{"id":97496,"date":"2021-03-29T05:55:35","date_gmt":"2021-03-29T05:55:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=179806"},"modified":"2021-03-29T05:55:35","modified_gmt":"2021-03-29T05:55:35","slug":"cancelling-art-dark-mofo-and-the-offended-classes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/03\/29\/cancelling-art-dark-mofo-and-the-offended-classes\/","title":{"rendered":"Cancelling Art, Dark Mofo and the Offended Classes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, Australians found themselves delighting in another fit of cancel culture, this time in the art world.  Tasmania\u2019s Dark Mofo art festival<\/a> prides itself on being gritty but the mood was very much about removing any grit to begin with.  Interest centred on the project of Spanish artist Santiago Sierra, who had proposed<\/a> soaking a Union Jack Flag \u201cin the blood of its colonised territories\u201d.  The blood would come by way of donations.  First Nation peoples \u201cfrom countries claimed by the British Empire at some point in history, who reside in Australia\u201d would furnish the liquid.<\/p>\n

Given what followed, festival organisers might have preferred one of Sierra\u2019s other suggestions: a work that would have involved vast amounts of cocaine.  Social media outrage followed.  People purporting to speak for the offended, while also counting themselves as offended, railed and expectorated.  Festival curator Leigh Carmichael tried to be brave against the howling winds of disapproval.  \u201cAt this stage we will push on,\u201d he told<\/a> ABC Radio Hobart on March 23.  \u201cProvided we can logistically make this work happen, we will.\u201d  He acknowledged that, \u201cThese were very dangerous topics, they\u2019re hard, they hurt.\u201d  For criticisms that the work was being made by a Spanish artist, Carmichael was initially clear: to make work taboo for people from specific localities could constitute \u201ca form of racism in itself.\u201d  Then inevitable equivocation followed.  \u201cThis artist is about their experience and whether a Spanish artist has the right to weigh in, I don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n

Within a matter of hours, Carmichael\u2019s position had collapsed<\/a>: Sierra\u2019s project was cut and put out to sea.  \u201cWe\u2019ve heard the community\u2019s response to Santiago Sierra\u2019s Union Flag.\u201d  Grovelling and capitulation before this all powerful community followed.  \u201cWe made a mistake, and take full responsibility.  The project will be cancelled.  We apologise to all First Nations people for any hurt that has been caused.  We are sorry.\u201d<\/p>\n

David Walsh, Tasmanian founder of MONA (Museum of Old and New Art) and responsible for running the festival, was open to<\/a> self-education and reflection, having not seen \u201cthe deeper consequences of this proposition\u201d.  He had thought the work \u201cwould appeal to the usual leftie demographic.  I approved it without much thought (as has become obvious).\u201d  A bit of old fashioned, censoring conservatism was called for.<\/p>\n

Brian Ritchie, bassist for the Violent Femmes and artistic director of Mona Foma, the museum\u2019s summer festival, felt righteous<\/a>, firstly, wanting to distance his own outfit as \u201ca completely different and separate organisation\u201d before weighing into rubbishing the cultural sensitivity credentials of the work and the artist.  \u201cExploiting people while claiming to protest on their behalf is intellectually void.  Stupid programming is aesthetically null.  Controversy outweighing the quality of the work is bad art.\u201d<\/p>\n

The cancellation was approved by the bloated entities across the academy, certain ethnic groups and the professionally enraged.    Critique ranged from the identity of the artist (Spanish, foreigner, coloniser) to the merits of the work itself.  \u201cA coloniser artist intending to produce art with the actual blood of colonised people is abusive, colonising and re-traumatising,\u201d came the social worker assessment<\/a> from novelist Claire G. Coleman.  \u201cThe idea is disgusting and terrible and should not have been considered.\u201d<\/p>\n

If every traumatic, disgusting incident (rape, pillage, massacres, wars, the crucifixion) were to be considered a bad idea for representation, the canvasses best be left empty, the art shows barren.  Never depict, for instance, that Tasmania\u2019s lands are blood soaked by European conquest.  Do not, as Australian artist Mike Parr did in June 2018, bury yourself<\/a> beneath a busy street of the state capital Hobart to get to the hidden truth.  That way lies trauma.<\/p>\n

The art content commissars were also keeping close eye over how the depiction might have been properly staged, if it was even possible.  Such a contribution can be found in the journal Overland<\/em>. \u201cSimply stating or depicting that the beginnings of the Australian colony were brutal and bloody for Indigenous people is a passive act,\u201d moaned<\/a> the very selective Cass Lynch.  She demands, expects. \u201cThe concept on its own isn\u2019t active as an agent of truth-telling, it doesn\u2019t contain an indigenous vice or testimony, it has no nuance.  On its own, it leans into the glorification of the gore and the violence of colonisation.\u201d  Blood, it would seem, is no indicator of truth.<\/p>\n

In such convulsions of faux sensitivity to the First Nations, the arts sector (for this is what it has become in Australia, a corporatized, sanitised cobbling of blandness, branding and safe bets) justified not merely the pulling of the piece, but that it should have ever been contemplated to begin with.  In the commentary on Sierra, the Indigenous peoples are spoken of in abstract and universal terms: they were hurt and all have one, monolithic voice; and \u201cwhite curators\u201d should have thought better in letting the project ever get off the ground.  Thinking in cultural police terms, Paola Balla asked<\/a> \u201chow this was allowed to be programmed in the first place?  And what structures support white curators to speak of Black traumas?\u201d  Such questions are bound to embolden art vandals across the world keen on emptying every museum for being inappropriately informed about \u201cpower structures\u201d.<\/p>\n

Ironically enough, in this swell of ranting about voices and representation, the artist in question was deprived of it.  Sierra, in a statement released<\/a> on March 25, called treatment of his work \u201csuperficial and spectacular\u201d and his own treatment as a \u201cpublic lynching\u201d.  His quotes had been misconstrued; he had been \u201cleft without a voice, without the capacity to explain and defend\u201d his project.  He had hoped the blood-soaked Union Jack would inspire reflection \u201con the material on which states and empires are built\u201d and reveal how \u201call blood is equally red and has the same consistency, regardless of the race or culture of the person supplying it\u201d.<\/p>\n

Sierra\u2019s shabby treatment did not go unnoticed.  Parr took issue<\/a> with the festival organisers\u2019 \u201ccowardice and lack of leadership\u201d.  Michael Mansell, Chair of the Aboriginal Land Council of Tasmania urged<\/a> Carmichael to push on with the work.  \u201cThe artist challenges Tasmanians about whether Aboriginal lands were peacefully or violently taken, and uses the blood-smattered Union Jack to express his view.\u201d  By all means disagree with the artist and even feel offended \u201cbut that cannot justify stifling the artist\u2019s freedom of thought.\u201d  A sinister result had followed from the cancellation of the project.  \u201cThe unintended consequence of the objectors is that the discussion about truth telling will now be ignored, put aside.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are parallels in this fiasco with previous instances of rage over what can and cannot be depicted in the shallow art lands of the Antipodes.  The cultural police also took issue with Australian photographic artist Bill Henson in 2008 for his portrayals of children as sexual beings.  On May 22 that year, twenty Henson photographs featuring \u201cnaked children aged 12 and 13\u201d were confiscated by police from Sydney\u2019s Roslyn Oxley9 gallery.  Jason Smith of the Monash Gallery of Art defended Henson, claiming<\/a> that his work \u201chas consistently explored human conditions of youth, and examined a poignant moment between adolescence and adulthood\u201d.<\/p>\n

Then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was having none of it.  There were simply certain things you could not touch, that art should not enable you to understand.  Henson had erred into vice.  \u201cKids deserve to have the innocence of their childhood protected,\u201d he spluttered<\/a>.  Rudd found the photographs \u201cabsolutely revolting\u201d despite having not seen them.  \u201cWhatever the artistic view of the merits of that sort of stuff \u2013 frankly I don\u2019t think there are any \u2013 just allow kids to be kids.\u201d  Jenny Macklin, Minister for Families at the time, moralised<\/a> before the Nine Network about how children were \u201cjust getting bombarded with sexualised images all the time, and it\u2019s that sexualisation of children that I think is wrong.\u201d  Now, just as then, artists have been put on notice.<\/p>\n

This article was posted on Sunday, March 28th, 2021 at 10:55pm and is filed under Australia<\/a>, Censorship<\/a>, Freedom of Expression\/Speech<\/a>, Hypocrisy<\/a>, Imperialism<\/a>, Indigenous Peoples<\/a>, Resistance Art<\/a>, Social media<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, Australians found themselves delighting in another fit of cancel culture, this time in the art world.\u00a0 Tasmania\u2019s Dark Mofo art festival prides itself on being gritty\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,92,771,579,731,1275,4,15785,16,15786],"tags":[179,96,773,587,1098,15787,15788,2655],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97496"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97496"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97497,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97496\/revisions\/97497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}