Bureau d'études
Antrepo No.3

Established in 1998, Paris. Live in Paris.

Bureau d'études is a media collective founded in 1998 by the artist duo Léonore Bonaccini and Xavier Fourt. Using complex graphic tables conceived for the Internet, they map various hidden global structures of finance and world governance, formalising patterns and connections using scientific and informational accuracy.
The excess of information in contemporary Western democratic societies tends to erase the possibility of grasping the whole or cutting to the core of things. Through their complex mapping projects, Bureau d'études are exploring and exposing parallels and systemic affiliations amongst different systems of oppression and manipulation, be it in the media, science, military or industrial complexes, and often in unexpected but telling conglomerates comprising all of these. Their maps become visualisations of otherwise scattered and elusive information, and help to put the bits and pieces together in a coherent picture of power struggles and influences that shape everyday reality. Administration of Terror (2009) provides the analysis and a map tracing the interconnectedness of 'stay behind' secret armies and their key operations throughout the world since the 1950s. The map provides a sobering account of alliances created by different research, diplomatic, intelligence, and military structures and the impact that the 'strategy of tension' created by them has on world governance.