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SOUND UNDERPINNINGS If you visit the Douglas Hyde
Gallery this month, you might become a guest on Free Thought FM, a new exhibition by conceptual artist Garrett Phelan that tackles the class system and inequality of access to education. words Jack O’Higgins photos Andres Poveda The genesis of Free Thought came from Garret Phelan’s previous project. Heed FM was a sound portrait broadcast over the course of a month in which Phelan talked to Dubliners aged between the ages of 18 to 25. Topics ranged from accents to political activism to dog breeding. That project was initially sparked by Phelan’s concern about homelessness, but over the course of his research he realized that the focus needed to be tightened. “The subject was so huge and expansive. We could have been researching for years to come. So I asked one of our mentors at Crosscare what she thought would be of value to the situation and she said that advocacy for young people aged 18-29 is non-existent.” Heed FM was an attempt to share young people’s voices and experiences. Over the course of recording the segments, Phelan became increasingly aware of the class stigma and financial differences that made higher education difficult for people in working class areas. “I was self-educating myself when talking to these young people and seeing a huge disparity. So I finished the project and it went out as one thing but I was left with all this other stuff which became Free Thought FM.” Though it may share DNA with his previous work, Free Thought FM is an even more ambitious project. The exhibition can be split into three levels; the marketing materials, which Phelan and his team have disseminated over Dublin city with the aid of a top class marketing agency; the gallery space, which is adorned with vinyl replications of Phelan’s artwork, and of course, Free Thought FM itself, a live broadcast radio station that Phelan will man six days a week for a month. It’s rare to find an exhibition in which the marketing materials are an integral piece of the work, but that’s just what Phelan and company have done. Instead of putting Phelan’s name front and center, the posters and online advertisements offer useful advice on SUSI grants or the CAO application process, as well as the frequency for the station. “We put a lot of energy into doing that,” Phelan says. “You can purchase ads and use your advertising procedures and algorithms to get directly into people’s houses. So rather than selling them Coca-Cola or Nike, you can sell them good information that can help them. Our campaign is about giving not taking. It’s information that the government has prepared in a very jargon-y way that we put back into simple language.” The broadcast itself will find Phelan conversing with people in the gallery about Ireland’s class system and the resulting disparities in higher education. Sometimes he’ll be talking to well known city advocates like Emmet Kirwan or Andrea Horan. More often, Phelan will leave the confines of the gallery to talk to people on the streets of Dublin, or on Trinity Campus. Though it might seem like a caustic critique to mount a project about class division in the heart of Trinity College, Phelan has chosen the venue because of his great affection for the area. He’s loved the Douglas Hyde Gallery from an early age, and finds its location to be a fascinating bridge between Trinity and the city at large. “I didn’t want to use Trinity as a space to look at in the negative and how the education and curriculum system has been developed in the country, because that would be too easy. It’s important for people to know that it’s well within their means to come here, regardless of their level of financial income or how they interpret themselves. I think people who come here feel special and in one way that’s not a bad thing, but I think everyone should feel there’s a possibility of studying here.” It’s not just education that Phelan wants to bridge the class divide on, but art spaces too. Every day, thousands of people pass the Douglas Hyde Gallery, and Phelan aims to get more people walking through its doors. He sees the open and participatory nature of Free Thought FM as a way to encourage engagement. “I want people to know that I am accessible, and that art should be accessible for conversaFree Thought FM gives people ownership of the space. It changes the methodology of how the gallery is used. 31