The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1949), Article 19 states that "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; including any act of seeking, receiving and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used.” It also allows governments to restrict speech with various limitations. Although in the UK and many other countries we are able to express opinions relatively freely without being censored, we live in an era of increasing surveillance, fear and adaptation to measures preventing terrorist attacks. Some governments assert the right to restrict free speech to protect the public. In some cases this assertion is used to censor otherwise free communication, thereby rights to freedom of speech and of expression are denied. In the monument-installation Shoeyouright, shoes function as placeholders, enabling absent bodies to communicate their views. Title: Shoeyouright. Material: Proxy shoes collected from participants. Esperanto Flag. Sound: Electronically generated voice reading the Declaration of Human Rights: Freedom of Expression. Plaque: engraved: To resist is to create, to create is to resist, Stéphane Hessel. Size: ca 500 x 400 x 400cm Location: MAFA Show University of Brighton 2016.

Using the web and an Esperanto [i] flag as symbol for Universal [ii] Communication, collective memory [iii] and rights to Freedom of Expression are examined. It is an art project that progressed through proxy participants’ shoes. [i] Esperanto: Zamenhof had three goals, as he wrote in 1887: 1) "To render the study of the language so easy as to make its acquisition mere play to the learner." 2) "To enable the learner to make direct use of his knowledge with persons of any nationality, whether the language be universally accepted or not; in other words, the language is to be directly a means of international communication." 3) "To find some means of overcoming the natural indifference of mankind, and disposing them, in the quickest manner possible, and en masse, to learn and use the proposed language as a living one, and not only in last extremities, and with the key at hand." [ii] International without boundaries, the whole universe [iii] The memory of a group of people, passed from one generation to the next.

Proxy protests show the power of the anonymous voice. The project Shoeyouright has made use of real-time technology and social media that make it possible to express opinions anonymously. This project is based on the Freedom of Expression against governmental censorship all over the world and the neglect of human rights. The right to Freedom of Expression, is a basic need to fight dictatorship. People committing hate crimes and using these platforms to hurt other human beings, possibly believe that all opinions are free to express via social media, but actually these crimes will be prosecuted, just as any other crime. The advantages of social media seem to be the broader and global reach and the social interaction. The disadvantage of social media is reflected in the misuse of this social function. Shoeyouright speaks to people that don't want fear to take over their lives and believe that the freedom to express themselves is a basic democratic requirement. Shoeyouright Real-time on screen. Screenshot of Proxy Shoes tweeted by a participant. Location: Brighton University MAFA Show 2016.

Location: Hastings beach. May 2016. Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4V3rEz6sj1k

The Installation The Monument displayed a replica of the environment of a demonstration and the remains of the action, illustrating the dedication of protesters to stop a monument being erected in Budapest. This monument was given its paradoxical use as a place to commemorate the demonstrators’ own political actions. The Protests about the construction of a controversial monument to the Hungarian victims of the German occupation imply that the Hungarian government bore no responsibility for the death of Jews. It is called a “Whitewash Crime”. Protesters carried signs denouncing the memorial as “A Falsification of Hungary's History”. Installation The Monument ca. 700 x 400cm. Part of A.i.R. Project Pécs. Project Private Nationalism. Art Association, Pécs, Hungary. PNP is to be explained as a series of international art and cultural programs in which the A.i.R took place in July/ August 2014.