Information Wants to be Free

About

Information Wants to be Free is a statement, a provocation and an invitation for discussion taking as its point of departure the abundance of free magazines available in London's public sphere. In the exhibition, The London Paper, Metro and London Lite are allowed to serve as a basis for a larger exploration of free information; its mode of entering consciousness and becoming a seemingly transparent backdrop to the everyday.

Read by millions of commuters each day, the easily accessible, insistently fragmented and free of charge magazines open up for questions about the kinds of messages allowed in the public sphere and the modes in which they work within this space. The title does in this sense have a dual meaning, beyond referring to 'free' as in gratis information it also suggests a level of desire and agency in play in information flows. Beyond being a passive entity to be consumed, information is here treated as something considerably more dynamic and endlessly more difficult to define.

This exploration is an inherently site-specific one as the very base of the project, Platform One Gallery, is located on the Wandsworth Common station. Each working day commuters take their trains from platform 1 and each day new magazines are handed out, read, glanced at over another's shoulder, passed on and finally discarded. Even if the gallery serves as the main site, the six newly commissioned works exist as much as satellites around London as they do in the space itself.

Curated by Fatima Hellberg

Sponsored by Chapter 8. For further information contact information@wantstobefree.co.uk