A promise is an offer of social obligation for the near future, often made with premeditated confidence and the desire for mutual fulfilment. Yet promises are liable to failure, with the potential for unforeseeable challenges to thwart the performance of one’s duties, inviting disagreement and conflict. Layne Waerea’s Free Promises explores the concept of social agreements or ‘promises’ as interpersonal practices governed by highly individual and spontaneous systems of values by giving away free promises during the opening week of the Busan Biennale 2024.
Free Promises will take place at the Museum of Contemporary Art Busan where members of the public are invited to kōrero and enter into a reasonable ‘promise’ with the artist. This ‘promise’ could include carrying out a small action, saying something, or even an agreement not to do something. Free Promises examines the fleeting and optimistic space where social promises are located, intervening upon the codified behaviour of civic spaces in metropolitan Busan. In doing so, Free Promises suggests the slippery or ultimately unreasonable nature of social promises, asking the public to reimagine the underlying social or legal transcripts at stake.
Artwork details
Layne Waerea, Free Promises, 2024
Performance with public
Co-commissioned by Te Tuhi and the Busan Biennale Organizing Committee
About the artist
Layne Waerea (Ngāti Wāhiao, Ngāti Kahungunu, Pākehā) is an Aotearoa-based artist whose practice involves carrying out performance art interventions that seek to question and challenge social and legal rules of preferred behaviour in the public sphere. As a former lawyer, and now a part-time lecturer in law, and visual art theory, Waerea uses this experience to inform her performance interventions with a particular focus on how te Tiriti o Waitangi could continue to play a critical role in the developing cultural fabric of Aotearoa New Zealand. Waerea has a PhD from AUT and is a lecturer in the School of Art and Design at AUT. She is the current president of the chasing fog club (Est. 2014). Recent exhibitions include Auckland Arts Festival (2024); Performance Art Week Aotearoa (2024); Takiwā Hou: Imagining New Spaces, Te Tuhi and Malta Biennale (2024); and Huarere: Weather Eye, Weather Ear, Te Tuhi (2023).