POWER TABOO AND THE ARTIST – VIDEO SERIES

 A series of videos of prominent artists, curators and critics (U.S. and foreign), created specially for this event, address the questions of arts funding and censorship around the world will be screened during the events and will be available on social media sites, including YouTube and Facebook, as well as on DVD to educational institutions and libraries.

Power, Taboo and the Artist: a series of video interviews with artists and curators worldwide

Check it out HERE.

The responses and creative comments of artists and curators worldwide to these and other related questions are collected in Power, Taboo and the Artist, an ongoing video project to be launched online September 15th 2010.

Follow this website for additional information on this program as it is being developed.

 

HOW OBSCENE IS THIS? – A CONVERSATION ON CENSORSHIP IN THE ARTS

In September 2010, the National Coalition Against Censorship, in partnership with the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School and the BFA Department of Visual & Critical Studies at the School of Visual Arts, held a series of programs to highlight the effects 1990s attacks on culture continue to have on art and society and to reassess the state of art funding, censorship and self-censorship today. The programs included panel discussions, film screenings and event-specific videos.

Bill Ivey, former Chair of the NEA and Svetlana Mintcheva, NCAC Director of Programs appeared on GRITtv. Host Laura Flanders interviewed them about the impact of the Culture Wars on the arts.

Bill Ivey and Svetlana Mintcheva Discuss Censorship from NCAC Censorship Videos on Vimeo.

 


PANELS

►The panels examined how the introduction of the decency clause in particular, and the culture wars in general, have affected funding, free speech and self-censorship, and how attitudes towards notions of decency and respect for the values and beliefs of the American public have changed over the past twenty years.

Survival vs. Autonomy: Public Funding of the Arts, Free Speech and Self-Censorship
September 15, 2010 at the New School Tishman Auditorium

Participants included:

  • Bill Ivey, Director of the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy and former chair of the NEA (1998-2001);
  • Beka Economopoulos, activist and founder of Not an Alternative and The Change You Want to See Gallery, an alternative space in Brooklyn
  • Magdalena Sawon, Owner and Director of Postmasters Gallery in New York;
  • Nato Thompson, Chief Curator at Creative Time, author of Seeing Power: Socially Engaged Art in the Age of Cultural Production;
  • Martha Wilson, performance artist and founding director of Franklin Furnace Archive.
  • Moderated by Laura Flanders of GritTV

Have arts organizations modified their programming in the aftermath of the culture wars? What alternative funding sources and strategies have they had to employ? How does the commercial market relate to the issue of decency and community standards? What is the future of government funding for arts institutions and individual artists? The panel examines how the introduction of the decency clause and culture wars over arts funding in general have contributed to a growing distinction between conservative and avant-garde institutions. Rather than worry about “community standards” and “decency and respect” for the beliefs of the “American public” (or the beliefs of those who claim to represent the American public) a number of alternative organizations have sprung up that simply forfeit – or are prepared to forfeit – government funding. Panelists include founders of new alternative spaces that seek autonomy from government funding, leaders of art projects that have been supported by the NEA, and key figures in public art funding.

 

How Obscene is This! The Decency Clause Turns 20: Panel I, Part I. September 15, 2010 from Vera List Center on Vimeo.

How Obscene is This! The Decency Clause Turns 20: Panel I, Part II. September 15, 2010 from Vera List Center on Vimeo.

 

How Obscene is This! The Decency Clause Turns 20: Panel I, Part III. September 15, 2010 from Vera List Center on Vimeo.

 

 

 

Decency, Respect and Community Standards: What Offends Us Now?
September 22, 2010 at the New School Tishman Auditorium

Participants include:

  • Wafaa Bilal, Iraqi American artist, whose installation Virtual Jihadi was closed down by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York;
  • Holly Hughes, performance artist, one of the NEA4;
  • Trevor Paglen, Social scientist, artist, writer and provocateur;
  • Carolee Schneemann, filmmaker and visual artist who has battled censorship for the last 50 years.
  • Moderated by Laura Flanders of GritTV

This panel looks at changing attitudes towards notions of decency and respect over the past twenty years. Have attitudes towards representations of nudity and sexuality changed? Are religious topics still as inflammatory? What is considered offensive or inappropriate under our current political climate? The panel brings together artists whose work provoked the culture wars twenty years ago and those who deal with taboo topics today.

How Obscene is This! The Decency Clause Turns 20: Panel II, Part I. September 22, 2010. from Vera List Center on Vimeo.

 

 

How Obscene is This! The Decency Clause Turns 20: Panel II, Part II. September 22, 2010. from Vera List Center on Vimeo.

 

 

How Obscene is This! The Decency Clause Turns 20: Panel II, Part III. September 22, 2010. from Vera List Center on Vimeo.

 

 

How Obscene is This! The Decency Clause Turns 20: Panel II, Part IV. September 22, 2010. from Vera List Center on Vimeo.

 

 

FILM SCREENING

Film screenings include films that were censored by means of direct suppression or just by very limited distribution. These films are still hard to find in the U.S.

Indecent Exposure: A Discussion and Screening of Films You Are Unlikely to See Elsewhere
September 27, 2010 at the School of Visual Arts SVA Theatre

greenpinkcaviar_006_1.jpg

6:30 Destricted, a collection of short films by visual artists, all exploring the boundaries between pornography and art. This will be the exclusive national pre-release screening of the film. Destricted has screened at the Tate Modern in London in 2006, Critics Week at the Cannes Film Festival, as well as the Sundance and Edinburgh Film Festivals. It includes films by Matthew Barney, Marco Brambilla, Cecily Brown, Marylin Minter, Richard Prince, and Sam Taylor-Wood., and others. 

Watch the trailer for DESTRICTED.

7:30 Discussion with Amy Adler, the Emily Kempin Professor of Law at NYU, documentary film director Tony ComstockAndrew Hale, Destricted‘s Founder, filmmaker Marilyn Minter, and Neville Wakefield, one of Destricted‘s Producers.

8:30 Larry Clark, Ken Park (2002), a film about the abusive home life of several skateboarders in California. Ken Park’s controversial sexual content has led  to the film being banned in Australia and to its very limited distribution in other countries.

Watch the trailer for KEN PARK.

 *Image: Marilyn Minter, still from “Green Pink Caviar,” in Destricted.

You can download the panel discussion from iTunesU, or watch it in sections here: