Vidéo Troisième âge

PRÉSENTATION A LA DOCUMENTA 6 KASSEL Juin-Octobre 1977

• Concept and project management: Fred Forest
• Scope: Project commissioned by the Social Research Department of the C.N.R.O. - Caisse Nationale des ouvriers du bâtiment.
• Execution: Retirement home, Font des Horts, Hyères (Var), 25 June to 11 July 1973.
• Presentation: Documenta 6 Kassel, June / October 1977
• Participants: 200 retired people aged 65 to 90.
• Aim: To build a "social sculpture" in the sense defined by Joseph Beuys (Free University). This sculpture, according to Forest, would take the form of a multimedia communication action built and implemented on site in a retirement home.

Concept

Conceived as an artistic entity, the aim of this action is to energise human relations by using video recorders to play on the mirror effect. Accelerate the information process within a closed environment. Reveal to the authors their own behaviour in a slightly deferred way by playing back the video image. Encourage individual and group exchanges. Stimulate the emergence and expression of the collective imagination. Transform the relationship with the institution and encourage a "political" attitude that leads to the appropriation of the means of communication for the mastery of information. The protagonists are a social group of former construction workers, whose lives have been marked by hard work. Their level of education is generally lower than the Certificat d'Études Primaires. With a wealth of practical and human experience, including trade union activism.

Device

All the retirees were invited to make videos on subjects of their choice, shoot the footage and edit the footage themselves. Five groups were freely formed. A few isolated individuals produced their own videos independently. At the same time, a general programme was developed in the school for non-participants and members of staff whose active involvement the director had categorically refused. A daily video diary of the action was produced, leaflets were distributed and teams and equipment were moved to communal areas.

Results

Five fifteen-minute films were made, as well as the film of the film... a total of some forty hours of filming, which will be the subject of a study published by Jean-Philippe Butaud, a gerontologist with a doctorate in sociology. As a pilot project, this experiment, rich in various respects, bears witness to a fruitful collaboration between the fields of art and human sciences. Professor Vilém Flusser and journalist André Bercoff also took part in the experiment.

• Catalogue Documenta 6 Kassel 1977. (Allemagne)
• " La télévision en partage ", Éditions I.D.E.R.I.V., Lausanne 1974
• " Vidéo troisième âge ", Jean-Philippe Butaud et Fred Forest, Nice 1974
• Nombreux articles (voir bibliographie générale sur le site du Webnetmuseum)