K-Way Gallery Freedom, a cultural study about freedom inside the K-Way Shop 4 Turin (4th April 2012)

FREEDOM K-Way has always been synonymous with freedom. Freedom to go, to move, to have fun and to do sports without thinking about the weather, the rain, umbrellas or other bulky accessories. For this reason, inside the K-Way store, on the lower level, you will find an in-depth analysis dedicated to freedom: acts, people, documents, quotes and symbols of every human being’s most sought-after ideal. From Martin Luther King, Jr., to the Statue of Liberty, from the pages of our Constitution to the fall of the Berlin Wall, up until new network technologies. The exhibition invites us to reflect upon the importance of the search for freedom for the construction and development of the most modern societies.

QUOTES Freedom has been at the core of the works and thoughts of great figures from our history and culture. On this panel we have selected several quotes from great thinkers, philosophers, scientists and innovators who, more than others, seem to express in a clear way the concept of universality of this ideal: We are driven by five genetic needs: survival, love and belonging, power, freedom and fun William Glasser Freedom in general may be defined as the absence of obstacles to the realization of desires Bertrand Russel
IMAGINE A WORLD IN WHICH EVERY SINGLE PERSON ON THE PLANET HAS FREE ACCESS TO THE SUM OF ALL HUMAN KNOWLEDGE JIMMY WALES, FOUNDER OF WIKIPEDIA NO ONE CAN BE FREE IF FORCED TO BE SIMILAR TO OTHERS (OSCAR WILDE)
I consider the Web as a whole potentially linked to everything, just like a utopia that gives us a freedom never seen before (Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the Web)
FREEDOM IS THE WILL TO BE RESPONSIBLE TO OURSELVES FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE HE WHO IS BRAVE IS FREE SENECA BY GIVING PEOPLE THE POWER TO SHARE, WE’RE MAKING THE WORLD MORE TRANSPARENT AND FREE (MARK ZUCKERBERG, FOUNDER OF FACEBOOK)
The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion Albert Camus MEN BUILD TOO MANY WALLS AND NOT ENOUGH BRIDGES (ISAAC NEWTON)

K-WAY AND FREEDOM K-Way has always been synonymous with freedom. Freedom to go, to move, to have fun and to do sports without thinking about the weather, umbrellas or other bulky accessories. The K-Way trademark is born in 1965 thanks to the intuition of the young Parisian Léon-Claude Duhamel who, one rainy day, observed the passers-by bundled up in heavy waterproof clothing or with their hands busy holding uncomfortable umbrellas. Hence the invention: creating an anti-rain object to always keep with you but which is neither an umbrella nor a raincoat. Since February 2004, this timeless brand has been a part of Turin’s BasicNet Group and K-Way’s notoriety has returned to what it was in the early days. And, after almost fifty years of history, K-Way is one of the few brands, legally defined as “ultra well-known�, included in the Italian dictionary. But K-Way is no longer just a rain jacket that, thanks to BasicNet, has been available again in the marketplace for several years. In fact, in addition to the historic jackets with heat-welded zippers which can be folded into their own pockets and produced with warm and breathable wind-breaking and water-proof materials, the collections also include clothing and accessories that have the same characteristics of practicality and functionality.

THE DOCUMENTS Here some of the most important historic and legal documents connected to freedom are reproduced and exhibited. From the United States to France, from the United Nations to the Italian constitution, those on display are messages of freedom, which have become true cornerstones of western society. In these documents, we can rediscover the origins of the concept of safeguarding the fundamental rights of the individual.
1. The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America, 1776. It is the document in which the British colonies declared their independence from the motherland, stating the motivations that pushed them to this act.
2. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, 1789. It is the legal text devised over the course of the French Revolution containing a solemn listing of the fundamental rights of the individual and of the citizen.
3. The Declaration of Human Rights, 1948. It is a code of ethics of fundamental historic importance. Signed by all the member countries of the United Nations in December 1948, it was, in fact, the first document to universally ratify the rights that are entitled to human beings.
4. Article 21 of the Constitution of the Italian Republic, 1948. It is the article of the Italian Constitution dedicated to freedom of speech or to freedom of expression.

THE SPOKESPEOPLE In the last century several important figures have become true symbols of freedom, of its conquest and of its diffusion. Among them we have chosen to remember those who have worked and “fought� for this ideal by practicing and promoting “non violence�. Mahatma Gandhi (1869 – 1948), famous for having worked for the civil rights of Indians in South Africa and primarily for having contributed to India’s independence from British rule. Gandhi is the father of Satyagraha (Truth Force), the philosophy of civil non-violent disobedience against injustice and oppression. Nelson Mandela is a South African politician. Born in 1918, he was the leader of the anti-apartheid movement for a long time, fighting for the rights of people of color in his country. Imprisoned for twenty-seven years during the pro-apartheid South African governments, today Mandela is universally considered a heroic combatant for freedom and, like Martin Luther King, Jr. (1963), was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929 – 1968). Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929 – 1968). Inspired by Gandhi’s philosophy of “non-violence�, the political action of the protestant American pastor Martin Luther King, Jr. is directed at safeguarding freedom and civil rights. His fight against every kind of ethnic prejudice in American society is fundamental. His “I have a dream… �, repeated many times in his speech at the March for Jobs and Freedom of 1963 in Washington, D.C., is perhaps the most evocative slogan for freedom in our history.

SYMBOLS  There are several manmade objects that have become true symbols of freedom that have been erected specifically in order to celebrate its importance or produced in order to sustain man’s fundamental needs. The Statue of Liberty, designed and given by France to the United States, and the Web, invented and “given� to the entire world by the CERN researcher, Tim Berners-Lee, are perhaps the most striking examples of how the creativity of individuals can create freedom to the benefit of all humanity. Nevertheless, in addition to great gestures, our life is also sprinkled with small objects that create simple yet as important freedoms, like when we wear a comfortable pair of jeans. In this area, we have gathered several symbolic objects that refer directly or indirectly to the concept of freedom.
1. The Statue of Liberty, 1884. We chose this shot because we are convinced that freedom isn’t a natural result but a human construction. No monument more than the Statue of Liberty can attest to it. Not so much for its beauty or size but because it is the result of a cultural exchange between Europe and the United States. Conceived and constructed in Paris with the intention “to glorify liberty and the Republic, in the hope that these values will not die�, it was made by Gustave Eiffel and Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, and then given to the United States of America as a sign of friendship between the two peoples.
2. Jesus Jeans, 1976. Born in the 70s and always accompanied by campaigns as much creative as irreverent, these jeans, after having disappeared from the market in the late 80s, are re-launched in 2010 by the BasicNet Group of Turin. Jeans have always been freedom. Today, with Jesus, they are Freedom Inside.
3. Personal Computer Kim-1, Commodore, 1976. In the same years when Jesus Jeans were born in Italy, in the United States, the Personal Computer revolution was taking shape, which would have brought the freedom of access to information technology to millions of people in a little more than ten years. Apple, Commodore and Atari were the first young companies; protagonists of this revolution that today still characterizes more than any other thing our world and our thirst for freedom.
4. Network connection. Someone said that the “Internet is the greatest weapon of mass construction.� As a matter of fact, this tool, born in 1969 with the name Arpanet and then enhanced by the physicist Tim Berners-Lee in 1993 with the invention of www, today allows billion of people to share information, passions and knowledge; becoming history’s most important collective tool for spreading freedom and democracy on our planet.

GESTURE The British physicist Isaac Newton (1642 – 1727) maintained that, “man builds too many walls and never enough bridges�. For this, in the strength and enthusiasm with which the Berliners, from east and west, tore down “their� wall in 1989, we see one of the clearest gestures of every human being’s uncontainable desire for his own freedom. Often, in our recent history, young people running have also represented a clear expression of freedom. For this reason, we wanted to present thousands of young pacifist hippies running, as immortalized in the film Hair. In this small selection of videos, we couldn’t leave out all the power expressed by the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. during his famous speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.