In this time of war, uncertainty, random terrorist acts and media-fanned fears of avian flu pandemics, questions and suspicions are re-surfacing about the place of art and of the fundamental right of the artist to provide a critique of life.
For what is it that artists do? Artists observe, reflect and digest the world. They are the commentators of life. They pinpoint, extend, dramatise and essentialise the particularity of the times we live in. Their role in society is of its very nature radical. Their observations are often edgy, anxiety-inducing and brimming with seditious possibilities. And as such, the artist’s creative response to the world is also a vital sign that we live in a tolerant and tolerable society.
So, it always comes as a bit of a shock when as a culture we cast a suspicious eye over what is central to us as human beings. Namely, the activity of making meaning.
Governments, defensive about having their authority and process questioned are attempting to appropriate this activity of making meaning. Not only that, but the step which follows is the attempt to regulate the “wrong” or “dangerous” kind of meaning. This is censorship.
Given recent events, the impulse to tighten the legislative net to protect us from future acts of Terror seems reasonable enough, but in so doing perhaps something far more pernicious is being unleashed.
On Friday night, November 5th 2005 two metropolitan police officers enter the Bettie Morton Gallery in Brixton and request the removal of a painting from the current exhibition. The gallery owner refuses and presses the officers for an explanation. The officers make vague references to “a complaint made by a member of the community who has been offended”. The officers then state that the artist clearly has “an agenda about the police”.
The offending painting entitled, “Help with Enquiries 1984” depicts a young naked black man being beaten by two white policemen. The painting is one of eight in the exhibition called Fall/Uprising by UK artist Kimathi Donkor. Donkor’s paintings are political/historical documentations of the violent Brixton and Tottenham riots of 1985. The artworks recall the trauma and human suffering of those events and pay quiet homage on the twentieth anniversary of the riots.
So was it the complaint that brought the police to the gallery or their agenda about the artist’s “agenda with the police”? The question remains unanswered between the gallery owner and the local authorities. Who exactly is complaining and what is the complaint about ? And if this is a legitimate action on behalf of the state should not everything bearing any resemblance to “The Rape of the Sabine Women” ( visions of violence, nudity, abuse of power, etc) be removed from every gallery in England ?
Unsatisfied that they cannot persuade her to remove the painting, the two policemen state, “We will return.” Ominously, their comment hangs in the air. Both the artist and gallery staff brace themselves for potential legal wrangling.
Donkor ‘s response to the event is philosophical. ”It’s inevitable that various specific expressions of opinion will offend somebody or other, and that those people will inevitably try to suppress that opinion/speech/expression if it threatens their interests. Unless we all agree that literally anybody can literally express anything without sanction, then it is just a matter of competing social forces.”
In October, the Tate removes a sculpture from octogenarian sculptor, John Latham’s Retrospective. Entitled God is Great it is a large work in glass. Within the glass volumes of the Bible, the Talmud and the Koran are embedded. Latham has a long artistic history of working with books and this work was made in 1991. A spokesperson for the Tate states that in this “sensitive climate” it is feared that the sculpture might offend Islamic extremists. The artist himself, not having been consulted by the Tate is understandably angry. Meanwhile, the Muslim Council of Britain reply that; “ We find no offence in this and we would have preferred to have been consulted by Tate Britain before the decision was taken”. Fear is stronger than either process or the asking of a simple question.
David Godbold’s situation reads like an excerpt from a James Bond cum Johnny English screenplay. Having been appointed by an all-party parliamentary committee to be the official Election Artist in 2005, he is commissioned to create 18 drawings. Some months later he is effectively put on ice. His drawings are in storage because he has refused to alter them, his fee has not been paid and his pencil hung up, so to speak. Why? Because the drawings actually reflect and comment upon the process and workings of politics. They bear no resemblance to David’s The Coronation of the Emperor Napoleon – they are classical, satirical and sassy. A deadly combination.
David Godbold describes his experiences as the Official Election Artist this way:
“There were undoubtedly attempts to bury the work and to cancel the book, led by the Speaker, Michael Martin. The work was certainly “summoned” and taken to the House of Commons against my wishes. Where it was kept for two weeks without word until an emailed ultimatum was delivered to me. This offered to part pay for the commission, with full payment coming upon the “satisfactory amendment of certain works”. It also notified me that the promised funding for the publication was being withdrawn, as it was not really the sort of thing public and charitable money could be associated with.”
The crises in “government during the election campaign emphasised their paranoia and control freakery” Godbold said. “The House of Commons has now “accepted” my drawings, paid for them in full and is putting itself behind them… but I believe very few people will see the actual drawings as the venue for the launch is … only semi-public at best. However, the book is…how the work will really get out.
It is all about blind attempts to control unknown situations. They are actually afraid of the unknown “idea” of the power of contemporary art.”
Is this an indication of the current global paranoia? Anxious about more terrorist acts and the killer flu, are we allowing ourselves to be infantilised by our governments? Terror is the domain of the child. Terror and helplessness. Is the father-knows-best paradigm resurfacing without apology precisely because we are being scared out of our wits? Fear is always at the root of the impulse to censor. Fear is also at the root of hatred, intolerance and violence.
The impulse to look away and to put one’s head into a large bucket of sand has never been stronger. However, as our heads do descend into the bucket, far-reaching legislative changes are being made the world over on our behalf, on an almost daily basis. Are we naively placing our trust in our governments and allowing our thinking to be done for us?
The war on terror is a unique moment. It is the first time in human history that a war has been waged against a noun. It is also a war on complexity, a war on critical thought and memory. The line of argument and the legislation that has followed has diminished the scope of our freedom, whilst in the same instance, exhorting us to accept it as inevitable. At the very moment when freedom of expression is most endangered, that is the precise moment at which we most need that freedom of expression. Legislation is never a replacement for education, debate and engagement.
When Orwell wrote 1984 he was not writing some way-out science fiction novel. The story was a thinly disguised record of his terrifying experiences as a WW2 correspondent in a siege-mentality 1940’s England.
In September, several months after the underground bombings, an appalling thing occurs at an official Labour Party event. A man in his 80’s, let’s call him King Lear: A holocaust survivor, a Labour party member and a British subject for over 50 years is publicly abused and pilloried. He is hauled out of the meeting. Why? Because in response to some Labour party rhetoric by Jack Straw concerning “Britain’s role in restoring democracy to Iraq”, this man with an eagle’s eye for codswallop guffaws and calls out “ Nonsense. ” And again, “Lies”. This is no heckler, but a long-term member of the Labour party.
This old man is a living repository of European memory. By his quick and lively response to untruths he remembers and honours his past. Without warning he is seized and bodily lifted out of the room and into another room where he is denied re-entry to the meeting. Here, for some time he is detained under section 44 of the new anti-terrorist legislation.
Forgetting is perhaps the greatest crime against humanity.
Late last year in Birmingham, Sikh extremists with the support of local conservative Christian groups staged demonstrations outside a theatre. When opposition to the play Behzti turned nasty and resulted in rioting, the theatre was closed. The female playwright was forced into hiding following threats of abduction and murder. 1642 ? Cromwell’s England ? No, it is 2005.
At about the same time in Holland a Dutch filmmaker was murdered and mutilated by a Dutch-born Muslim extremist for making a 10 minute film exposing sanctioned violence against Muslim women.
If these preceding events appear familiar, it is because they are. Somewhere within our unspoken, collective knowing we are well aware of what we can inflict upon one another.
The four underground suicide bombers were not, as was initially feared, a US trained terrorist cell. They are in fact, four homegrown young English Muslim lads; albeit with allegiances difficult for even the most liberal Westerner to fathom. In Australia this week 17 young men have been arrested on terrorist charges. Many of them born and educated in Melbourne and Sydney. This is only two instances in which our complacency about the threat of terrorism being the activity of the “other” and from “over there” is being shattered. Bosnia-Herzegovina only made it into our consciousness because after almost 500 years of peaceful co-existence the multicultural community of Christians, Muslims and Jews was torn asunder by nationalist extremists.
These are not isolated or innocuous events, they are part of a pattern, a shift in the norms of acceptability. Fear is everywhere right now. In governments and in the public. This fear has caused us to become careless of our rights.
No democracy in the world can boast of itself as a set and forget fact. This fragile ideal needs to be reinvigorated, reinvented and demanded on a daily basis. That is the nature of democracy; it is constantly arising from the flames like Dumbledore’s phoenix. Because the powers of darkness ( in the form of intolerance, greed and righteousness ) do roam the earth.
War and its resultant social disturbance has a tendency to skew our perspectives. What seemed unthinkable yesterday is only mildly unpalatable today. This is but a symptom. Art often provides us with critical signals ( and often years ahead of events) that something is rotten in the state.
When fear, reactivity and a decided lack of humour run at a high pitch we can be sure we have lost our moorings. Wherever there are significant erosions of free speech, censorship of art, a resurgence in racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia and intolerance of otherness: Then the writing is on the wall.
If someone tries to steal your bag, you object. You may even fight for it.
If someone tries to steal your powers of language, thought or insight do you do any the less?
What then is the task of the artist, the world citizen, the human being ?
Arundhati Roy has this to say;
“…Above all to watch. To try and understand. To never look away.
And never, never to forget.”
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