All That Is Banned Is Desired: A World Conference on Artistic Freedom of Expression (Oslo)

artsfreedom.org

All That Is Banned Is Desired: A World Conference on Artistic Freedom of Expression
The Opera House, Oslo, Norway, October 25—26, 2012

Introduction

Over the two days of All That is Banned is Desired: A World Conference on Artistic Freedom of Expression, artists, journalists, activists, scholars, curators and others will respond to censorship of the arts around the world.

We will discuss and investigate why, where, and how artistic expressions is condemned, banned and persecuted. In particular, we will focus on the three principal agents of censorship — religion, state and market.

Although the effects of censorship can be easily identified in cases where artists are imprisoned or killed, the social and economic repercussions of censorship are more difficult to measure. A culture deprived of its artistic creations and cultural heritage clearly loses an important link to its history and identity.

Cultural artefacts carry with them the power to influence the minds and motivations of the masses and with it, the power to divert people from an awareness of and compliance with the normative behaviours of a society, as dictated by religious and political ideologies. The control of culture is thus a major concern for both clerics and politicians.

But where religion and state decline in importance in the control of artistic expression, another censor appears quite ready to step in to fill the censorial void — namely the market. And there is no guarantee that it will prove to be any less censorious than its religious and political predecessors.

Censorship is characterized by the contradictory fact that by imposing limits it provokes reactions to those limits. By limiting freedom it helps fuels the desire for even greater freedom, as the title of the conference evokes: ‘All that is banned is desired’.

In many ways, the power of nation-states to carry out censorship is being undermined as global communication networks expand and international trade barriers crumble. This means that it is becoming increasingly difficult for governments to control what their citizens have access to; however, history suggests that nation-states will be reluctant to relinquish control.

Conference participants will be invited to debate these and other concerns in relation to specific cases. These cases will be drawn from a wide range of conditions and contexts and will include some that are well known and others that are known to only a few. In addition to deepening our understanding of the fundamental propositions of freedom of expression, the conference will also work toward proposals for monitoring censorship globally, and organising to advance freedom of expression for artists around the world.

PRELIMINARY PROGRAMME

THURSDAY, 25 OCTOBER 2012

09:00: Registration – 09:40: Doors open – 10:00: Doors close
10:00: BEAUTY UNDER PRESSURE

ZARGANAR, Comedian, Actor and Film Director [Burma]
Min Htin Ko Ko Gyi, Poet and Filmmaker [Burma]
WIN MAW, Musician and Composer [Burma]

Moderator: FRANCES HARRISON, Journalist [UK]

10:40: RELIGION AND ARTISTIC FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION

SVETLANA MINTCHEVA, Director of Programmes, National Coalition Against Censorship [USA]
GURPREET KAUR BHATTI, Playwright and Screenwriter [UK]
AZHAR USMAN, Comedian, Activist and Lawyer [USA]

Moderator: KENAN MALIK, Writer, Lecturer and Broadcaster [UK]

11:40: MORAL PANICS – SEXUALITY AND ART

ZANELE MUHOLI, Visual Artist [South Africa]
PANG KHEE TEIK, Arts Consultant and Human Rights Activist [Malaysia]

Moderator: ROBERT SEMBER, Artist and Researcher [South Africa/USA]

12:30: LUNCH

13:45: CORPORATE CENSORSHIP

LARISSA SANSOUR, Visual Artist [Palestine/UK]
NADIA PLESNER, Visual Artist [Denmark]
FREDRIK GERTTEN, Film Director [Sweden]

14:30: HUNGARY – ARTISTIC FREEDOM AND RESPONSIBILITY IN THE AGE OF XENOPHOBIA

ADAM FISCHER, Chief Conductor [Hungary]
YNGVE ANDRE SØBERG, Soloist at The Norwegian National Opera & Ballet [Norway]

14:45: PUBLIC SPACE AND ART CLASHES

MUSTAPHA BENFODIL, Writer and Visual Artist [Algeria]
LARS Ø RAMBERG, Artist [Norway/Germany]

Moderator: ALESSANDRO PETTI, Architect and Researcher [Italy/Palestine]

15:30: COFFEE BREAK

16:00: TIBET – ARTIST IN EXILE

TENZING RIGDOL, Visual Artist and Poet [Tibet]
TENZIN GÖNPO, Musician [Tibet/France]

Moderator: FRANCES HARRISON, Journalist [UK]

16:30: THE INVISIBLE RED LINE – MANOEUVRING CHINESE ARTS CENSORSHIP

SI HAN, Curator [China/Sweden]

Moderator: FRANCES HARRISON, Journalist [UK]

17:00: STAGE PERFORMANCE

TERAKAFT [Mali]

FRIDAY, 26 OCTOBER 2012

08:45: Doors open – 09:00: Doors close

09:00: OVERCOMING – WOMEN, ART AND EGYPT

SHERINE AMR, Singer [Egypt]
SONDOS SHABAYEK, Writer, Theatre Director and Actress [Egypt]

Moderator: PETR LOM, Filmmaker [Czech Republic/Canada]

09:45: STOP THIS FILTH – ARTISTS UNDER THREAT

DEEYAH, Music Producer [Norway/UK]
ARSHAD HUSSAIN, Actor and Culture Activist [Pakistan]

OLE REITOV, Program Manager, Freemuse

10:05: THE ART OF LOVE: CULTURAL TABOOS AND ARTISTIC REPRESENTATIONS OF ROMANCE IN TRIBAL PAKISTAN AND AFGHANISTAN

GEORGE GITTOES, Painter, Photographer and Filmmaker [Australia]

Moderator: FRANCES HARRISON, Journalist [UK]

10:30: RUSSIA

NIKOLAY OLEYNIKOV, Visual Artist [Russia/Chto Delat]

10:50: COFFEE BREAK

11:20: SYRIA – TUNISIA: ARTS IN RESISTANCE – RESISTANCE IN ART

RACHIDA TRIKI, Film Director and Researcher [Tunisia]
ORWA AL MOKDAD, Actor [Syria]

Moderator: DONATELLA DELLA RATTA, PhD Fellow [Italy]

12:00: FREEDOM THEATRE: WHAT KIND OF FREEDOM?

JONATHAN STANCZAK, Co-Founder and Administrative Manager of the The Freedom Theatre [Sweden/Palestine]

12:20: CUBA (tbc)

13:00: LUNCH

14:00: NOTHING TO ENVY IN THIS WORLD

Moderator: SIGRUN SLAPGARD, Writer, Foreign Correspondent and Board Member of Fritt Ord

14:20: THE LASTING IMPACT OF THE RUSHDIE CASE

WILLIAM NYGAARD, Publisher and Defender of Freedom of Expression [Norway]

14:30: TURKEY

ASLI ERDOĞAN, Writer [Turkey/Austria]
PELIN BAŞARAN, Researcher [Turkey]

Moderator: KENAN MALIK, Writer, Lecturer and Broadcaster [UK]

15:10: THE ARTIST VS. THE STATE: THE CASE OF LAPIRO DE MBANGA

MARAN TURNER, Executive Director, Freedom Now [USA]

CAMPAIGNING AGAINST THE STATE: PUSSY RIOT

ALEXANDER CHEPARUKHIN, Music Producer, Promoter and Founder and Director of GreenWave Music [Russia]

15:40: PERFORMANCE

OUTSPOKEN, Artist and Community Activist [Zimbabwe]

The conference is organised by Fritt Ord and Freemuse, and is generously supported by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and PostkodLotteriet, Sweden.

Violent Homophobia as State Policy in Russia

Group of Masked Men Attacks Gay Club
By Ezekiel Pfeifer
The Moscow Times
15 October 2012

Police started an inquiry Friday to identify a group of men who wreaked havoc in a Moscow gay club — attacking clubgoers, overturning tables and throwing bottles — which left four people hospitalized and others injured.

Police began to receive phone calls around 9:30 p.m. Thursday night from people saying a group of aggressive young men had entered the club 7FreeDays, located in a basement on Milyutinsky Pereulok in central Moscow, and started a fight, an unspecified police official told Interfax.

The club, which on its website describes itself as the “first gay- and lesbian-friendly bar in Russia,” was holding an event in honor of international Coming Out Day. Police arrived at the club after the agitators had fled the scene.

Police plan to study videos from nearby surveillance cameras, RIA-Novosti reported, but the attackers might be hard to identify because, for privacy reasons, there were no cameras inside the club.

Four people were hospitalized, the news agency said.

Unspecified police officials told Lifenews.ru that the attackers were dressed in dark clothes and surgical masks and that many of them had shaved heads.

A man in the club at the time of the attack told the online tabloid that acid was thrown on him. Other witnesses told the NTV television channel that a group of about 20 attackers struck clubgoers repeatedly over the course of five to six minutes, turned over tables and threw bottles, then fled.

“First I thought it was part of the show. … A bit later we realized it was not a show, but an attack,” witness Pavel Samburov told the channel.

The injured included a woman who was rushed to a hospital with a punctured eye after her glasses were smashed to pieces, NTV reported.

The attackers held the bartender at gunpoint, forced her face down on the floor, and started smashing the bar, Human Rights Watch said in a statement on Friday. About 70 people were at the party that evening, the statement said. It called on Russian authorities to investigate the attack.

Earlier last week, the People’s Council, a nationalist Orthodox group, called for the closure of all gay clubs in Moscow as part of an effort to prohibit the “promotion of homosexuality.”

The People’s Council said Moscow lawmakers should follow the example set by their counterparts in St. Petersburg and other Russian cities, where the “promotion of homosexuality to minors” had already been banned.

Moscow has about a dozen gay or nominally gay-friendly bars and clubs, according to various Internet listings. No one has claimed responsibility for the Thursday attack.

Gay rights leader Nikolai Alexeyev said in a commentary piece on Gayrussia.eu that he thought the attack took place because the perpetrators felt they would not be punished.

“The main reason for what happened is the feeling of complete impunity of the people who commit such crimes, which must be considered hate crimes — in this case, hate crimes against those who love others,” Alexeyev wrote.

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anticapitalist.ru

Let’s Stand Up to State-Sponsored Xenophobia!
A Statement by the Russian Socialist Movement

On October 11 in Moscow, a group of twenty armed thugs attacked the club 7FreeDays, where an event celebrating LGBT Coming Out Day was underway. After breaking into the club, the thugs assaulted partygoers before escaping the scene of the crime completely unimpeded.

The attack on 7FreeDays cannot be regarded as an isolated incident. Law enforcement authorities are always well informed about such groups of pogromists and their plans, so in this particular case we are dealing, if not with a deliberate provocation on the part of the police, then with their connivance. This attack has taken place amidst calls by United Russia deputies in the Moscow City Duma to adopt a law, similar to one already adopted in Petersburg, banning the “promotion of homosexuality” in Moscow, and proposals by Pavel Astakhov, Russia’s children’s rights ombudsman, that LGBT people should be banned from working in schools. Previously, when officials commented bans on marches and rallies defending LGBT rights, they argued that there was simply nothing for activists to defend, citing the presence of special LGBT nightclubs in the major cities. Now, however, their rhetoric has become tougher: we are confronted with calls and plans to actually reduce the labor rights of LGBT people, along with attacks on the places where they were permitted to openly express their personal feelings without the risk of encountering violent homophobia.

It is no accident that this flare-up of state-sponsored xenophobia is taking place amidst a new phase in the attack on the social rights of Russian citizens and the veritable abandonment by the authorities of their campaign promises. When governments want to take something away from their citizens, they begin vigorously supporting chauvinism and xenophobia. First, chauvinistic sentiments are artificially provoked in society by means of propaganda, and then the authorities pretend they are merely making concessions to the popular mood, thus concealing their own dirty deeds. Today, these deeds include cuts to the network of state educational institutions, the destruction of the system of free medical care, and increases in utility rates at a tempo that outpaces increases to state-sector wages and pensions.

Thus, opposing state-sponsored xenophobia and preventing growing popular discontent with the socio-economic situation from once again being channeled by the authorities into xenophobia and chauvinism is a task not only for LGBT activists.

The Russian Socialist Movement demands:

• a prompt investigation into the attack on 7FreeDays
• the repeal of all laws adopted recently in various regions of Russia that in one way or another limit the rights of LGBT people
• the resignation of all MPs and officials who have sponsored such legislative initiatives

We call on friendly leftist organizations, as well as all organizations and public figures who claim to belong to the opposition, to support our demands.

October 14, 2012
Russian Socialist Movement (RSD)

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Almost as if on cue, a “grassroots organization” with the grimly and comically appropriate name of Reaction held a rally outside Our Lady of Kazan Cathedral in Petersburg on Sunday against what it dubbed the “homo dictatorship.” The homely appearance of the “Reactionaries” supports the RSD’s argument that, as it pursues homophobia and other forms of xenophobia as semi-official policy, the Russian state pretends to be caving into purely popular sentiment.

 Stop, Gay Dictatorship! Today They Confiscated Dmitry Deneiko’s Cross, Tomorrow They’ll Arrest You!

[Deneiko is a nationalist arrested on suspicion of participating in a group assault on LGBT activists after an opposition rally in Petersburg on June 12.]

 

“God is the universe’s head homophobe.” Holy Martyr Daniil Sysoev