The Archives Box. 2000: The Jean Osinski Project, an unusual and controversial exhibition, in Forbach

It was an order from the organizers of The Forbach 2000 exhibition " The Adventure of Work". Jean Michel Bruyère , director of the Fabriks company, played the provocation card to make people think about the notions of work, unemployment and inactivity. A real local unemployed person, Jean Osinski, was installed doing nothing for five months in front of a camera whose images were broadcast on a dedicated website. A look back at this strange device that made headlines even in the national press... to the great displeasure of the flagship exhibition " The Adventure of Work", eclipsed by the installation.

[Article from the Républicain Lorrain, June 18, 2000]

Summer vacations sometimes bring with them some downtime. For those who are bored, we recommend a more than enriching visit to the Osinski Museum.

It all begins at 175 Rue Nationale. A room bathed in harsh light and three chairs facing a giant screen: the scene is set. On the canvas, the image of the impassive face of a man, Jean Osinski, broadcast via the internet. What is he doing? Nothing, it's art. Beneath the screen, words scroll by in slow motion, narrating a story whose scope it is futile, even courageous, to grasp.

Blending harmoniously with the austere furnishings, a guide patiently awaits the visitor. Only at the visitor's request does he stand up and guide—it's his job—the onlooker to an apartment further up the street: that of Jean Osinski. Before entering the said studio, he warns in a threatening tone: "Not a word, not a sound, please. Any attempt to communicate with Jean is useless, he won't respond." Moreover, even after his online exposure, we were not given the opportunity to interview Jean Osinski, nor to ask him his motives, "this intervention could disturb his balance," we were told by the organizers. But let's continue...

It is with undisguised interest that we discover the rooms where Jean spends his time, outside of his working hours (well, "work"...): his bedroom, his kitchen, his bathroom and - oh unsuspected bliss - his latrines.

The museum's centerpiece: the room where Jean poses. With his pupils dilated, he stares into a webcam, to the delight of the depressed internet user, delighted to discover someone more neurotic than himself. Once again, don't smile, this is art.

While Jean is mute, the guide is rather laconic. Avoid questions; they annoy him (he himself plays a role). That said, the humor is definitely there: there's an admission fee.

[Article from the Républicain Lorrain, September 3, 2000]

The almost bare room suggests to the visitor a possible recent past, already swallowed up by time. Perhaps the trace of previous tenants. On the faded friezes, the repeated motifs signal children's games... It is there, in a temporary museum bearing his name and of which he is the sole object, that Jean Osinski has become, in his own way, a work of art. A source of questions rather, for those who accept the unusual proposal made by the director Jean-Michel Bruyère, on the sidelines of The Adventure of Work. The installation here takes the opposite view of the parent exhibition, to focus on its opposite, non-work, and the "heavy feeling of guilt that weighs on those whom the flourishing economy refuses to integrate (disintegrates)." Jean Ozinski, a young 27-year-old from Forbach, truly unemployed, becomes here the archetype of these forced inactive people eroded by unemployment and ostracism from society. An unusual journey through an even more surprising museum.

It's a strange metaphor built around contemplation that presides over the scenography of the Ozinski project. First, we pass through an immaculate chapel from floor to ceiling, in the corner of which an unlikely guide awaits, just the right amount of pale and dressed in black. Outside, the Rue Nationale roars with the decibels of its weekday hubbub. A moment of silence, and the mentor invites you to follow him. Stopping in front of a heavy building door, and for the time of an instruction spoken in a dull voice ("avoid any noise that might disturb Jean Ozinski in his inactivity"), the apartment-museum opens to the visitor at the top of a flight of stairs. First, a first room, where all the personal objects belonging to the inactive hero are gathered behind a glass pane - bicycle, books, telephone, so many "deactivated" and carefully cataloged objects, the number LL50IN0050 corresponding here for example to a paperback edition of The Misfortunes of Virtue. The tiny corridor also leads to a cafeteria-kitchen, to the smell of damp cleanliness of a tiny bathroom, then to a bedroom, called the room of total inactivity. There the spectator is invited to sit and watch over an empty bed, in an almost oppressive decor/reality of heavy and significant banality: photos of pin-ups pinned to the wall, a bare light bulb on the ceiling, candle wax spilled on the nightstand, slippers abandoned on the floor. Finally, we arrive at the room where Jean Osinski inactively spends every day, from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m., in front of a webcam placed on a computer, offering Internet users from all over the world a close-up of his neutral, expressionless, motionless face... According to the guide himself, it is embarrassment that most often wins out among the visitor, who reacts to this confrontation, shocking to say the least in its crudeness, by running away or bursting into laughter, for lack of any other behavior. Is this voyeurism, this plunge into the intimacy of a living individual, but literally inactive, and therefore useless in terms of work, of production? "No, since television itself uses our desire for "the real" throughout its programs, and we ask for more," argues Laurent Brunner. Simply, the boundary between reality and the theatrical object is completely porous and blurred here. And that Jean Ozinski's inactivity obviously refers to a zone of disturbing sensations, those of emptiness, abandonment, non-existence. Michel GENSON

[Article from the Républicain Lorrain, September 20, 2000]

Four waiting rooms have been installed in Forbach to invite the curious to cross the threshold of the Jean Osinski Museum. The publicity surrounding this unemployed man from Forbach, who has become the key to the exhibition curated by Jean-Michel Bruyère, is disturbing. On this point, the director has succeeded in his gamble.

It's 3 p.m. All we can make out of Jean Osinski is a wiry lock of hair. The rest is under the duvet. The room with its closed shutters lacks ventilation. Nothing is happening. Yes, a feigned sigh accompanies the lazy rotation of the hibernating man. As the brochure for the eponymous museum indicates, we are faced with the deactivated Jean Osinski. Because, and this is where we get to the how and why, Jean's lethargic inactivity is erected as an apology for "doing nothing." The unemployed man converted into a beast of burden or stage presence. The anti-hero in the spotlight.

The reason is contextual: Expo 2000 gives work the air of a grand adventure. The reconversion of the coalfield a more bitter taste. Jean Osinski doesn't care about any of this. In any case, he's out of the loop. No one asks his opinion. And if his room hadn't become the lair of the monster (to be shown), the man would only be (re)known to his mother and his bar colleagues.

The how is due to director Jean-Michel Bruyère: "Le Carreau came to me to make art based on a question. A fact: the absence of work. And its corollaries: the worry or discomfort that this generates in society." Jean Osinski served as the artist's guide for two weeks in the streets of Forbach. The time it took for the idea to germinate: why not make the unemployed person on the move the key to his masterpiece. The flesh and bones of the concept.

How to reactivate the inactive

This is the work: an atypical exhibition that we visit in two parts. The waiting room, for reflection. Jean Osinski's apartment, for reflection...

While the concept is dormant, we have time to actually think. No communication with the protagonist is planned in the staging. "Anyway, talking to Jean can't solve anything," sighs the director. Not many people around; only about fifty people have crossed the threshold of the Museum since June! "Experiencing the Museum scares people," the designer defends himself to justify the lack of interest.

The ambient inactivity is conducive to knee-jerk reactions. This, too, must be factored into the scenario. So, one wonders how a tall 27-year-old can shamelessly mimic indolence. Can failure—perceived as such, at least, by society—be highlighted when it becomes complacency? Would a good, reactive kick be enough to break the spell? Many have experienced unemployment, who have had the realistic feeling of being singled out and then simply ignored. The exhibition is only a freeze-frame: that of the background, of nothingness. Before losing oneself. Or regaining one's footing. On the walls of the hallway, Jean has drawn crosses, empty bottles, and black waves. But he left his favorite poster hanging: the Midnight Express one, with this maxim: "The important thing is not to despair." So? "I'm not a teacher," Jean-Michel Bruyère defends himself. "Only an artist"...

Paid to do nothing...

What a stroke of luck! A guy who's never done anything with his fingers. And who continues to do so, with a salary to boot. That's a good move! We haven't heard the last of it in Forbach. The poster campaign reading: "Jean Osinski does nothing" has given more than one café customer a case of shivers. And what about the three waiting rooms, reminiscent of bus stops, set in the familiar surroundings of the Market Square, Joan of Arc Square, and the Burghof site? Inside, shoppers will have nothing but the portrait of the impassive and amorphous Jean Osinski to sink their teeth into. Enough to haunt their nights.

A waiting room for what exactly? To wait is to do nothing. Until something happens. Attendere, in Latin, means to pay attention. Surely there's a message...

But there you have it. The work culture in Forbach doesn't tolerate inactivity. And we can't blame these workers, who, understandably, wonder how much an exhibition whose artistic object is a lazy person might cost. The town hall, when questioned about this, has no idea: "We don't have the figures," it replies. "You'd have to ask the head of Mission 2000, who is overseeing the project." The head, Laurent Brunner, has the figures but doesn't want to make them public: "Are we being asked how much a one-night show with Francis Huster might cost? No one has asked me...?"

Those who are reluctant will take out their calculators: Jean Osinski's rent, his salary, estimated at around 10,000 francs, that of the director and his assistant, the set designer, and all the technical staff. Not to mention the installation of the waiting rooms and the closing show scheduled for September 26 at the CAC theater... That's a pretty hefty sum for the beautiful eyes of an inactive person! "It's a budget comparable to a small project," Laurent Brunner defends himself.

Ultimately, it's true. Why such an outcry over one of the most modest projects in a vast program included in the framework of Expo 2000, whose budget costs at least 22 million francs? Why such a virulent reaction when art touches the Achilles heel of a changing society? Do we have to go to the waiting room to get the answer?

CK

[Article from the Républicain Lorrain, September 21, 2000]

Nothing is being done for Jean Osinski, Jean Osinski is doing nothing. This is the subtitle of the "Real Lost Time Interactivity Project" conceived by director Jean-Michel Bruyère as part of the exhibition "The Adventure of Work" in Petite-Rosselle.

Specifically, Jean Osinski, 27, from Forbach, is available to view live on the web every day from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m., and can be visited at the same time in his apartment. He embodies the many unemployed in a city that has been profoundly disrupted by the transition from one era to another, from industrial capitalism to the global speculative economy, forcing it to shut down the coal mining activities around which it was entirely structured.

The Web Chapel dedicated to the cult of his inactivity in Forbach, just like the site on the Net, and today a museum made up of personal objects, have abruptly tipped Jean Osinski from marginalization to social over-presence.

This art project, conceived from a social problem, naturally raises questions. Is it simply a perversion originating from the media, or does it fit logically into the history of art? Finally, can human misery be an artistic material?

For the designer Jean-Michel Bruyère, in any case, the case of Osinski, subjected to the injunction "Sit down, but stay standing!" is full of meaning, and leads to several observations: Inactivity is now the condition for maintaining Western supremacy and its wealth over the "globalized world." However, inactivity remains culturally and politically unintegrated and in no way considered the formidable value in which it actually consists. Work, although disappearing, is still the only thing that guarantees social status and, therefore, an identity for the individual.

[Article from the Républicain Lorrain, October 28, 2000]

Invited to hear the protagonists of the Jean Osinski Museum speak, nearly 100 people gathered Thursday evening at the CAC for the closing of a controversial project.

Please note that the Osinski Museum did not cost the city a single penny. It was Charles Stirnweiss, mayor of Forbach, who declared this on Thursday evening, at the closing of the project: "We were heavily criticized, saying that we were paying a guy to do nothing. They even threw money into the air, claiming that it was taxpayers' money being used for a lazy person! But Jean Osinski is 0 francs for the city." Explanation: for the entire Forbach 2000 project, the municipality released 500,000 francs, like Petite-Rosselle and the District. This entire sum, largely replenished by the State-funded Mission 2000, allowed all the events to take place, including the Osinski project. The amount of the envelope released for the latter is therefore part of a whole, inseparable according to the leaders of Forbach 2000 who refuse, in fact, to release a figure. Yes: 200,000 F for the four waiting rooms, located throughout the town. And if these facilities have sometimes served as accommodation for the homeless, as one person in the audience noted, "it wasn't Jean Osinski who invented drunkenness," Charles Stirnweiss quipped.

"I was serving an artistic project"

But is the heart of the debate basely pecuniary? No, cries the first elected official, defensively. "The Jean Osinski Museum was there to ask a taboo question, a question we tend to sidestep rather than confront. Can we imagine, in our region, people being sidelined?"

Everything was there to scratch the indifference of the average person. One couldn't walk past the four waiting rooms without asking questions. The impassive effigy of Jean Osinski, plastered on every street corner, faced every passerby. It was impossible to ignore that, there, in an apartment, a being was sinking into inactivity.

"I'm unemployed," protested a young woman from the audience. "Yet I don't feel inactive. I'm still, above all, a human being." "The role I played for five months was a little bit me and not quite me either," explained Jean Osinski. "I was serving an artistic project. The director Jean-Michel Bruyère asked me to lend my name, my face, and... to do nothing. I was surprised, but I played along. I was never manipulated, as some have said. I was happy to work with an artist, something that has interested me for a long time."

Osinski has loosened tongues

If the man dreamed of an artistic collaboration, he didn't expect the excessive media coverage. Television and national newspapers have taken up the matter since the end of August. So much so that in the bistros of Forbach or on the Place de Paris, people are talking more about the atypical project than about the Exhibition "The Adventure of Work." It's paradoxical but revealing. The Osinski Museum has loosened tongues, whether bitter or supportive. Everyone is talking about it! And talking about it is already considering the problem. Even if, as Laurent Brunner, director of Le Carreau, and Jean Osinski himself regret, many did not understand the approach. As for Jean-Michel Bruyère, he refused to answer our questions, believing that the press's treatment of his project had distorted its message. The Osinski slab seems to have created shockwaves. On this point, the director has hit the mark. Breaking indifference...

You had to be brave

Showing off is rewarding when you exhibit qualities recognized by all. Showing inactivity is the opposite of a society based on work. Above all, it exposes oneself to criticism, hostile reactions, and incomprehension. "You had to be brave to play Jean Osinski," Charles Stirnweiss emphasized.

The extra's friends, bothered by the label of lazybones stuck on Osinski's forehead, tried to dissociate the actor from the character: "Before he was called unemployed, he worked for three years as a stretcher-bearer in Lourdes, as a volunteer. And then, he was a presenter on Radio Jericho. Jean is not idle!" Their friend's performance made them uncomfortable: "When we went to see him at the Museum, we had the impression that he was dead. He was the visitor who brought a little life into the room."

And after that? "I'll find a job," he said. "But not temporary anymore..." The audience seemed satisfied with the answer. Jean Osinski finally fits the mold...

CK