Brian Reffin Smith (b. 1946) is a conceptual artist who is fond of using computers and generalized derision. Explorer of Zombie art. He taught art and digital design at the Royal College of arts 1979-1984 and at the Université de Paris 1, as well as the École Nationale Supérieur d'Art of Bourges. He lives in Berlin and Paris. Serves as Regent in the Collège de ’Pataphysique.
Notes: “Child’s Wheelchair”: Meccano, box 1, model number 23; constructed by adapting the directions for use by way of a Markov chain.
Zombie Art: As movements such as OuLiPo in literature and OuPeinPo and Systems Art in the visual arts have demonstrated, it can be immensely liberating to have to follow rules or be bound by constraints. But these processes have not been taken far enough. The ultimate constraint is that one manifests no qualities at all, one accepts that one is, or tries to become “at least has a sort of Taoist faith in the possibility of imagining being” a Zombie. At a stroke, problems of content are swept aside or put on hold, as pure form and beyond that, the intention to have no intention, are made manifest. And how does one « manifest » pure form and an absence of content ? It's simple — Zombies do it all the time.