Author Description

This publication documents the exhibition "Free as Air and Water" at The Cooper Union.Additionally the publication contains two transcriptions of symposia held at The Cooper Union.Allora & Calzadilla, Amy Balkin, Robert Bordo, The Bruce High Quality Foundation, Ross Cisneros, Amy Franceschini and Free Soil, Andrea Geyer, Hans Haacke, Paul Ramirez Jonas, Runo Lagomarsino, Andrea Polli, Marjetica Potrc, Simon Starling, Temporary Services, Oscar Tuazon, Lidwien Van de Ven, with additional contributions by Doug Ashford and Yates Mckee.The exhibition takes Peter Cooper's quote that "Education should be Free as Air and Water" as a starting point. The exhibition addresses the spirit of this statement by recognizing the difference between then (1859) and now (2009). Today, air, water, land, an all are all subordinated to the logic of privatization impacting the environment in challenging ways. As the past few decades have witnessed how global power has systematically distributed the world's resources in unfair ways, concerns such as human rights become increasingly tied to issues involving land, space, and environmental justice.Free as Air and Water poses these questions for our contemporary moment linking a broad set of issues such as public access to resources, political ecology, and governmentality within a group exhibition that features a diverse array of artistic operations and tactics. Featuring projects that are rigorous and poetic in its conceptual processes, the exhibition provides a needed density when one discusses the role of art in relation to ecology.