Experimental Jetset Online Archive Lost Formats Links News About this site Contact	The Free Library Semiotic Liberation Army page 4 of 5				04. For the second edition of The Free Library, taking place at Space 1026 in Philadelphia during the summer of 2005, we designed a banner that looked almost exactly like the original SLA banner. There was one difference: instead of the original symbol, a snake with one tail and seven heads, our banner showed a snake with one head and seven tails. A subtle change. We called this piece 'Semiotic Liberation Army'. In a way, the whole idea of reversing the symbol had to do with our own fuzzy brand of dialectical reasoning: we were thinking along the lines of 'freeing' the symbol by confronting it with its opposite. Hence the title. (A few weeks after we designed the banner, we were watching this really interesting BBC documentary about the Rokeby Venus, a painting from 1647 by Velazquez, showing Venus seen from the backside, in an interior setting. In this documentary it was mentioned that this painting was actually meant as a 'counterpiece' for a much earlier work, by another painter, showing Venus from the frontside, in an exterior setting. So in a way, this was exactly the word we were looking for to describe our banner: a 'counterpiece'). Shown here is the installation view (detail) of The Free Library exhibition at Space 1026.
(c) Experimental Jetset 97-06	Previous  / Back to Archive / Next				Related links: Space 1026		Banner printed by Mark Owens / Clint Woodside, Photo by Mark Owens.