Free to Choose, 2023, single-channel video, 36 minutes. In collaboration with in Rudá Babau and Waste Paper Opera (Klara Kofen, James Oldham, Gary Zhexi Zhang, Anna Palmer). Courtesy of the artist.
TB2023 cinema program
The relationship between art and capitalism is central to Bahar Noorizadeh’s work. The artist, writer, and filmmaker, examines the conflicting and contradictory notions of imagination and speculation as they suffuse one another. Noorizadeh created the single-channel video Free to Choose (2023) in collaboration with experimental music and theater collective Waste Paper Opera and Rudá Babau, an artist and gamer interested in the virtual aspects of reality and cultural interfaces. This work furthers Noorizadeh’s investigations of the histories of economics, cybernetics, socialism, and activist strategies for resisting the financialization of life.
An operatic work of financial sci-fi, what Noorizadeh calls “fi-fi,” Free to Choose is narrated by conservative economist Milton Friedman and set in a world where the credit banking system has become a machine for time travel. The video begins in post-handover Hong Kong during the 1997 economic crash. Philip Tose, ex-race car driver and CEO of an insolvent company travels to the future to borrow a lump sum from his older self and rescue his business. Hong Kong in 2047– the year it has been fully integrated with China–turns out to be eerily similar to the Hong Kong of “One Country, Two Systems” that Tose left behind. Centralization has not eradicated nepotism, and young activists advocate free time travel for everyone, including those deemed untrustworthy by a corrupt credit system.
Friedman hailed Hong Kong as the modern exemplar of free markets, despite the heavy-handed government planning and control. Much like the economic worlds built in metaverse and gaming platforms today, Hong Kong was the testing ground for neoliberalism. The territory now holds one of the deepest wealth gaps, and, until recently, one of the most lucrative real estate markets on the planet. Free to Choose riffs off Hong Kong’s history and present to speculate about the future of financialization.
