Freedom

Description:

For his performance-installation Freedom, Peter Conlin used the gallery space in an improvisational way to work, create installation elements, and stage encounters and events. Conlin set up several zones as conceptual bases (art-life collaboration, quotes of liberation, documentation of past work), with corresponding materials, scenarios, and related ideas. 

The project looked at the ties between hedonism and liberation, and challenged the ideas of value and production inspired by Robert Filliou. At the heart of this show was an ambivalence around the enduring idea that true pleasure leads to freedom—for Conlin it’s just too good to pass up, and yet it seems overwhelmed by its proximity to consumerism.

Visitors could view the various elements as an installation with a performative element, or interact with Conlin and participate in this open-ended, process-based experience. The idea was to reconsider and renew utopic impulses, and the difficulty to imagine alternatives to the current social and economic order.

An opening took place on Oct 24, 2003.