Performance artist and Founding Director of Franklin Furnace Martha Wilson talks about the need of public funding for art that confronts people with reality and changes cultural discourse.
Part of the Power, Taboo and the Artist video interview series produced by the National Coalition Against Censorship and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at the New School on the 20th anniversary of the adoption of the Decency Clause.
Invited artists are videotaping their responses to the following questions:
1. What are or should be the taboos honored by cultural institutions?
2. Why should public funds be spent to support artwork that might offend some segment(s) of the general public?
3. In the U.S., as well as in a number of other countries, it seems that (self)censorship is often exerted in the name of “concern for the community.” Is that the case in your experience?
4. What alternative institutional models are emerging in your country in the face of restrictive conditions attached to public funding?