NFT-Archeology, 2021
NFT, fichier numérique image (jpg), couleur
In June 2021, Fred Forest put an NFT up for sale at a price one euro higher than the record set by the notorious digital collage Everydays: The First 5000 Days by Beeple, sold for 69.3 million dollars. This work, entitled NFT-Archeology, consists of a re-reading of a 1996 work, namely the website Parcelle / Réseau, considered the first purely digital work to be sold by an auction house – using a password system owned by a single person. Fred Forest’s early awareness of the possibilities offered by private access to a digital artwork explains the title of NFT-Archaeology and its symbolic sale price. A 1965 tableau by Fred Forest, L’Homme-Réseau, appeared in Parcelle-Réseau in 1966, and has been linked up to NFT-Archeology by the artist in a form of retrospective looking at more than fifty years of an artistic career devoted to information technologies. A letter from the artist to the purchaser completes the set, Fred Forest’s first artwork to join the Centre Pompidou collections.
Marcella Lista et Philippe Bettinelli, 2023