as Babeuf or Saint-Simon) into the First International. 1848 is the beginning of the Hegelian Marxism theoretical leadership on the European revolutionary forces. The central question of Transitioners: London View concerns some points of exactness in Marx & Engels' analysis of the political situation from which they write as well as the inaccuracy of their "London" theoretical point of view in regard to the multiplicity and the complexity of the existing revolutions happening concurrently on the European continent. Thus, the collection intends to raise awareness on contemporary similar situations of disjunction between manifold revolutionary practices and standardized theoretical attempts.

London View: advertisement; Hold & Freight, London (a); Color picker - detail (d); (e); display for Ideology of Design, Novi Sad.
     
     
Cabinet Société Réaliste Conseil    
 

Cabinet Société Réaliste Conseil is an international legislative consulting firm whose mission is to help leading parliaments create and sustain competitive legislation. As a truly international firm, we focus on meeting the special conditions of worldwide leadership and the singular needs of legislative agendas designed for the politics of tomorrow.

Through our policy-making management and consulting services, we help our clients in local, state and federal authorities tackle their most challenging issues. Our core operating philosophy is to measure the success of our firm on the impacts of our researches and proposals with the reality of political situations.

Utilizing a solid historical sourcing, Cabinet Société Réaliste Conseil has developed a strong set of core competencies and skills that we have successfully applied in a wide range of decision settings. Our Cabinet strives to provide integrated analysis, best practices and knowledge to our client?s organizations to enable significant improvements in the construction of the political reality of the world to come.

Cabinet Société Réaliste Conseil is a leader in lawmaking intelligence, and our mission is to achieve both immediate and future success in the field of avant-garde policies.

Cabinet Société Réaliste Conseil: logotype; COM-EU (2007) 02 final. (The 2007 Almanac of Political Art, chapter 2); installation at Edinburgh Sculpture Centre: (a); (b).
  CSRC: Cultural Propelled Funds is a synthetic document adressed to the Commission of the European Communities, briefly presenting the Cultural Propelled Funds plan. Cultural Propelled Funds: COM(2008) 091 syn (.pdf, 188 Ko, french); detail of the installation; installation view at Ernst Museum.
     
     
Ponzi's    
 

PONZI'S is an application of the pyramidal scheme in the field of contemporary art. This project aims to be a tool for developing and integrating art to its background by converting it to a profitable activity for artists, art venues and audiences. Following this profit-making principle, in economic terms as well as ethical ones, Ponzi's allows to imagine new perspectives for contemporary art democratization and its higher adherence to social realities. Ponzi's is not only an art corporation: it is also a new attitude facing the social and economic responsabilities of the artist. Developed and finished in five exhibitions, Ponzi's has now the form of its explicitation.

Ponzi's has been developed within the frame of the series of exhibitions ?How to do things? In the middle of (no)where??.

Ponzi's: some points about the project; Ponzi's rules; Ponzi's voucher; Ponzi's franchise; Ponzi's office (Budapest); Ponzi's first franchisee classroom (Kiev); Ponzi's managers training room (Bucharest); Ponzi's board of directors (Copenhagen); 360° Parasite, a Ponzi's party for Berlin. ; Ponzi's explanation, Paris ; MoBy Hosting, Bat-Yam, Israel (a); (b); (c).
     
TEXTS    
  i/ THE GREAT KARAOKE SWINDLE, 2006; ii/ IN ACTION!, 2006; iii/ GANDHI BÜRGER, 2008; iv/ EXCLAVE, 2008; v/ PLIGATURES, 2008; vi/ TARIF D'ENTREE, 2009; vii/ SIDING WITH THE BARBARIANS, 2009.  
     
     
The Great Karaoke Swindle    
  Published in How to do things? In the middle of (no)where?, catalogue of the project, Revolver Publishing, Frankfurt/Main, 2006. The Great Karaoke Swindle: english text; version française; magyar verzió.
     
In Action!    
 

In Action! is a publication project initiated by Sparwasser for TRAFO Gallery.

"Dear Société Réaliste,
you are invited to participate in the project among 20 artists and other cultural producers from Budapest! Each person is given one word.

The word we chose for Ferenc Gróf is CONSPIRE (calculate) (opposed to INTRODUCE (circulate).

The word we chose for Jean-Baptiste Naudy is TRANSLATE (accept) (as the opposite of CONTRADICT (oppose).

Each WORD is an ACTION, each word is a thing that can be or should be done. We ask you to write a text, which should be one page (A4) long."

Sparwasser.

In Action!: Conspire - incoherent sentences on a diversified topic, acontribution by Ferenc Gróf; Dear Jean-Baptiste, a contribution by Jean-Baptiste Naudy (pdf, 36 Ko).
     
Gandhi Bürger    
  Published in Journal of Visual Culture: D12 Dissection, volume 7 No 1, London, 2008. Gandhi Bürger: version française; english text.
     
Exclave, a conversation between Metahaven and Société Réaliste about cosmopolis, dominium, Euregions, branding and politics.    
  Published in The HTV, No 72: A Democratic Brand Paradox, Amsterdam, 2008. Exclave: full english text (pdf, 1,2 Mo).
     
Pligatures    
  Published in Multitudes, n° 35, Paris, Winter 2009. Pligatures: version française.
     
Tarif d'entrée    
  Text of the lecture "Xenos / Xenia" given by Société Réaliste at Centro Cultural Montehermoso, Vitoria-Gasteiz, on February 25th, 2009, turned into a text to be published. Tarif d'entrée: lecture at Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels (online video).
     
Siding with the Barbarians    
  Published in Foreign Policy in Focus, online publication from Washington D.C., June 15, 2009. Siding with the Barbarians: online text.
     
MISCELLANEA:    
  Société Réaliste also develops its work under the form of collaborations or peculiar art history reading. Several works illustrate these miscellaneous activities. i/ ATL(E)AS(T.) COMPLEX; ii/ M6.1 PLATFORM; iii/ OVER THE COUNTER; iv/ INTERNATIONAL GRAFFITI MUSEUM (IGM).  
     
     
AtL(e)As(T.) CoMpleX    
  In October 2007, on the occasion of the Herczeg Klára Prize awarding, Tamás St. Auby and Société Réaliste exhibited together at Stúdió Galéria, Budapest, a set of works dealing with the complexification of geography. AtL(e)As(T.) CoMpleX: exhibition view.
     
M6.1 Platform    
  Upon the cancellation of the Manifesta 6 Biennale, destined for Nicosia, Cyprus, we have re-assembled our network of presupposed participants in the undertaking of collective works.  
 

Manifesta 6, Department 3: Abschlussball

Manifesta 6, Department 3: Abschlussball is a collaborative initiative from 20 of the selected students from Dept III of the ?failed? Manifesta 6 school-as-biennale project. The term ?failed? is purposefully in quotations. The mishap of the project has transformed it unforeseeable directions ? becoming the first purely textual biennial. Since the inception of the project until now it has manifest itself exclusively through a collection of texts (applications, press articles, curatorial statements, legal documents, publications, emails, etc). This transformation has re-positioned the intentions, but has unwillingly produced the most trans-disciplinary biennial of its? kind, involving, but not excluded to the juridical, political, diplomatic, intellectual, media, economic and aesthetic spheres.

From this perspective the ?still-born? network of Dept III participants, is seeking to reanimate itself into a ?zombie network? as a collective, productive machine. These collaborative efforts are focused on a co-authored ?confetti contract? ? a text built in intervals between all participants of fragments, statements, digressions, interactions, re-writing, definitions and discords that take place amongst such a large group.

M6 DIII Abschlussball: press release; final draft contract.
  Manifesta 6, Department 3: Off Season

M6.1: OffSeason is a site-specific project mobilizing the lost network of the former Manifesta 6, Department III student body. The international network of cultural producers (now comprised of 13 participants), is the result of an appropriated network of accepted ?students? into the Manifesta 6 Dept. III ?school-as-biennale? project, which was scheduled for Nicosia, Cyprus in 2006, but was later cancelled due to political tensions in the divided city of Nicosia. M6.1: OffSeason is a collectively authored ?Tour Guide? of the island, written and edited as a large group, scheduled for October 8 - 21, 2007, off-season tourist time. The project re-appropriates both the network, as selected by the curator of Department III, M6, and the site of its presupposed activities. For a period of two-weeks, the lost-network will convene in Nicosia, and later disperse to research, write and photograph off-season, ?off-tourist? locations and themes of their choosing throughout the island and city on both sides of the border.
 
     
Over the counter    
  Over the counter (OTC) is a work realized within the context of Multitudes Icones, a collective website contributing to the Documenta 12 Magazine project. OTC intends to answer the three questions asked by D12 and reformulated by Multitudes. Is modernity (y)our aftermath? Is bare life your apocalyptic political dimension? What is to be done after the D12 Bildung programme? To the first question, OTC replies by launching a call for donation; to the second one by displaying Société Réaliste's International Bank Account Number (IBAN); to the last question by going public with the minimal information necessary to access this bank account (click Progéliance Net). OTC: call for donation; IBAN; user+password; advertisement (to be printed); installation view at Buy Sellf, Marseille: (a); (b).
     
IGM    
 

The International Graffiti Museum (IGM) is dedicated to the study of urban signs. Its public access is fragmentary. A room after the other.

> MUSEUM
The International Graffiti Museum is a museum within the frame of the first Museum of the history, The Mouseion, built by Ptolemy Soter the 1st. The Mouseion was a meeting place for scientists that wanted to study and to regroup works of art. The International Graffiti Museum does not have any permanent building. It operates temporarily in every place where it exhibits itself. Its goal is neither to classify nor to conserve objects. It does not organize nor represent a collective memory. This museum studies a delimited category of human productions, with the only purpose of producing other objects. It is a factory-museum, that only collects and documents its own productions. The International Graffiti Museum is not an object?s theatre but a production machine.

> GRAFFITI
The graffiti is the delimited category of human productions studied by the International Graffiti Museum. The term graffiti comes from three words, the Latin noun graphium, that means ?dagger?, the Italian verb graffiare, ?to scratch? and the Greek adjective graphikos, ?related to the action of writing or painting?. The International Graffiti Museum identifies graffiti experiences through history to interpret them. In its researches, the International Graffiti Museum considers as graffiti every marks of passage, private or not, individual or not, esthetical or not, informative or not, communicating or not.

> INTERNATIONAL
What happens, what takes place between the nations. That concerns the relation between the nations. The graffiti as an international way of expression, in any place. The graffiti as an international way of communication, at any moment.

IGM: logotype.
 

MDCCLXX IX -- International Graffiti Museum #1

MDCCLXX IX is the first public presentation of the International Graffiti Museum project (IGM). MDCCLXX IX is the name of IGM's inaugural room, its introduction, its antechamber. IGM does not have any cash machine.


MDCCLXX IX is a tribute to the first conceptual graffiti artist in the art history, the French writer Nicolas-Edme Rétif de La Bretonne. Born in 1734, October 23rd, near Auxerre, Rétif de la Bretonne began his life as a typographer and a printer. As soon as he arrived in Paris, he began his literary life. Very prolific writer, he was especially recognized for his autobiographical works, mainly Monsieur Nicolas (Mister Nicolas) and Les Nuits de Paris (Nights of Paris). Bound to the late spirit of the Lumières, friend of Beaumarchais and of several of the most important post-Rousseauistic French intellectuals, he was nevertheless a solitary man, a night bird, worried, looking for adventure and for love during his crossings of Paris at night. All his work were connected to its own experience of the city. Haunted by the passage of time, by seeing his life escaping from him, Rétif de la Bretonne began in 1779, on November 4th, a strange activity that he would only stop in 1789. He registered, on the stony walls of l?île Saint Louis (Saint Louis island), the important dates of his life, with a text, in Latin, describing exactly the importance of the reported moment.
But Rétif de la Bretonne had a rather high idea of the importance of his days. His inscriptions were almost daily. He even wrote a book, Mes Inscriptions (My Inscriptions) remained handwritten, in which he recorded all his graffiti, always made by the same way, with a key, in the city?s flesh. In this book, even if we cannot suspect him to establish a theory ? Rétif de la Bretonne is a man of emotion who did not get involved in systems - he lets appear an explanation of his motivation. It is the memorial function of the inscription that he preferred. "Reading again my inscription, I was moved to tears, feeling an extraordinary enjoyment to be still very alive" you can read in My Inscriptions. Rétif de la Bretonne laid bare his heart in the middle of public space, and he merged his life, always/still going away, with his city, his ?body of stones?.

MDCCLXX IX - IGM#1: excerpt from My Inscriptions; Exhibition view; Exhibition view, detail (a); (b); (c); Some graffitis in situ (Paris): rue du Prévôt; rue de la Grange aux Belles; Notre-Dame; Palais de Tokyo; Party Party, an action at OPA (Paris).
 

DISTAL -- International Graffiti Museum #2

First graffiti.

In the gas chambers of the death camps, only two traces of the methodical massacre remain. On one hand, there are blue marks, maculae left by Zyklon B. On the other hand, tracks scratched by dying people.

Last graffiti.

[ Distal ] : of Latin distans, distant.
1/ Which is the most distant object from a reference point.
2/ Which functions remotely.

DISTAL - IGM#2: installation view; in the afternoon; detail; after dark.
 

APPENDIX -- International Graffiti Museum #3

Appendix (IGM # 3) is the cabinet of the International Graffiti Museum devoted to one of the oldest practice of the mural inscription, that of Ancient Mesopotamia.

Appendix takes as starting points of its work three fundamental cultural practices developed by Mesopotamians from the fourth millennium BC to the seventh century BC. Mesopotamians created the first cities. They invented the cuneiform writing, one of the first known form of writing. They built ziggurats (pyramidal temples). They wrote the first epics, fixing a great part of the cultural background of the Near East. The Mesopotamian texts were registered on clay tablets, on the walls of the ziggurats, even on the public sculptures. The old epic is a text of laws. The epic style was used as an allegorical transcription for the cultural frames : power, religion, relation to oneself, all the social life precepts were contained in it. It is a synthesized expression of the ancient social structures. The epic text is law of the language as much as grammar of the men.

In Appendix, Société Réaliste proposes a grammar of error, what is never thought by the tables of laws, what exceeds, what makes appendix to any framework. Mistakes of language, in the most general way: grammatical errors, errors of perception, errors of conceptualisation, logical errors.

Appendix is a tool. It is a stencil, a "normographe" that can be used for the reproduction of its own typographic police and, perhaps, for the reproduction of its own errors.

[ Appendix ] : Latin name.
1/ what hangs.
2/ addition, supplement.

APPENDIX - IGM#3: zinc plates; grammar (pdf, 756 Ko); >alphabetical table; wall drawing; appendix font (ttf, downloadable); public space display of the grammar, Prague.
 

VERSADE -- International Graffiti Museum #4

Versade (IGM # 4) is a project developed in collaboration with EXINDEX, published in October 2006, within the frame of the documenta 12 magazines project.

VERSADE - IGM #4: introduction; Versade compass; online access to the project: English version; Magyar verzió; Documenta 12 Magazine website.