PR image: FREE TEXTS
"FREE TEXTS: An Open Source Reading Room," 2012.
detail view at ZERO1 Art and Technology Biennial, San Jose, CA.
Image courtesy of the artist and Catharine Clark Gallery.
FREE TEXTS is an ongoing project that offers to the public PDF links to download books, essays, and journals curated around themes of social justice, activism, open source culture, copyright, empire, capitalism, feminism, and art. Visitors are invited to pull tabs from a wall of flyers that advertise URLs to download their own copy of text, many of which have been illegally uploaded by anonymous file sharers around the world.
A cumulative work, the collection grows every time it is shown by requiring the exhibition curator to not only choose from the existing titles, but to literally contribute a selection into the master copy of PDF files. This additive process seeks to “pay forward” the knowledge-base of the distinct concerns and curatorial themes of each exhibition. In this way, each show has the ability to use FREE TEXTS as a research and reference site for the larger exhibition it is embedded in. There is no single repository that holds these digital files as they are uploaded to servers around the world, creating a dispersed and diffuse network that has the ability to evade copyright takedown notices.
Originally conceived in 2012 as part of a commission for the Zero1 Biennial in San Jose, California, FREE TEXTS has traveled to Moscow, Bangkok, Romania, Poland, Germany, Singapore, Spain, and dozens of venues in the United States, picking up new titles along the way. Currently there are 280+ PDFs in the collection.
stephaniesyjuco.com/projects/free-texts-an-open-source-re...
PR image: FREE TEXTS
"FREE TEXTS: An Open Source Reading Room," 2012.
detail view at ZERO1 Art and Technology Biennial, San Jose, CA.
Image courtesy of the artist and Catharine Clark Gallery.
FREE TEXTS is an ongoing project that offers to the public PDF links to download books, essays, and journals curated around themes of social justice, activism, open source culture, copyright, empire, capitalism, feminism, and art. Visitors are invited to pull tabs from a wall of flyers that advertise URLs to download their own copy of text, many of which have been illegally uploaded by anonymous file sharers around the world.
A cumulative work, the collection grows every time it is shown by requiring the exhibition curator to not only choose from the existing titles, but to literally contribute a selection into the master copy of PDF files. This additive process seeks to “pay forward” the knowledge-base of the distinct concerns and curatorial themes of each exhibition. In this way, each show has the ability to use FREE TEXTS as a research and reference site for the larger exhibition it is embedded in. There is no single repository that holds these digital files as they are uploaded to servers around the world, creating a dispersed and diffuse network that has the ability to evade copyright takedown notices.
Originally conceived in 2012 as part of a commission for the Zero1 Biennial in San Jose, California, FREE TEXTS has traveled to Moscow, Bangkok, Romania, Poland, Germany, Singapore, Spain, and dozens of venues in the United States, picking up new titles along the way. Currently there are 280+ PDFs in the collection.
stephaniesyjuco.com/projects/free-texts-an-open-source-re...