This handbook traces ten years of activity of Glitch and IKHÉA©SERVICES—two collaborative projects initiated by artist Jean-Baptiste Farkas.
Jean-Baptiste Farkas defines himself as an artist who provides services.
Under the name IKHÉA©SERVICES he creates works which are not art objects, but rather protocols and instructions inviting us (the user) to act in unexpected ways within society. His book, On Words, In Deeds, gathers these directives. The deviant actions concocted by IKHÉA©SERVICES set up situations which give an advantage to nuisance. Entrenched conventions with which we too easily comply are dug up and defied. True challenges await the reader who, in activating these services, may find themselves in a sticky yet enlightening situation.
Glitch is an extension of IKHÉA©SERVICES dedicated to negativity, acting as a means to communicate an aversion to unbridled productivism.
Both IKHÉA©SERVICES and Glitch are simultaneously critical, playful and damning (if not to say downright mean at times) and despite their no-holds-barred approach don't simply glorify waste or expense. Rather, their aim is to kindle a passion for destruction and subtraction, setting in motion a shift from "Art with a capital A" to an art delivered with a hail of blows.
Ghislain Mollet-Viéville
Jean-Baptiste Farkas provides services where ordinarily it would be expected an artwork from an artist. His collaborative projects are named: IKHÉA©SERVICES (1998), Glitch, Beaucoup plus de moins! (2002) and PRACTICES IN REMOVE (2015). According to him: the art object is a burden, it has become inessential; in the present context, subtraction must be considered a major gesture; our opinion of authorship, based upon the idea that there is one single author behind each work of art, is a delusion, a convenient shortcut that has to be rethought; the exhibition is an outdated stylistic device that needs to be abandoned in favour of other approaches, such as manoeuvre or operations.
