WORDS (& Pickers)

The artwork and event WORDS (& Pickers) was supported by Milton Keynes Gallery (MKG). The work was part of a month-long exhibition at MKG’ s project space. The exhibition was open from 6 - 28 October 2017. WORDS (& Pickers) was a work that focused on the slogan writing and choosing process which is central to our practice. We devise ways to write slogans with others in order to exchange opinions and discuss contemporary political issues. In this way we aim to explore the potential of art as opinion formation. These conversations and impromptu workshops are directed at the passer-by so they are directed at the individual in this way we temporarily cut out of the community and paste them into new configurations, rearranged through processes of splitting and joining (disagreeing and agreeing) and then reassembled in a new totality through acts of collective publishing. In this artwork passers-by were asked to select and wear (embody and publish) the badge that they most agreed with. We collected new versions of our slogans form the public and re-published them throughout the exhibition

Art and the Politics of Eliminating Handicraft

This essay charts the outlines of the historical transition from the artisanal workshop to the artist’s studio and the transition from the artisan to the artist, not through the transition from patronage to the art market but through an analysis of the transfor-mation of labour’s social division of labour. The essay reassesses the discourses on the artist as genius and the artist as worker through a reinterpretation of the elevation of the Fine Arts above handicraft. This sheds new light, also, on the discourse of de-skilling in art. This essay argues that the transition from the artisan to the artist is an effect of the social division of labour in which the knowledge, skills and privileges of the master artisan are distributed among a set of specialists

The Carracci Institute Year Book

Book section in book mapping Freee art collective recent practice. Editorial section and interview with Charles Esche, Director Van museum , Eindhoven, N

Neither Capitalist Nor Wage-Labourer: An Economic Examination of the Exceptionalism of Artistic Production vis-à-vis the Capitalist Mode of Production

This PhD by Publication is a contribution to art and art theory through the book Art and Value in the context of the practice of the Freee art collective. This thesis situates Art and Value within contemporary art practices and debates. Art and Value addresses itself directly to misrecognitions of the relationship between art and capitalism within the humanities and social sciences. The conviction that art was a commercial activity had penetrated the discourses of contemporary art in the UK, Western Europe and North America since the 1960s and therefore constituted, in part, the milieu in and against which Freee has operated since 2004. The historical study of the emergence of the theory of art’s economic exceptionalism in classical political economy gives an alternative historical framework in which to situate the discussion of art’s relationship to capitalism. The rationale for my economic analysis of art – comprising separate critiques of the economics of art in classical, neoclassical, welfare and Marxist economics – is to reset the coordinates for thinking politically about art’s relationship to capitalism. Art and Value does not claim to cover every aspect of art’s encounter with capitalism, which would require sociological, semiotic, psychoanalytic, geographical, philosophical and historical inquiries, at the very least, but establishes the economic groundwork for the interdisciplinary study of art’s relationship to capitalism. Economic analysis provides this ground; not because economics is the master discipline of the social sciences, but because the question of art’s relationship to capitalism must be understood, first and foremost, by understanding what capitalism is and how the production of art has or has not been incorporated into the capitalist mode of production

Social Kiosk: The New Text Art of and Making Books a Difference by Ulises Carrión Freee

The artwork Social Kiosk: The New Text Art of and Making Books a Difference by Ulises Carrión Freee was commissioned by RADAR Arts for ‘For & Against: Art, Politics and the Pamphlet’. The event took place on 26 & 27 May 2017 in Loughborough, UK. Social Kiosk and The New Text Art of and Making Books a Difference by Ulises Carrión Freee is a designed as a temporary public locus in which to disseminate badges and manifestos. The artwork is part-public structure, part-kiosk and part-publishing laboratory. The research focus in this project was on the role of the manifesto. Therefore, the project enabled us to experiment with how the manifesto operates beyond constative utterance, aiming to shift language and statement towards performative utterances. The aim is to use language and action in an artwork; the result is that the work does not only describe a given reality, but attempts to also changes the social reality that the words are describing. A manifesto, 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

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

Expiratory flow limitation in a cohort of highly symptomatic COPD patients

The question addressed by the study Small airway collapse during expiration, known as expiratory flow limitation (EFL), can be detected using oscillometry and is associated with worse clinical outcomes in COPD. This study investigated the prevalence of EFL in a cohort of highly symptomatic patients, evaluated clinical and lung function characteristics of patients with EFL and studied the repeatability of EFL over 6 months. Materials/patients and methods 70 patients were recruited. Clinical characteristics and lung function metrics were collected at baseline and 6 months. Impulse oscillometry was used to detect the presence of EFL. Patients were defined as EFLHigh (change in reactance measured at 5 Hz (ΔX5) ≥0.28 kPa·L−1·s−1); EFLIntermediate (ΔX5 0.1–0.27 kPa·L−1·s−1) and EFLNone (ΔX5 <0.1 kPa·L−1·s−1). Results EFLHigh was present in 47.8% of patients at baseline. ΔX5 showed excellent repeatability over 6 months (ρ=0.78, p<0.0001, intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) 0.88), with the best repeatability observed in EFLNone and EFLHigh patients (ICC 0.77 and 0.65, respectively). Compared to EFLNone patients, EFLHigh had a higher body mass index, worse health-related quality of life and increased peripheral airway resistance. EFLIntermediate was more variable over time with less severe physiological impairment. Answer to the question Overall, these data indicate that EFLHigh is a common, and relatively stable, component of disease pathophysiology in highly symptomatic COPD patients. EFLHigh was also associated with worse quality of life and obesity

In the Family way: an exploration of family business resilience

Purpose: The article is to explore the concept of resilience set within a family business context and considers how familiness and the nature of noneconomic factors, such as relationship dynamics influence performance. The work provides new insights into the nature and impact of familiness as a mediating device, uncovering the potential for reframing resilience theory and practice. Methodology: The article draws on a review of the extant literature in the areas of resilience and familiness as a means of developing a deeper understanding of the social-ecological system of the family firm. Findings: The work reveals family business as a complex interrelationship between complimentary social-ecological systems. It highlights the complexity of family business and the challenges of the relational nature of familiness and how this presents additional layers of complexity in the decision-making process and implementation. Limitations: The article draws on literature that is dominated by western culture and may partially or not at all reflect the issues associated with organisational resilience in family firms with such backgrounds and their culturally bound social-ecological systems. Originality: The article seeks to fill a knowledge gap by exploring the key elements of organisational resilience in the context of familiness. The work calls for further research into the nature of familiness connections mediating the nature of family relational dynamics. It further provides a framework indicating how these elements can shape and subvert day-to-day management events, raising implications for theory and practice and calls for deeper empirical research to be undertaken. Keywords: resilience, familiness, small and medium sized enterprises, sustainability, social-ecological systems, family business

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)