intelligence_at_societerealiste_dot_net

Société Réaliste is a Paris-based cooperative created by Ferenc Gróf and Jean-Baptiste Naudy in June 2004. This cooperative manages the development of several research and economical structures in fields such as territorial ergonomy, experimental economy, political design or counter-strategy. Société Réaliste is researcher at Jan van Eyck Academie (Maastricht) and is represented by Galerie Martine Aboucaya (Paris).

June #15 > August #17: L'Argent, Le Plateau, PARIS.
||| collective exhibition, curated by Caroline Bourgeois and Elisabeth Lebovici.

June #20 > August #31: Na mi van?, Mucsarnok, BUDAPEST.
||| collective exhibition, curated by Judit Angel and Zsolt Petranyi.

July #1 > July #30: Pro Eto, National Centre for Contemporary Arts, MOSCOW.
||| collective exhibition, curated by: Daria Pyrkina.

July #9 > August #31: The Mechanics of the Canvas, Ernst Museum, BUDAPEST.
||| collective exhibition, curated by: Áron Fenyvesi.

August #2 > August #31: Positive Critical Imagination, ESW, EDINBURGH.
||| collective exhibition, curated by: Javier Marroquí and David Arlandis.

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.

Related website

http://www.eurunion.org/GreenCardLotteryWarn.htm

EUGCL website: screenshot.

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

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

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

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

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 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 the Nazi and the Soviet pavilions to the display of the imperialist cultural conceptions of France or UK through their colonial pavilions. Seventy years after this key-moment, what is the relation between political and cultural entities in nowadays Europe? Ministère de l'Architecture 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 remains the domain of activity for the European geographical zone's cultural history.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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’.

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.

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.

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.