Entries Tagged 'IN PERSPECTIVE' ↓

…concerned members of Canberra’s arts community joined together today outside the Chinese Embassy in support of the global sit-in to protest against the detention of artist Ai Weiwei by the Chinese Government.

The Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard is visiting China next week – let’s see what she has to say about the suppression of political discourse in China. In breaking news, the German Chancellor Angela Merkel is reported as having made a personal plea to the Chinese Government for Ai Weiwei’s release. And the NYT reports that 54 people have been detained during the current crackdown.

You can follow the campaign for Ai Weiwei’s release here.

The interweb is filling up with commentary on Ai Weiwei’s (and others’) detention on April 3rd. I’ve been adding them to this post (at least those I find are contributing new information and commentary) as they have come in. It started here on April 3rd in the NYT. And then in the WSJ here. And at ArtInfo. And on TED. And the New Yorker blog. And the New Yorker essay. And now on Voice of America. And Lebbeus Woods: This Cannot Pass. And ABC Arts. And Holland Cotter in the NYT. And the WSJ again. Even Bianca Jagger at Huffington Post. Then CNN reporting the Chinese official response. And The Guardian’s version of the same. And a petition on ArtDaily. And The Guardian again on his “economic crimes”. And The Australian. And at Bloomberg. Plus The Financial Times. Then Ben Davis on ArtInfo and a Friday update here.  And now this open letter (with a zillion signatures) in The Guardian. And more from Beijing by Evan Osnos at The New Yorker. And now a change.org petition. The Irish Times. ArtDaily reports on continuing Chinese Government intransigence. April 10: It’s “killing the chicken to scare the monkey” says Jaime FlorCruz on CNN. And see Newsweek. And the Herald Scotland

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April 11: apparently now it’s about obscenity (Michael Sheridan, The Oz): is this the offending image, on China Digital Times? It’s none of your business, China tells the West (Telegraph). And criticism of Bob Dylan, in The Times (Joe Joseph). April 12: He’s now rendered invisible, see Probe International (with more links). And Sean Wilentz defends Bob Dylan in the New Yorker. As does Jonathon Jones, in The Guardian. And Ian Crouch, again in the New Yorker. PBS Newshour summary here. April 13: The Christian Science Monitor. And where is Wen Tao, disappeared at the same time, at Huffington Post? April 14: The Guardian reports on contradictory invitations offered to AWW just prior to his arrest. Deutsche Welle reports on German debates about the purpose of the current exchange: The Age of the Enlightenment. And read here, in further detail. Colin Jones, the producer of the upcoming film Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, also gives an insider’s account at Dissent.

April 15: Art Info summarises the various rumours and responses. And there’s a world-wide sit-in planned for this Sunday, reported in the L.A. Times. April 16: Now The Guardian reports on other associates being arrested. And see The Committee to Protect Journalists. Michael Sainsbury, in The Australian, (“Brutal flipside of economic success”) points out that Julia Gillard will be put on the spot when she visits China next week. And see Austin Ramzy, in Time Magazine. April 17: NPR publishes an interview article by Laura Sydell. And see designboom. The German Chancellor Angela Merkel is reported as having made a personal plea to the Chinese Government for Ai Weiwei’s release. The NYT reports that 54 people have been detained during the current crackdown. A revealing interview with German architect of the Chinese National Museum, Meinhard von Gerkan at Spiegel Online. April 18: reportage on some of the demonstrations around the world on The Age here. And here on the blog WNYC. April 19th: read Ma Jian at Day by Day (The Day Weekly Digest) on the symbolic values of the sunflower seeds. And read Ben Evans who ruminates on the effects of the NY protest here at Art Info. The NYT watches the German angst over their Beijing exhibition The Age of Enlightenment. Maybe this gaggle of U.S. Senators will raise the issue. “It’s a tinderbox… it’s all about to blow” says Will Hutton, interviewed here by Ali Moore on the ABC. April 20th: ArtInfo reports that change.org, the host of the AWW petition, was brought down by a denial of service attack. In Australia, press reports quote Prime Minister Julia Gillard as having said: ‘We regularly raise human rights and in a broad set of discussions I will raise human rights.” The Guardian’s Tania Branigan reports today that Ai Weiwei’s lawyer, Liu Xiaoyuan is no longer in detention. The Economist sees the purge of public intellectuals, reporters and lawyers as a reflection of the nervousness of the leadership. And Charlie Finch at artnet argues the comparison with fascist Germany in the 1930s. See and read Alison Klayman on Frontline (with Hillary) drawing attention to the breadth of the purge. April 21: The Guardian on the change.org hack attack. AFP reports that the US government has reiterated its concerns at the “extralegal detentions”. April 22: AFP reports the departing US Ambassador Jon Huntsman reiterating his call: “It is very sad that the Chinese government has seen a need to silence one of its most innovative and illustrious citizens,” he said in a written introduction to the artist, who is also a staunch activist, published by Time. “Ai… has shown compassion for his fellow citizens and spoken out for victims of government abuses, calling for political reforms to better serve the people,” Huntsman, who is due to leave his post in the next few days, added. “For the world, Ai continues to represent the promise of China.” Chinese Human Rights Defenders publish a list of those missing. April 24: AFP reports another significant Art Citizens demonstration in Hong Kong. Reported by BBC TV news.  Human Rights Watch asks Gillard to step up. And here’s VoA’s latest.  And meanwhile (Evan Osnos reports in the New Yorker) the Chinese Government exhorts the populace to be happy. April 27: The Asia Society references an instance of the use of parody to get around censorship. The Swiss Interior Minister, Didier Burkhalter, is reported as having raised the issue, and more forcefully than the Australian PM, it seems. And here’s an anonymous Chinese contributor to the austere Wesleyan Argus. Reuters reports the Chinese government’s warning that discussion of human rights is a “tool to meddle”, suggesting that something got lost in translation? Here’s the Asia Society’s Melissa Chiu speaking to CNN. On the U.S. Asia Law Institute (NYU School of Law) site Jerome A. Cohen unpacks the possible legal scenario(s) facing Ai Weiwei. April 28: Martin Gayford at Bloomberg asks whether, if Ai Weiwei is still in custody, the Chinese participation at the Venice Biennale (opens June 4) will be a focus for art world action. Tania Branigan reports today in the Guardian that two of Ai Weiwei’s oldest friends, Zuoxiao Zuzhou and Xiao Li have been detained at Shanghai Airport. It may be coincidental, but Zuoxiao Zuzhou yesterday published an article “Who doesn’t love Ai Weiwei?”, in the Hong Kong newspaper Mingpao. And in the context of the German exhibition in Beijing, The Age of Enlightenment, the NYT’s Didi Kirsten Tatlow compares Ai Weiwei’s circumstances to that of Voltaire… April 29: Geremie Barmé writes this incisive and informed essay on Ai Weiwei’s predicament on The China Beat. April 30: Read Barmé’s conclusion, and then: Jamil Anderson reports on Xu Bing’s “apolitical” stance. And then Chen Danqing, Ai Weiwei’s friend, interviewed in the LAT. May 1: The Chinese Embassy in London writes that this has nothing to do with freedom of speech, etc. (Ben Balnchard, at Reuters). And here (Peter Foster, The Telegraph) specifically in response to Salman Rushdie. Ai Weiwei’s wife and colleagues make their claims in this open letter to the authorities. And here is a dedicated blog: freeaiweiwei.org. Australia’s voice remains silent on Ai Weiwei’s disappearance. In its own Open Letter, iconophilia asks whether the Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard will have anything to say about Ai Weiwei when she visits China? And the answer is: not much, politely. A Chinese police officer, right, and a security guard stand outside the entrance to Ai Weiwei’s studio in Beijing Sunday, April 3, 2011. China blocked Ai Weiwei, one of its most famous contemporary artists, from taking a flight to Hong Kong on Sunday and police later raided his Beijing studio, the man’s assistant said. AP Photo/Ng Han Guan. Quotes: “The state is taking action against people who have peacefully demonstrated their ideas. They are writers – all they did is to express their minds through the internet. So the pattern is very clear. The state tries to maintain stability by crushing any thought of making change,” Ai says. “It could happen to me, because I did the same thing and in many cases I went much further and deeper. But I always think the government can learn from their mistakes – they should learn and should understand; they should be just as intelligent as anyone else. I have to be wishful [optimistic] in that sense.” (see Tania Branigan, in the Guardian, 18 March 2010) “So what is my activity? My activity is very simple, asking basic rights for people to freely express themselves and also to find a new structure, a new way of communicating. Because I’m an artist and this is what I do and I believe in that.” (CNN) “How can you predict what’s in a dictator’s mind?” he asked. “You know if you really think about them you are already a victim of them.” (npr) “They put you under house arrest, or they make you disappear,”‘ Ai Weiwei said in an interview. “That’s all they can do. There’s no facing the issue and discussing it; it’s all a very simple treatment. Every dirty job has to be done by the police. Then you become a police state, because they have to deal with every problem.” From Art Info 7 April: – Love the Future Indeed: In China, where countless government agents patrol sites behind the Great Firewall for any offending political content (and where telephone conversations are so closely monitored that some trigger phrases can immediately disconnect the call), it takes some creativity to voice opposition. The fact that even sympathetic publications universally self-censor to avoid reprisals is a sad problem too. So to rally citizens to protest the detention of Ai Weiwei, online commentators have taken up the slogan “Love the Future,” (爱未来) which both resembles and sounds similar to Ai’s name (艾未未). Calls range from the energetic (“To love the future is to love yourself. Fill the microblogs with love. Fill the motherland with love. Donate your love to the future of the motherland.”) to the despondent (“I really don’t dare believe that in this society, even love for the future can disappear”). [China Digital Times] AWW quoted in the Australian: “Dissidents are criminals. Only criminals have dissident ideas. The distinction between criminals and non-criminals is whether they have dissident views. If you think China has dissidents, you’re a criminal. The reason China has no criminals [dissidents?] is because they have already become criminals.” And from Bloomberg (above): Departing U.S. Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman said yesterday America will defend the rights of Chinese human rights activists such as Ai and jailed Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo. Future ambassadors “will continue to speak up in defense of social activists, like Liu Xiaobo, Chen Guangcheng and now Ai Weiwei, who challenge the Chinese government to serve the public in all cases and at all times,” Huntsman said in a speech in Shanghai. And, now, in The Age (7th April) there’s a story about “The Initiators and Organisers of the Chinese Jasmine Revolution” who are said to be the people who first launched the idea of a peaceful revolution on February 17. And Bob Dylan (on tour in China) appears to have accepted censorship of his playlist, and has kept his mouth shut over AWW. Great photograph in The Australian here. And reported here in the Washington Post. And for related ambient experiences, read Bill Shiller, at the Toronto Star. A slideshow of AWW’s work has been posted by The Washington Post. And here’s Imagine’s Without Fear or Favour on YouTube. From which these marble surveillance cameras were snapped:

See this nice article at Art Info.

Curious? Then read this great Bob Gosford post on Crikey.

For the last decade the recognition of the “moral rights” of artists has been incorporated into Australian Copyright legislation. The Arts Law Centre of Australia’s excellent website provides a plain English guide to these issues (and many others) here.

As explained at the Arts Law Centre’s site:

Moral rights are personal rights that connect authors to their work. Though they exist only in relation to copyright material, they are distinct from the economic rights included in copyright.

Moral rights arise automatically and have a legal meaning. There are three types of moral rights:

• Right of attribution: this is the right of an author to be identified and named as the author of his/her work;

• Right against false attribution: this is the right of an author to prevent others to be identified and named as the author of his/her work; and

• Right of integrity: this is the right of an author to ensure that his/her work is not subjected to derogatory treatment. The Copyright Act defines “derogatory treatment” as any act in relation to the work that is in any manner harmful to the author’s honour or reputation.

In a previous post your Iconophile listed 11 modes of curatorial practice which test the boundaries of “derogatory treatment”. Of course it is a brave artist who will challenge the assumed authority of the institutions of the art world by challenging the right of a curator to meddle with the “treatment” of their work. What actually constitutes “derogatory treatment” or harm to the artist’s “honour or reputation” has seldom been put to the test in case law, in order to draw some lines in the sand. And clearly neither expression is quite the same as intent and meaning, which lie at the core of artistic practice… Nevertheless, if a work of art is to retain its distinctive originality and value, the distinction between agency and authority is worth exploring in relation to such issues. In future posts I will look at some case studies of the question of attribution.

See these Google Earth selections from Jon Rafman’s site called 9-eyes.com.

When Sarah Palin used the dramatic term “blood libel” did she know what it means? She said “Journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible.” Of course SP and the other Tea Party activists deny that the use of “crosshairs” and other targeting metaphors used in their advertising was in any way inciteful or related to the Tucson massacre. See David O. Williams’ summary here. Or Gabrielle Giffords at The Daily Beast, where you can see some of the campaign images.

Here’s how Rush Limbaugh presents himself in Tucson. At The Atlantic.

I wasn’t familiar with the expression, so I turned to Wikipedia: “The libels typically allege that Jews require human blood for the baking of matzos for Passover. The accusations often assert that the blood of Christian children is especially coveted, and, historically, blood libel claims have been made to account for otherwise unexplained deaths of children.” And, “Historically, these claims have—alongside those of well poisoning and host desecration—been a major theme in European persecution of Jews.”

And then (reported by Jillian Rayfield on TPM) the Washington Post editorial upped the anti-Semitic thrust of such comments by suggesting that criticism of Sarah Palin’s comments amounted to a journalistic “pogrom” against conservative politics “the latest round of an ongoing pogrom against conservative thinkers.” Shifts the focus to journalists and “gun grabbers” both – it’s worth a read, if only to see the nature of contemporary conservative thought.

And for an analysis of the look of Sarah Palin’s speech, see Michael Shaw at BagNotes. And if you’ve missed them, while you’re there you can find the links to both Palin’s and Obama’s speeches – a salutary comparison.

Do curators have “rights” which supersede an artist’s Intellectual Property rights?  It’s one thing to criticise a curator’s thesis, or the complex decisions that are made in order to mount an exhibition or hang a collection. And sure, of course there is a particular mode of creativity involved in the curatorial process. But are these activities defensible as a higher form of Intellectual Property over that which is embodied in works of art? Some curatorial practices seem to assume this is the case. To open the question for critical debate, here is Iconophilia’s list of the eleven common ways in which curators may interfere with the Intellectual Property inherent in a work of art. As we witnessed in 2010, curators may/do:

1. redesign integral elements of a work of art

2. rearrange the elements of a work of art

3. frame it in a way that’s inconsistent with its original manifestation

4. hang it on a wall that’s painted in a dominating colour

5. locate it amongst competing architectural forms (for example, hang flat art on a curved wall)

6. exhibit the work in dynamic lighting conditions

7. subject the work to intense spotlighting

8. exhibit a work of art without giving attribution to the artist(s) (names)

9. vary the orientation of a work of art

10. ignore the artist’s instructions

11. use fragments of artworks as logotypes

Iconophilia seeks readers’ contributions of examples of the ways in which public institutions interfere with the integrity of works of art. If you wish to contribute to the Iconophilia database of the following kinds of curatorial actions which appear to infringe the integrity of a work of art which is currently on public display in a museum or art gallery, please download this pdf checklist.

Ben Davis: “The emblematic figure of “postmodernity,” in this sense — the person who stands at the nexus of its political, economic and cultural aspects — is neither an artist nor a philosopher, but Charles Saatchi.” Read on, in artnet, here.

Read this account of the debate in the NYT.