Back to the Present: 50 Years of Free Expression with Franklin Furnace New York Performances

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.