All Now, All Free!

Creating an artwork with no production costs—for sure that’s the dream of all artists living in precarity. In All Now, All Free! Michael Heindl delivers two works in one at zero cost—however, the film is not intended as a serious instruction manual.  Instead, the work joins Heindl’s artistic practice of questioning social rules and conventions—in All Now, All Free! the at times absurd freedoms of capitalism.

At the base of this extremely cost minimizing art production is the offer made by dominant online retailer to test goods at no risk and send back within thirty days. Making full use of this offer through to the finest detail, Heindl orders not only a crafts book for creative inspiration, the working utensils from scissors through to glue, work table, and chair as well as lamps, camera, and tripod to document it all on film, and even the printer with which he prints the return label in the end. Beginning with unpacking the packages, the artist lets us look over his shoulder during the creation of his object; thereby assigning observers a role somewhere between witness and collaborator.

Perhaps viewers are fascinated and amused watching the bold consistency shown here in carrying out something that decency would probably prevent in common consumption habits, but which in light of the market power of the retail giant could seem plausible as a guerilla tactic. Longer lasting is the contemplation about the power of the consumer and the involvement of the individual in the status quo that All Now, All Free! triggers. The fact that the final cardboard artwork is simply the product of unnecessary packaging material is simply the very last point. (Anne Katrin Feßler)

Translation: Lisa Rosenblatt