National Museum of Gallery Visitors and Museum Workers

A new manifesto 'National Museum of Gallery Visitors and Museum Workers' was developed for the summer programme at Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art. The work was commissioned to accompany the 'Wilderness Way' exhibition that takes as its departure point Margaret Thatcher’s visit to Teesside in 1987 to reflect on a decade that transformed the way we live. The manifesto operates as mini-dictionarium which describes key phrases that connect art and politics. The manifesto choir was performed collectively at Mima during teh exhibition. The manifesto choir is designed as a mechanism for the action of agreeing or disagreeing. Participants are requested to read the given text and make their own minds up about what part of it they subscribe to. When present at the group reading, the participants only read out the words of the manifesto they agree with

Open letter to the Engage International Conference, Liverpool 2016

Open Letter addressing the issues the conference addressed: Art & Activism. Produced new social kiosk (artwork). The Engage International Conference 2016 explored how issues of access and activism impact on gallery and visual arts approaches to education and outreach. Freee invited delegates to join them in a spoken choir 1. Underline every sentence you agree with in the Open Letter 2. Bring the pamphlet to Freee's public kiosk and read out loud those sections you have under-lined

To Hell with Herbert Read

Freee write manifestos by taking a pencil (or a laptop) to an historical text, usually belonging to the entwined traditions of the avant-garde and political activism. Sometimes, as Tristan Tzara advised, we choose the text according to its length, while other times, such as in this instance, we select the text according to the conditions of the invitation that triggered the writing of the manifesto. Our manifesto ‘To Hell with Herbert Read’ was written originally as a contribution to a conference held in Manchester that took its title from Herbert Read’s essay ‘To Hell with Culture’ (1941)

Political Art Today: Twice Political

New artwork by Freee art collective specifically commissioned for the Critical Machines exhibition. The slogan is taken from the writing of Walter Benjamin. The text is made into a 'collective' sandwich board which is 'carried' by three people. The text and the people move about in the public realm both empowered (together they agree) and restricted (physically) by their collectivism

Economists are wrong!: the Warsaw Manifesto 2011

Is art an economic activity? Should art be independent of economic pressures? Is the value of art to be determined separately from its value as a commodity? can we apply the Marxist labour theory of value to art? To consider the question of value in art from a Marxist perspective is, on the face of it, to invoke two kinds of philistinism. Marx tells us that value is twofold with use-value and exchange value forming a contradictory unity of value. There is no third kind of value. So, if art is supposed to be useless and priceless, how can a Marxist engage seriously with art and with only use-value and exchange value as tools? This work was originally published in Polish as an outcome of the international conference The Labour of the Multitude? The Political Economy of Social Creativity held in Warsaw, 20-22 of October 2011. Organisers of the conference were: Free/Slow University of Warsaw, Bęc Zmiana Foundation, University of Warsaw, Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland

Freee kiosk #2: the new text art (of) and making (books) a difference

Introduction to the new Freee manifesto - The New Text Art (of) and Making (Books) a Difference by Ulises Carrión Freee An introduction to a manifesto is an opportunity to give an account of oneself. One of the most conspicuous and interesting aspects of any manifesto, in fact, is that it almost always seems to demand or require some kind of defence or account. Why is the manifesto needed? Why now? Whose manifesto is it? What is it against? What is it for? Why a manifesto rather than a poem or a joke? However, unlike in the formats assumed by Judith Butler for ‘giving an account of oneself’, in which the individual faces a demand from a figure of authority, the call to give an account of oneself in the introduction to a manifesto is a declaration to the public. Insofar as every manifesto is a public declaration, every manifesto also calls forth the question: who is the public of this manifesto? Manifestos are not written by the masses but usually by a very small number of people, but they are written in the hope of capturing the anger and dissatisfaction shared by great numbers of people. The public of the manifesto does not always exist prior to its publication, however, since the purpose of the manifesto is to provide a focal point for the construction of a new social body, a new public, a new class, a new social movement. Manifestos contain not individual likes and dislikes; the aim of the manifesto is to identify collective positions and collective actions. A manifesto, from mid 17th century Italian (from manifestare, from Latin) meaning to ‘make public’ (from manifestus ‘obvious’) it is not the act of going to market with your private opinions or personal taste, it is not a disclosing to others what you have done by and for yourself, it is public in a more fundamental sense than this. The manifesto cannot but be public; even before it is published, the manifesto belongs to the public, is formed by the public-to-be, and is addressed to the public (not to readers). That is to say, like a slogan or a political chant at a march, it survives only by being utilized by others. Manifestos and slogans are acts of montage because they cut through the social body in so far as they are ‘carried’ by people and they are continually pasted into other situations. Unlike photomontage, which cuts and pastes images, manifestos and slogans perform what Freee call a real montage of people and spaces. Real montage is a political act of displacement, cutting through reality and reordering the world. Freee use the genre of the manifesto, like the genre of the slogan, to connect contemporary art after the social turn with a much longer and deeper tradition of collective action and common culture. Manifestos by Freee are examples of text art but they are also a means by which to reunite text with action, and language with politics. Rather than text art being subject to a giddy range of interpretations, Freee’s manifestos ask the participant (of a spoken choir reading) or the reader (of a manifesto published in a book) to agree or disagree with the statements made in the manifesto. This is why each manifesto is prefaced with guidance on how it is to be used: ‘In order to participate you need to print out the pdf of Freee’s new manifesto and underline every sentence that you agree with. Bring the manifesto with you to the spoken choir event and read out only those sections of the manifesto that you have underlined.’ A manifesto, therefore, does not give an account of oneself, but gives an account of the social and political situation of the time. It is not a description, though: it makes declarations, proclamations, pronouncements, announcements and it sets forward a programme. Manifestos are not performative language in the classic sense: it is not the words themselves that effect change. Manifestos call for action. Language is essential to this transformative activity but it is not the action itself and cannot take its place. Manifestos light the fire but the bodies of the politically engaged are its social agents. In one sense, manifestos do nothing at least not by themselves, but in another sense - in which what we say is tied to what we do - manifestos are essential to the collective action of social change

The impossible participant

The chapter critiques the rise of participation in art since the 1990s – a development that sees artists and curators searching continually for new and increased levels of audience inclusion. While there has been much discussion about what might be gained by participating in an artwork, we ask what might be lost by this act. We also question the extent to which participation is a useful social or aesthetic strategy in circumstances where it remains bound by the institutional structures of the artworld. For this reason, our work is an attempt to transform the broader ‘apparatus of art’ and to create works in which the roles assigned to individuals and groups remain fluid and subject to continuous negotiation. As a means of an attempt at resisting absorption into the institutional structures of the artworld, we privilege a form of participation that remains immanent in the work, but that never crystallizes into a single or definable role. Kathryn Brown , art historian and editor of Interactive Contemporary Art, says, ‘It is, perhaps, a fitting end to the discussions of the present volume that the most interesting and valuable form of participation envisaged by Freee is one that must remain impossible.

A new species of hippopotamine (Cetartiodactyla, Hippopotamidae) from the late Miocene Baynunah Formation, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

The discovery of new hippopotamid material from the late Miocene Baynunah Formation (Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates) has prompted the revision of the existing material of this as yet unnamed fossil taxon. The Baynunah hippopotamid appears to be distinct from all other contemporary and later species in having a relatively more elongate symphysis, a feature similar to the earlier (and more primitive) Kenyapotamus. Yet, the Baynunah hippopotamid presents a dentition typical of the Hippopotaminae. It is therefore a distinct species attributed to the later subfamily, described and named in this contribution. This species provides further evidence for a ca. 8 Ma evolutionary event (termed “Hippopotamine Event”) that initiated the spread and ecological significance of the Hippopotaminae into wet habitats across Africa and Eurasia. The morphological affinities of the new species from Abu Dhabi suggest that the Arabian Peninsula was not a dispersal route from Africa toward southern Asia for the Hippopotamidae at ca. 7.5 Ma to 6.5 Ma

Learning from difference and similarity: identities and relational reflexive learning

Within organizations there is reciprocal interplay between identity construction and learning. Processes of learning are enabled and constrained by identity practices; concomitantly, the possibilities for learning are shaped by the identity positions available to individuals. There is a dynamic between the impositions of organizations and people’s freedom to shape their identities and learning plays a crucial role in this. Our purpose in this special issue is to contribute to the understanding of the intersection of identity work and learning as a response to experiences of being different. Experiences of difference include moving into a new role, encountering a disjuncture with others while in a role or a difference in broader life which is reacted to as if it were a problem in an organizational setting. Being different produces a variety of challenges and the papers in this special issue trace how people cope with vulnerabilities, develop resilience and often collaborate in their learning. We focus on how people reflect on their own identity and learn and how, by learning together with people who have similar experiences, micro-communities can support, develop and enhance their insight and identity-positions