BIENNALE BOYCOTT- ART CRITIC DIARY

BIENNALE BOYCOTT-ART CRITIC DIARY: PROTEST FROM WITHOUT V. PROTEST FROM WITHIN

By Ruth Skilbeck 4.3.2014

This year I will not be on the boat of media arts writers, critics and journalists to Cockatoo Island, a main exhibition site of the Sydney Biennale and one time convict prison in Sydney Harbor. Since 2003 when I started Arts Features International I have accepted media preview invites, and have always before enjoyed the full day of previewing the international contemporary art spectacular, which over the years has become bigger and more spectacular, especially since expanding to Cockatoo Island, a few years ago. But this year I will not be on the bus, and ferry circuit, hurrying between the MCA, AGNSW, Carriageworks, and Artspace; viewing the works and able to interview and photograph artists from around the world.

 I have made the decision to boycott the Sydney Biennale 2014, and instead, I will write about the art and ideas of the group of prominent international Biennale artists, who are boycotting the Biennale in ethical protest about the source of sponsorship from detention industry profits by Transfiel

The group of international and Australian artists who have withdrawn form the Biennale are: Libia Castro, Ólafur Ólafsson, Charlie Sofo, Gabrielle de Vietri and Ahmet Öğüt.  They announced their decision to withdraw in an open letter to the Biennale Board. http://19boswg.blogspot.com.au/2014/02/statement-of-withdrawal-from-19th.html.

The artists announced their decision to withdraw from the Biennale after signing an open letter (a total of 45 artists out of the 92 Biennale artists) requesting the Biennale cut ties with Transfield, the Biennale sponsor, promoted by the Biennale. http://19boswg.blogspot.com.au/2014/02/open-letter-to-board-of-sydney-biennale.html

The Biennale artists posted this with a press release on the #19BoS Biennale Working Group blog they started for this purpose: “Blog created by artists involved in the 19th Biennale of Sydney to discuss the call to boycott the Biennale over its sponsor Transfield's involvement in offshore mandatory detention.” http://19boswg.blogspot.com.au/2014/02/press-release-artists-working-group.html.

Included in their posts of Thursday 20 Feb an information sheet on the ties between Transfield, the Biennale of Sydney and Australia’s Asylum Seeker Policy, outlined the connections between these, and the reasons for the artist concern. Resulting in their call for the Board to sever these unethical ties. http://19boswg.blogspot.com.au/2014/02/transfield-biennale-of-sydney-and.html.

The Biennale Board responded with an open letter stating that “without Transfield there would be no Biennale”, and that they would do nothing.

http://19boswg.blogspot.com.au/2014/02/open-letter-to-board-of-sydney-biennale.html.

The five Biennale artists who have withdrawn, act in protest at the source of funding from Transfield, Biennale sponsor and construction company, which has last week increased its now 1.2 billion dollar contract to provide “welfare” services to Australia’s offshore refugee and asylum seeker detention (internment) camps, which have been condemned by witnesses and former workers there as “concentration camps”. Transfield has now taken over all the services for the detention camps on Manus Island and Narua. (And I will also be writing about other arts events in Sydney between March and June, the span of the Biennale).

The decision by the boycotting artists was in response to the much-reported horror of the detention camps—despite the government media blackout (“We forbid reportage. We censor news."

Elizabeth Farrelly, SMH 27 Feb 14.)

Just under two weeks ago, a 23-year-old man Reza Barati was murdered in the mandatory detention refugee camp on Manus Island on 17 February. Reportedly he was hit in the head repeatedly with a wood object, in a protest when security staff, and machete wielding locals attacked the refugees. The protest occurred after they were driven to despair and some expressed their in protest following a meeting with a PNG official on Sunday afternoon. After leading the refugees to believe otherwise, officials had confirmed that they could not be settled in PNG, following their being told they cannot go to Australia, despite Australia being a signatory to the international Refugee Convention (which states that Australia will resettle asylum seekers who met the criteria of refugees; and that anyone who has reason to flee their homeland for fear of death on political and environmental grounds if they stay there, is a legitimate asylum seeker.

"Article 31 of the UN Refugee Convention - which we naturally signed - forbids host countries from penalising refugees who declare themselves and show cause. Articles 32 and 33 forbid their expulsion or refoulement to any place of endangerment through race, religion or belief.

Article 26 requires the host to allow free movement. Articles 27 and 28 require provision of identity and travel documents. Other articles require the same rights to education, housing, employment, artistic freedom, social security and ''sympathetic consideration'' as accorded to nationals. Article 16 requires free access to courts of law.”- Elizabeth Farrelly, SMH 27 Feb

The horrific facts, of the murder, and attacks, are now on record, and confirmed, and have been repeatedly questioned and discussed, in Australian social media, where the reports and news first emerged, then mainstream media, and finally in the Australian parliament, where there are now calls for a royal commission, and for the resignation of minister, Scott Morrison, who gave misleading reports for several days, which hid the truth.

 

It was in response to this— to the reports of the death of Reza Barati and the serious injuries to many other asylum seekers in the attacks on them with rocks, wooden sticks, and machetes, as well as shots fired by attackers inside the enclosure of the detention refugee camp which is already being run by Transfield— the group of artists put out their public statement on Thursday Feb announcing their withdrawal from the Sydney Biennale (which opens on 21 March) in protest at the Biennale funding from the detention camp profits.

The Biennale artists protest began after the announcements that Transfield was taking over welfare service as well as garrison services to the detention centres. Tranfield has been providing services to the detention camps for the past two years, during which time there have been numerous reports (as documented on this blog) about the inhumane and illegal conditions. Most of the artists, and probably all the international artists, had not known of this link of the sponsors, prior to the news, and the call to boycott the Biennale that was put out in an open letter on a website, by citizen and academic Matthew Kiem, February 6 just under a month ago.    

Prior to the call to Boycott in early February there had been an earlier call to boycott the Biennale, made in 2012, at the end of the last Biennale, by Van T Rudd, artist, after the announcement by a prominent Transfield director, in a talk at the Biennale (cite) that the company was taking on services in the detention industry. However, the majority if not all the prominent international Biennale artists did not know about this, as they state, of their lack of knowledge and the lack of information given to them, that they document in their open letter: (quote)

So when the call to boycott the Biennale came in February, on the grounds of the increasing funding from the detention camps, this took the prominent international Biennale artists by surprise, and prompted much discussion over what they should do in response, to news that many found deeply ethically abhorrent.

 As open letters stating objections, and protest, began to appear on public blogs and online sites (which is the form and place in which this early debate and discussion has so far played out), the prominent international Biennale artists were put into a position where they felt they had to act, and state their views, and ethical position, on the news of the sponsorship funding from detention camp profit. They started up a blog in which to discuss publicly their views.

The debate is now escalating on social media and has been picked up in the mainstream media.

Meanwhile artists who have withdrawn have gone about the practical business of removing their work, cancelling their flights, or returning to their home countries.

On Friday 29 Feb, artist Gabrielle de Vietri, removed from Cockatoo Island her large installation work that includes heavy planter boxes, and relocated the work in a new site not part of the Biennale. A rapidly requested team of helpers assisted her, after she put out an urgent request through social media, and Facebook, asking for the assistance of  “burly men and women” to help her move her work from the island.

Although the artists have requested that the Biennale clearly indicate the absence of their works, in the place they would have been, so far this has not happened. In the brochure, online, of the Biennale, for example an article on the Sydney Biennale blog (not to be confused with the Biennale Artists blog) last week advertised the works of prominent artist team Olafur Olaffson and Libia Castro and that suggests they were part of the exhibition still. These are two of the artists who have withdrawn their work from the Biennale, to protest the sponsorship funding by detention camp profits. Their works are not on display.

 Ahmet Öğüt  representing Turkey is another artist who has withdrawn his work from the Biennal in protest. He wrote an article on why he has withdrawn his work from the Sydney Biennale, published yesterday. In his open letter he says:

“What I see here is a lack of ethical transparency; a last-minute call from an Australian citizen to boycott; a Biennale team and board that has known of its sponsor’s engagements for a very long time; invited artists left uninformed; as sponsor, Transfield Holdings without a clear distinction from Transfield Services, who is very well aware that their business decision as a major contractor on the highly criticized refugee detention camps at Manus Island and in Nauru is ethically indefensible; and the implications of this both on the cultural scene, and on the broader discussion of Australian citizens demanding an urgent change of policy from the Australian Government.”

Ahmet Öğüt, 26/2/14. http://xborderoperationalmatters.wordpress.com/2014/02/26/ogut-biennale

Charlie Sofo has also withdrawn his work from the 19^th Biennale of Sydney. His work will now not be on display at the Biennale as he is protesting, against the sponsorship funding from detention camps.

The City of Sydney’s Clover Moore has publicly stated opposition to the funding, and to mandatory detention camps, as reported.

Yet the Biennale Board has chosen to retain its dubious link.

One of the complicating factors in what has been described as a “complex” situation which the Biennale curator, Juliana Engberg, said leaves her “between a rock and a hard place”  is that a director of Transfield and son of the founder of Transfield, is also the chairman of the Sydney Biennale, and the new Director of the board of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, as well as on the board of the Biennale. http://dailyreview.crikey.com.au/juliana-engberg-why-spectacular-need-not-be-dumb/.

And it was following the lecture by director Luca Belgiorno-Nettis at the end of the last Biennale that first began the calls for protest (watch the video of his lecture here); after this Van T Rudd (coincidentally nephew of the former PM) called for a boycott. There was an attempt to protest at the time within the Biennale, by local artists who were not Biennale artists, joined by activists from Occupy Sydney that was happening at that time.

Since then there has been unrest within some in the local arts community, over these sponsorship detention camp links, however there was no active call to boycott, and as previously shown, the prominent international Biennale artist did not have this information.

The prominent international artists at the Biennale became aware in early February of the controversy over the detention camp funding, and when the call to boycott was made public in a blog article, by academic Matthew  Kiem. There followed, on social media, an intense and passionate, and often aggressive volley of posts, or a campaign, aimed to intercept an actual boycott of the Biennale. One or two very loud voices, took up and amplified the directive of the Transfield directors, posted during this Facebook debate on the public Transfield website- to keep discussions and diverse opinions and views on “how to treat refugees” within the confines of the Biennale itself.

For a couple of weeks there was a noisy obfuscation, generated by the vocal self appointed spokespeople on Facebook, that sought to claim that the Biennale sponsor Transfield, was not really involved in the detention camp funding. It was this effort at denial, designed to stop a boycott, and the confusion that was generated through Facebook posts, in an aggressive and relentless attack on any who tried to point out otherwise, despite the research that some (including myself) had done into this (and the links to the evidence that clearly showed otherwise, in Transfield’s own website, and publicly available reports of their profits) that compelled the actual prominent international Biennale artists to conduct their own research, into the sponsorship links. I personally witnessed and was subjected to this bullying on Facebook.

Even when Transfield made this link clear by referring to the different components of the Transfield “brand” on the website, this still did not quell the efforts to undermine those who had done this research, and knew, and posted, the links. This did not seem to deter those (local artists) who were seemingly trying to stop a boycott. It did not stop the bullying of any who spoke out for the historic legitimacy of non-participation by art critics, and audiences, or withdrawal (in other words ‘boycott’), as a form of democratic protest, in a series of angry Facebook ‘status updates’ and comments ‘threads’. Mentioning, as I did, that it was due to the international boycott that stopped apartheid in South Africa, led to even further bullying, and even a comment, a few days later, in an article by Helen Razer, who cynically added that when she was young  activism led her to write: ‘I believe I thought I had stopped apartheid’.  http://dailyreview.crikey.com.au/sydney-biennale-artists-divide-over-dirty-money/.

Despite the evidence, the people in the noisy strident ‘anti-boycott’ campaign adhered to the line that ‘protest is more effective from within’ and that any other form of protest was a form of “bullying” and “wedging the artists”.

Meanwhile the actual Biennale artists had conducted and commissioned their own research and were making up their own minds as to what to do and what actions to take.

This led to their independent petition to the Board, and the subsequent boycott by five prominent international Biennale artists, who have withdrawn from the Sydney Biennale in protest. I am now in contact with two of these artists, although had not had any contact with any of the prominent international Biennale artists, prior to the withdrawal this week, of the five artists in boycott.

Meanwhile, the bullying and aggressive denials, and attacks on me, on Facebook, have ceased, as I have thankfully been “defriended” (twice) for daring to put the views, that “protest from within” in such a situation as this, whilst it may be a valid choice for people to make, is not in my view, going to be an ultimately effective response. And that boycotting is a legitimate form of protest.

The artists who decide to boycott show the most effective response. They are the ones who will be recorded as having the courage to stand up for what has become one of the most significant symbolic and political issues of this time of global capital, the attempts to colonize, “brand”, and corral freedom of expression, by capital and in this case art sponsorship by detention industry profits, where art is used, and can be visibly seen, to add value and cultural capital to the sponsor.

The five artists who are boycotting the Biennale refuse to let their art be used in this way to “add value” to the brand of a sponsor and patron promoted by the Biennale, whose detention industry profits they do not endorse.

For this I applaud their actions, and support their decision to boycott.

We can all learn from their ethical leadership, that there are some sacrifices that are worth making, and ethical causes that are worth standing up for, even in the art world which has been criticized in Australia for its cynicism and lack of effective social and political engagement. This year the actions of these Biennale artists show otherwise, that art does not have to be coopted by capital, and that art as a means of advancing our universal humanity, comes before money and there are some artists who will not sell-out.

The prominent international five who are boycotting the Biennale, are the artists who give us hope for humanity, and show that art is more than a spectacle, but a means of political and social and human engagement; and authentic ethical communication with humanity around the world. Art is what makes us feel and be our selves as human, with compassion, tolerance, and empathy for others that cannot have a price, let us keep it that way.

Ruth Skilbeck, March 1, 2014.