Research Postcards: Ben Pulver in Paris

Next in our series of Research Postcards is a glimpse of Paris, France, where M.A. candidate Ben Pulver is researching pre-Internet telecommunications art:

Ben Pulver: "This summer, I am in Paris making use of various archives and libraries, focusing on French telecommunications art and its surrounding philosophical and political discourses in the 1980s, before the Internet. This research is supported by the David Edney Research Travel Award.

"Setting foot in the Centre Pompidou (pictured below) is an experience in itself. Some have called it a labyrinth, and that could not feel more accurate. The Bibliothèque Kandinsky reading room is on the third floor. To get there, you must ascend the exoskeleton-like staircase (pictured), providing an increasingly aerial view of the bustling streets below. Through my research at this library, I am becoming familiar with (the plentiful) documents and photographs of an exhibition from 1985 titled Les Immatériaux. As the exhibition was hosted only two floors above the archive reading room, I am cognizant of the relationship these documents maintain with their space."

BP: "Looking through notes by the French philosopher & curator Jean-Francois Lyotard and his team, I am searching for traces of a project called l'Art Accès Revue, developed by ORLAN, that was on display at the exhibition. The Revue is known to be the ‘first online contemporary art revue’. I was fortunate enough to view some recently acquired slides that remain of this work on unprinted photo negatives. This provided me with an unparalleled perspective into the Revue. I squinted at the slides to study the texts and works by artists such as John Cage, Ben Vautier, Vera Molnar (to name only a few). It was somewhat strange to see these images that once existed in a live, online format, and must now be seen through static slides. And it was exciting to see these images; the Revue is a particularly rich vantage point to consider the history of art and early telecommunication technologies in France at this period. It operated as a vanguard lab for artists in visual, literary, and musical genres, whose works challenged the artistic limits and questioned the social effects of the new medium—a French proto-Internet device called the Minitel.

"Next week, I am at the Archives Nationales to look at the meeting notes from a project adjacent to Les Immatériaux at the Centre Pompidou, a seminar group from the 1980s known as ‘Eirpi’ (Espace internationale recherche philosophique interdisciplinaire). With the documents, I will review the participants, the topics, and, in particular, discussions concerning the body and its relationship with the burgeoning ‘informatic’ era. This work will hopefully provide me with a greater picture of the historical context within which Art Acces Revue emerged.

"To more days at the archives fueled by croissants!"