Lotte Van Den Audenaeren/ Becca Albee/ Bureau d’Etudes/ Shinsuke Aso/ Daniel Bejar/ Cody Castro/ Carrie Dashow/ Detext/ Eric Doeringer/ Don Edler/ Emcee CM/ Harrell Fletcher/ Symrin Gill/ Felix Gonzales-Torres/ Jenny Holzer/ the KLF/ Vikenti Komitsi/ Keith Haring/ Jenny Holzer/ Enzo Mari/ Bruce Nauman/ Steve Lambert/ YesMen/ Cesare Pietroiusti/ Yoko Ono/ Daniel Seiple/ Elizabeth Smolarz/ Solarring.org/ Superflex/ Radek Szlaga and Honza Zamojski/ Elaine Tin Nyo/ Julie Torres/ Brad Troemel/ Jirí Thýn/ Patrick Tuttofuoco/ Lawrence Weiner and others
...Is This Free? xCurated by Marco Antonini Jul .6 / Sept. 22, 2012 Within certain limits gift wealth may be rationalized and market wealth may be eroticized (...) the problem is not “can gift and commodity coexist?”, but “to what degree may one draw from the other without destroying it?” Lewis Hyde, The Gift. Can Art really be Free? The answer to this question, the opening line in a document shared with all those who generously contributed to this exhibition and to the accompanying book that NURTUREart published, was often a positive “Yes”; nonetheless, the diversity of trajectories followed by each reply (and the wealth of opinions, ideas and conversations they spanned) were revealing of the many ways in which gifts and all things “Free,” are conceived and perceived. In English, the word “Free” is per-se double-sided, suggesting availability and gratuity while also evoking freedom, the state of being free, whether on an existential level or as in something or someone liberated from restric-
tive bonds. As Ted Purves has remarked, the study of gift economies (pioneered by Marcel Mauss’ 1923 Essai Sur le Don and expanded by Lewis Hyde’s The Gift:
Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property, in 1983) teaches us that gifts are neither free, nor the product of generosity. Whoever has received something and then, consciously or subconsciously felt obliged to reciprocate knows that gifts are in fact offers, they produce bonds; in Purves’ words, they are “a token through which social relationships are forged, managed and preserved.” Taking cues from Mauss, Hyde, Purves