Name:

Felipe Cidade

 Title of Project/Work:

Taste of Freedom

Taste of Freedom.  Image courtesy of Felipe Cidade.

What does “FREE” mean to you?

It is very difficult to talk about what “FREE” mean, or what is “FREEDOM” because has many variables. It is not a concrete answer, but it is an answer with some observations and with new questions about it.

Two of those multiple variables I think it better approach what I think about what “FREE” means to me. First a very popular concept of what “FREE” means: “my freedom ends when I reach the other one freedom”. The problem with that theory, it is when you create conscience about anything – in this case the other one – you are no longer being free, you are imposing to yourself new personal questions about, ethics, respects, morals and enter in a psychological state of “do, or do not”, that 50/50% limits the liberty of doing whatever you want independently of will result. In other words, the notion of conscience are what make us less free up to everything around us.

The second variable of what may change what mean “FREE”. Are the notion that everything I do, someone know about it – specially sending this to the land of NSA – having the conscience of everything I have may be hacked, my cellphone can be used as microphone, they even can track everyone using the GPS system in our cellphones. So, using that logic, without privacy of doing something without anyone know about it, lead me to question it – If someone will know about whatever I will do, can I do everything? The fact of losing individual privacy could not be a way of generating a new kind of freedom, multiple, open and without secrets in response to the imposition the individual privacy, the personal individuality concept of “FREE” or “FREEDOM” can metamorphose to a multiple-personal concept of “FREE” or “FREEDOM”?

I believe “FREE” mean something around those variables, something closer to know and being OK to yourself and do not have your personal ideals manipulated by culture, religion, politics, or ethnicity.

Why is 14th Street a compelling site for creative response?

14^th Street are a historic street, leaving aside the economic and social status of the street, and like to think more in the political and social activism historic in that street, for example, the Union Square, a place marked energy for political demonstrations, since 1861 this place has that energy. Believing art today has the only purpose to question topic about politics, anthropological concepts, social behavior, moral, and ethics. Working in a place with that energy and history is very important for a creativity response

What reactions are you hoping to draw from the public?

To be very honest, I don’t expect any kind of reaction. Some people may like the work, enjoy the food I will serve, or not. What I am hoping to draw from the people, it is what they will think and react to the ideas what my work and me are proposing to them. If they start to think about what may be “FREE” or “FREEDOM”, I already will be very happy.