Back to the Present: 50 Years of Free Expression with Franklin Furnace
About This Event
Back to the Present: 50 Years of Free Expression, presented at ISSUE Project Room, is a performance program developed in collaboration with longtime alternative arts space Franklin Furnace. It draws on archival practices, artist-led publishing, and the history of downtown performance to treat the stage as a site for public record, favoring documentation and context over spectacle.
About Back to the Present: 50 Years of Free Expression with Franklin Furnace
At ISSUE Project Room, *Back to the Present: 50 Years of Free Expression with Franklin Furnace* traces the New York organization’s long record of supporting performance, artists’ books, and other work that has often struggled to find institutional shelter. The program links archival materials to live presentation, treating the room as a site where documentation and action share the same stakes. In a city where downtown spaces routinely disappear and re-form, Franklin Furnace reads as a durable counter-public. One clear implication is that “free expression” here is less a slogan than a practice maintained through infrastructure.
About the Artists
Back to the Present: 50 Years of Free Expression
Back to the Present: 50 Years of Free Expression is a performance program presented in New York City at ISSUE Project Room, developed in collaboration with the longstanding alternative arts space Franklin Furnace.
Franklin Furnace
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