All images Party for Freedom, 2013, by Oreet Ashery. An Artangel commission.
OREET ASHERY Party for Freedom Various London venues 1st May – 22nd June 2013 www.artangel.org.uk/projects/2013/party_for_freedom
Somewhere between a travelling cinema and theatre troupe, a kiss-a-gram and a takeaway delivery service, London-based artist Oreet Ashery’s Party for Freedom is an itinerant work that combines live performance with moving-image and an original album soundtrack. An invitation for self-organised gatherings to host and experience the work – anywhere from a sitting room and work place to public spaces and venues – it will also appear at venues across London including The Swedenborg Society in Bloomsbury, Millbank Media Centre at Millbank Tower and Organiclea, a workers cooperative on the edge of the Lea Valley.
Party for Freedom: Party for Hire trailer (contains nudity) from Artangel on Vimeo.
Party for Freedom is loosely based on Vladimir Mayakovsky’s 1921 play Mystery-Bouffe, telling the story of the Clean and the Unclean. It explores performances of liberation and the exposure of the political ideas around nakedness; and responds to the changing landscape of Dutch politics following the assassinations of controversial politician Pim Fortuyn in 2002 and film director Theo van Gogh in 2004, and the ensuing popularity of Geert Wilders, the Dutch politician and leader of the far-right Partij Voor de Vrijheid [Party for Freedom].
Including newly commissioned punk, experimental and contemporary classical music by Finnish composer Timo-Juhani Kyllönen, all-girl post-punk band Woolf and London-based musician Morgan Quaintance, the Party for Freedom moving-image work features an irreverent array of characters and scenarios, developed through workshops and filmed in the lush setting of a 13th-century church in the English countryside. Questioning the currencies of perceived Western freedom, the work draws on trash aesthetics, leftist sentiments grounded in the 1960s and 1970s avant-garde, the hippy movement and far-right populist claims positing Islam and immigration as a threat.
Party for Freedom will appear at four ticketed public London events exploring themes of the work. To launch the project there will be a live concert of the moving-image work with the original album soundtrack on May 1 at Millbank Media Centre, Millbank Tower. Members of the public wishing to invite the Party to their venue should visit artangel.org.uk for instructions. A dedicated Party Line Operator will then call to discuss the request.
People vs Freedom ticketed events: Tickets available for all events from artangel.org.uk
Launch event: Wednesday 1 May 7.30pm – 10pm
People vs Freedom on live music
Millbank Media Centre, Millbank Tower, London, SW1P 4QP
A celebration of Party for Freedom with a full-length screening of the moving-image work and the soundtrack performed live by Woolf, Timo-Juhani Kyllönen and Morgan Quaintance.
Tickets: £12/£9 concessions (must be booked in advance)
Thursday 23 May 7.30 – 9pm
People vs Freedom on land, animals and women
The Swedenborg Society, 20 Bloomsbury Way, London, WC1A 2TH
With celebrated feminist writer, teacher and activist Silvia Federici.
Tickets: £9/£7 concessions (must be booked in advance)
Sunday 16 June 11am – 4.30pm
Organiclea, Hawkwood Community plant nursery, 115 Hawkwood Crescent, Chingford, E4 7UH
People vs Freedom on being offensive, UK visas, immigration profiteering and state control
With Shaista Aziz, Manick Govinda, Kenan Malik and Corporate Watch.
Tickets: £9/£6 concessions (must be booked in advance)
Thursday 20 June 7 – 9pm
People Vs Freedom in conversation
Friends House, 173 Euston Road, London, NW1 2BJ
Oreet Ashery in conversation with Tirdad Zolghadr, chaired by T.J. Demos.
Tickets: £9/£7 concessions (must be booked in advance)
OREET ASHERY
Oreet Ashery is a London-based visual artist, working in performance, still and moving image, objects and writing, mainly in the context of post-identity and minority discourses, and continuously explores the participatory nature of events, situations and public platforms. Ashery is interested in the body and everyday life, presently around performances of western liberation; current and historical trajectories of political nakedness under the meshing of changing ideologies. Ashery explores eccentric performances, actions and speeches of fictional and real public figures in the realms of populist and trashy mediascapes, currently in relation to neo-orientalism and imagined nationhood. Ashery exhibits, performs, intervenes and screens her work extensively in an international context, public spaces have included the Liverpool Biennial, Venice Biennial, ZKM, Tate Modern, Brooklyn Museum, Pompidou Centre, Freud Museum and the National Review of Live Art. Context-responsive locations have included curators’ bedrooms in various cities, a men only religious celebration, Qualandia checkpoint, and a derelict fishermen’s hut. Ashery is represented by the Other Gallery in Shanghai and Beijing. Ashery’s work has been discussed in numerous art, academic and cultural publications in many languages. She has published Dancing with Men: Interactive Performances, Interactions and Other Artworks (Live Art Development Agency, 2009), and The Novel of Nonel and Vovel, a collaborative graphic novel with Larissa Sansour (Charta, 2009), an expanded project including live events, solo exhibitions and residencies. Ashery is an honorary research fellow in the drama department at Queen Mary University London, and a lecturer in the art department in Goldsmiths.
ARTANGEL commissions and produces exceptional projects by outstanding contemporary artists. Over the past two decades, Artangel projects have materialised in a range of different sites and situations and in countless forms of media, from film and video to sculpture and sound installations. Artangel has generated some of the most talked-about, contentious and acclaimed art of recent times, including work by Francis Alÿs, Clio Barnard, Matthew Barney, Jeremy Deller, Brian Eno, Douglas Gordon, Roger Hiorns, Michael Landy, Susan Philipsz, Gregor Schneider, Rachel Whiteread and Robert Wilson.
Artangel and Oreet Ashery would like to thank Millbank Media Centre, Millbank Tower; the London College of Communication; Home Live Art; Kone Foundation; Performance Matters and the Arts and Humanities Research Council for their generous support of Party for Freedom.
