Twenty-first-century political art: the Freee manifesto for art & twenty-first-century socialism

Freee produce manifestos and instigate group readings of manifestos for the action of agreeing and disagreeing. Participants are requested to read the given text and make their own minds up about what they subscribe to. When present at the group readings, the participants only read out the words on the manifesto they agree with. The reading then becomes a collective process in which individuals publically agree as well as disagree and declare their commitment to Freee’s manifesto. While the use of a specific text by Freee is a given, the text itself can be used and reworked by those who read it to formulate their own opinions just in the same way Freee have reworked it from the original. Freee acknowledge that ideas are developed collectively through the exchange of opinion. In this way Freee offer a text that they produced but one that becomes the basis for the action of critical thinking. The content of Freee’s manifesto are an explicit call for the transformation of art and society and Freee readily take and use existing historical manifestos, speeches and revolutionary documents, such as, The Manifesto for A New Public (2012) based on Vladimir Tatlin’s The Initiative Individual in the Creativity of the Collective (1919) and the UNOVIS, Program for the Academy at Vitebsk (1920); and the Freee Art Collective Manifesto for a Counter-Hegemonic art based on the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (1848). Freee here use Marta Harnecker’s ‘Twenty-First-Century Socialism’ as inspiration for Twenty-First-Century Political Art; the Freee Manisfesto for Art and Twenty First Century Socialism.