Hervé Fischer

Hervé Fischer (born 1941) is a French artist-philosopher and sociologist. He graduated from the École Normale Supérieure (Rue d'Ulm, Paris, 1964) and defended his Master's thesis on Spinoza's political philosophy with Raymond Aron and devoted his main research to the sociology of colour. For many years he taught the sociology of communication and culture at the Sorbonne, where he was promoted to master lecturer in 1981. At the same time, he developed a career as a multi-media artist and creator of "sociological art" and initiated many public participation projects with radio, television, and print media in many European and Latin American countries before coming to Quebec. He speaks fluently French, English, German and Spanish.

Biography

Born in 1941 in France, Hervé Fischer, a French and Canadian philosopher and artist, graduated from the École Normale Supérieure (rue d'Ulm, Paris). Hervé Fischer taught sociology of communication and culture at the Sorbonne. He obtained a master's degree in philosophy and a PhD in sociology. A multi-media artist and creator of "sociological art" (1971), he initiated many public participation projects with radio, television and print media in many European and Latin American countries before coming to Quebec. He was a special guest at the Venice Biennial in 1976, the Sao Paulo Biennial in 1981, and Documenta 7 in Kassel (Germany) in 1982. He had personal exhibitions at the Musée Galliéra in Contemporary Art in 1976, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Montreal in 1980 (a retrospective), and Mexico in 1983. In 1985, he organized Franco-Canadian participation in the Marco Polo electronic novel project which involved writers from Africa, Europe and Canada, and was parrained by Umberto Eco and Italo Calvino. Since 1999, he is working again as a painter of the digital age. He had one man shows at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires, Argentine, (2003), Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales, Montevideo, Uruguay (2004), Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de Chile, Santiago (2006), Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Neuquen, Argentine (2009?), Centro Wifredo Lam in La Havanne, X Biennale de La Havane (2009), Musée d'Art Moderne de Céret (2010–11), Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (1976 and 2012). The Centre Pompidou-Musée national d'art moderne presents a retrospective of his work: Hervé Fischer et l'art sociologique, June to September 2017.

Hervé Fischer is co-founder of La Cité des arts et des nouvelles technologies de Montréal, the Quebec International Science Film Festival Telescience, the Multimedia International Market, and Science Pour Tous. Since 1997, he is also co-founder and president of the International Federation of Multimedia Associations. A member of the Canadian Committee of UNESCO.

He has been elected holder of the Daniel Langlois chair for Fine Arts and Digital Technologies at Concordia University, Montreal, 2000–2002, and developed the concept of a media lab, the Hexagram consortium between Concordia and UQAM Universities. Since 2006, he is associate professor, director-founder of the International Digital Observatory, UQÀM. In 1987 he co-authored and produced the 12-minute computer-animated film "Le Chant des Étoiles," which won a first prize in the international computer animation competition held by the National Computer Graphics Association (USA) in 1988. He was honored by the International Society for the Arts, Science and Technology with the first Leonardo (MIT Press) Makepeace Tsao Award.

In 2011 he starts what he calls tweet art and tweet philosophy, creating small digital icons syndicated on Twitter, with a philosophical and interrogative aim.

A member of the board of Artists for Peace, he received a Doctorate honoris causa from the Quebec Universities and delivers important lectures about digital technologies, art and mythoanalysis around the world.