REFLECTIONS OF A WRITER: ART JOURNALISM IN
THE TIME OF ‘TERROR” AND “CONTROL”
By Ruth Skilbeck
This essay reflects my observations as an
art journalist and essayist on changes in the professional and creative field
of art journalism in Australia.
I discuss some impacts on my practice,
since the advent of the ‘war on terror’ in the early 21st century,
with reference to an essay I wrote on my practice as an art critic, artist and
writer that was published in 2008. I was
last week invited by the founder of Academia.edu, Richard Price, to put up a paper for discussion in a Session, on the global networking site for researchers, which has over 16
million members worldwide.
I chose to make Art Journalism and the Impact of ‘Globalization’: New Fugal Modalities
of Storytelling in Austral-Asian Writing (Pacific
Journalism Review 14 (2) 2008) available, as it was the first paper of mine
published in an academic research journal, and it was based on my practice as
an art writer, which has changed considerably over the decades, from when I
first published my first essay in the Irish
Times in the early eighties, aged twenty-two. The world has changed beyond
recognition then for writers and journalists. This has given the opportunity to
reflect on the changes that are happening now and to invite others to reflect
on what is happening now in media and communication, where our freedom of
expression and free speech are now the topic of much discussion and
contestation around the world. I raise a few questions that have occurred to me
based on my practice.
Much has changed since I wrote Art Journalism and the Impact of
‘Globalization’ and since the
feature stories I discuss in the essay, on the art of Guo Jian, and Charlie Co,
that were based on my interviews and reviews of their work, were published, in
Australian based art periodicals (in 2000, and 2003).
How has social media impacted on art
writing and the exchanges between writers and artists since then?
In my case, I more recently have moved away
to new forms of art writing critically reflecting on the self in the new
digital age. For example in essays on my research as a writer and novelist into
my mother’s unknown family background, and moving from observing to a more
creative role, via my photography and reflections on it. I have also published
the first novel in my series that explores silencing, trauma, and the impact of
(secret) adoption on generations of a postcolonial family. This seems
consistent with social media communication, and “posting”, opinions and images,
which is very much based on “the self”.
Yet this new form of social media communication many have adopted,
raises questions about what kind of a society we are becoming. How is this
impacting on art and art writing, and literature, and practices of art?
A further issue I am considering is: what
is the difference between having a writer writing about another artist, or
engaging in a dialogue for publication, as opposed to the now rather
ubiquitous, self-based, “social media”
conversations?
Is social media having a chilling effect on
art and writing, as we are now all writing under some kind of unknown gaze? Or
is social media communication for artists and writers, liberating?
How has this impacted on, and is it likely
to further impact on freedom of expression of the individual and in groups, and
communities, or nascent future communities that are linked by art practices?
Is it significant to consider that now in
our present moment, the most ‘valid’ or meaningful art writing of a writer on
an artist may be writing on behalf of, or in empathy. For those who are jailed,
imprisoned, punished for their writing and art?
It seems that maybe this has most impact
now (as it really always has, yet we hear more of it now, and it appears to be happening more).
The terrible assassination of the French
satirists in Paris this month, is another tragic case of ‘art journalism’
reflecting and changing events in the world, which had a violent and global
impact.
A different example this week is a
sensitive and empathetic feature on prominent contemporary Australian artist Ben
Quilty’s art mentoring of Australian artist Myuran
Sukumaran (33) who with the ‘Bali Nine’ was convicted
by Indonesian police for drug smuggling ten years ago, who faces death by
firing squad, in the coming months. He is sentenced to death for drug smuggling
ten years ago (Deborah Cassrels’ feature Bali death row: when the battle for
mercy hits the canvas,’ in The Australian,
23/1/15). Since he took up art three years ago, the feature quotes his friend
and mentor Quilty on now the reformed Sukumuran has started up an art school in
jail, and had a “sell out” show of his works.
It seems that maybe this kind of art
writing as reporting empathetically on behalf of those who are endangered
around the world, has most impact now. It is certainly prominent in the rise in
social media petitions. These include
this month the PEN petitions, reports and writings circulating on social media,
on jailed Saudi blogger sentenced to 1000 lashes for his website which was
promoting free speech, and freedom of expression. This is a punishment that takes place in public, and the lashes are so severe they cause severe internal damage and likely death. Due to medical reasons his second flogging has been delayed, as reported on 22. 1. 15. ( 'Flogging of Saudi Blogger Delayed Again on Medical Grounds,' Wall Street Journal, January 22, 2015). He was arrested in 2012 after "writing articles critical of Saudi Arabia's clerics" on a blog he created that has since been shut down. He was found guilty of insulting Islamic clerics, and of breaking technology laws.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/flogging-of-saudi-blogger-delayed-again-on-medical-grounds-1421950149
(I I first heard about this through American PEN, via social media Facebook).
Major changes since the journal article and
features were published show the changing terrain for artists and writers, and
that the struggle of freedom of expression as an artist and writer continues:
Guo Jian, one of the artists in the journal article,
whom I wrote on in Sydney fifteen years ago, has now been exiled by the Chinese
government, after returning there and working as an artist for several years,
he was arrested before the 25th June 3rd anniversary of the repressed 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests, and imprisoned, held in detention, for an artwork he made of
a miniature replica of Tiananmen Square smothered in rotting meat, a statement
art work he explained referred to the rise of consumer culture in China, yet was
destroyed and censored by the authorities. He was interviewed by the Financial Times, before the anniversary, for a story entitled 'Lunch with the FT: Guo Jian' by Tom Mitchell (30 May 2015). In it he is quoted as saying that the massacre in Tiananmen Square should never be forgotten or banished from historical record. After the paper was published, he was arrested. His arrest was covered by newspapers and broadcast media in Australia (for instance in the report, the same day, in the Australian 'Chinese artist arrested for marking Tiananmen anniversary' 3 June 2015, and in the Guardian, 'Australian artist arrested for marking Tiananmen anniversary' 3 June, 2014 and further by newspapers including the Financial Times ). Following discussion with Australia
(as he has Australian and Chinese citizenship) he was released from detention, and officially exiled
from China. He is now living in the US and working there. When I spoke with Guo Jian in Australia in the late 90s he spoke about his experiences both as a soldier in the PLA and then later as an artist, involved in protests in the square, and very bravely endangering his own life to go back into the flying bullets of the massacre and carry other wounded students to the adjacent hospital; this interview is in my story 'From Mao to Now' published in 2000, the first feature on Guo Jian and his first exhibition in Sydney at Ray Hughes Gallery, Trigger Happy, on the trauma that he suffered and his responses to the Tiananmen massacre, and which is reflected on in my journal article.
On the island of Negros in the Philippines,
Charlie Co has gained international recognition,
showing in international Biennales, and expanding his practice.
Meanwhile, the huge disparities in
resources, of money, in value, in the art world, and the anomaly of the prices
paid for art works (and how most artists live, in poverty) has shifted into the
global education sector, of arts and media culture degrees.
It is still evident in the auction world,
but a most striking development has been the migration of these forces into
‘education as business’, which crystallises some of the inherent paradoxes and
inequities facing artists working for nothing, whose work may then be sold for
vast prices, which they may receive no royalties from. It also focuses the
increasing controversy around art funding, and artists’ lack of a working wage,
for most, and in the early years, of studying when fees have become so high and
debt now shackles art students for life.
The growing concern about this is shown in
a New York conference last week on this, The Artist as Debtor: A Conference about the Work of Artists in the Age of Speculative Capitalism, Jan 23, 2015. .
(Incidentally I heard about this through social media networking, in a link
posted to facebook via a New School professor).
And another change in Australia, is a
perceived leaning to ‘control society’ that in the last couple of years saw the
controversial linking of the Biennale of Sydney with funding from the
burgeoning private prison/detention industry, with a director of the company
that now has the multi-billion dollar contract for running Australia’s asylum
seeker detention camps (prisons) on the pacific islands north of Australia,
Manus Island, Christmas Island and Nauru. Prior to the 2014 Sydney Biennale, there
were attacks on imprisoned asylum seeker detainees, and a murder of one, Reza Berati
an architecture student and asylum seeker. An independent review was held, and
the verdict reported in this this story by news.com, Review finds asylum seeker Reza Berati killed on Manus Island by Salvation Army officer and PNG security guards. (May 27, 2014).
The controversies and their causes have continued. In the
news now, is the hunger strike of 700 detainees, “swallowing razor blades and
“sewing lips shut” in protest (as reported in this story in the Sydney Morning Herald (Manus Island protest escalates, up to 700 detainees on hunger strike, January 19, 2015).
International artists who were making
collaborative art works with refugees shown at the Biennale, boycotted the
Biennale, and were supported by local artists, and the chairman resigned. (The
international artists returned to show their works, some local artists stayed
out).
In this way it seemed that Australia is
perceived as moving towards, or in danger of moving towards, the more
repressive approach of some Asian countries.
I wrote about this here on my blog (The Daily Fugue), as it was happening, I
interviewed artists, and covered the artist boycott of the 2014 Sydney
Biennale, a boycott which had the outcome of the controversial sponsorship link
being severed, then.
How have artists responded, and how are
writers writing on the changes we are living through, subjected to, and shaping
in art and writing? My blog writing on the 2014 Sydney Biennale Boycott is an
example, yet readers know, or can read, that it had repercussions for me (the
posts I wrote then are still up on The Daily Fugue.) The time that I was reporting on this on my blog was the time in which Australian journalists reporting on asylum seekers were being referred to the Australian police according to an article published in the Guardian published on January 22, 2015, by Paul Farrell. 'Journalists reporting on asylum seekers referred to Australian police'. Who knows what reach this has, and whether in my case this is relevant.
I had to go to court over the matters I reported on here, on this blog. The charges against me were later dismissed. (LInks to some of the posts I made at the time are listed in works and sources cited, at the end of the post, they are still on the blog, starting in February 2014).
How real is
the threat to freedom of expression, free speech and reporting on issues such
as funding and sponsorship controversies in the art world in Australia?
If art writing is a cultural historical
record, what is being written now, and what needs to be written to shape the
world for the better?
This brings into sharp relief the
intersection of art writing and politics, which is increasingly hard to ignore
in the social media age where our “mobile” and computer based communication is
being shaped by political policies.
This raises the wider question. What is the
value of ‘art journalism’ in the new world of social media, self based texting,
tweeting, blogging and Facebook, artist websites, and the so-called
“surveillance gaze” and the “control society”? The role of the art journalist
seems to have shifted (as it always has been) to the artist as emblematic
perhaps of the times (as much, by being against the times), recording –and
expressing- in their works the world they live in and their responses to the
most traumatic, affective, violent, impactful events.
This gives a new meaning to “art writing”
and “art journalism” shifting it to art’s writing and art’s journalism, or
rather draws out its social and cultural meaning as both reflecting, signifying
and changing – or “disrupting” conditioned communication and understandings of
what it is to live, as human, and retain our humanity, in our times.
This has been witnessed in the massacres in
France, of the Charlie Hebdo journalists, and increasing restriction of journalists, writers and artists exiled,
or jailed, and/or murdered, around the world.
These are just some first thoughts on reflection on
re-reading this essay I wrote on the art journalism essays I wrote at the turn
of the 21st century. Questions readers of the article may like to consider:
What are your thoughts on the role and
possibilities of writing, journalism, and communication of artists in the era
of social media communication, through blogs, websites, social networking, and
professional, academic and research sites such as Academia.edu?
What are the challenges, and opportunities, the threats,
and downfalls, and the more positive aspects of the new forms and modes of art
writing?
How can artists and writers continue to
write and make art freely, when –like anyone and everyone now it seems- their
social media communication is under a “surveillance gaze”? Does this matter?
Does it only matter if “you have something to hide” as is a common response, or
is it having further unforeseen impacts? What kind of new world are we now
entering and shaping?
One where the once hallowed ‘private’ space
of inner reflection and thought that we brought into our communication with
others, and is the space of art generation and germination in creative
processes, and thinking, is now increasingly laid open to unknown “surveillance”
and data collection? As so many artists and writers now use computers, and
digital devices, which are not private, but have a public (yet unknown)
function, of data collection. This
radically changes the once private realm of writing from the self, into an open 'communication' (Yet to what extent is this controlled?; private or open to whom?; to what degree does this apply to private writings on a digital word processor for example?) What role is the new art journalist playing in the new
“global” media world? How does this
affect the western concepts of the rights of the subject, and the private
person?
How can we create a more humane global
society in this time of ‘terror’ and ‘control’ and mass digital data
collection? Where ‘freedom of expression’ and the rights of the individual
subject, are re-emerging as subject of as much significance, and contestation,
now as at the start of western modernity.
What are the new challenges, and how can we
face them?
I plan to write and publish books in this
area soon. Queries and suggestions welcome. PostMistress Press is considering
publishing books by authors and artists on art and culture, literature, journalism,
and media studies in the future.
Ruth Skilbeck
Author and publisher
PostMistress Press
Ruth Skilbeck, PhD, is an author, novelist,
essayist and publisher now based in Newcastle, New South Wales.
Her novel Australian Fugue: The Antipode Room is out now, and on sale in global bookshops.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Australian-Fugue-The-Antipode-Room/dp/0992277922 .
Her essay Art Journalism and the Impacts of Globalization: New Fugal Modalities
of Storytelling in Austral-Asian Writing is in a discussion session on Academia.edu
You can read the paper and join the
discussion here:
Works and sources cited:
Skilbeck, Ruth (2008) 'Art Journalism and the Impact of ‘Globalization’: New Fugal Modalities of Storytelling in Austral-Asian Writing', Pacific Journalism Review 14 (2) 2008
Cassrels, Deborah (2015), ‘Bali death row: when the battle for mercy hits the canvas.’ The
Australian, 23 January 2015.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/bali-death-row-when-the-battle-for-mercy-hits-the-canvas/story-e6frg6z6-1227193747335
Mitchell, Tom (2014) 'Lunch with the FT: Guo Jian', Financial Times, 30 May 2015
Murdoch, Scott (2014) Chinese artist Guo Jian arrested over Tiananmen, The Australian, 3 June, 2014.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/foreign-affairs/chinese-artist-guo-jian-arrested-over-tiananmen/story-fn59nm2j-1226940612963
Branigan, Tania (2014), 'Australian Artist Arrested fro Marking Tiananmen Anniversary,' The Guardian, June, 2014. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/02/australian-artist-guo-jian-arrested-tiananmen-anniversary
Mitchell, Tom (2014) 'Lunch with the FT: Guo Jian', Financial Times, 30 May 2015
Murdoch, Scott (2014) Chinese artist Guo Jian arrested over Tiananmen, The Australian, 3 June, 2014.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/foreign-affairs/chinese-artist-guo-jian-arrested-over-tiananmen/story-fn59nm2j-1226940612963
Branigan, Tania (2014), 'Australian Artist Arrested fro Marking Tiananmen Anniversary,' The Guardian, June, 2014. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/02/australian-artist-guo-jian-arrested-tiananmen-anniversary
'Flogging of Saudi Blogger Delayed Again on Medical Grounds,' Wall Street Journal, January 22, 2015.
The Artist as Debtor: A Conference about the Work of Artists in the Age of Speculative Capitalism, posted to Facebook, January 22, 2015.
'Manus Island protest escalates, up to 700 detainees on hunger strike,' Sydney Morning Herald, January 19, 2015).
Review finds asylum seeker Reza Berati killed on Manus Island by Salvation Army officer and PNG security guards. News.com. May 27, 2014
Paul Farrell. 'Journalists reporting on asylum seekers referred to Australian police'. The Guardian, January 22, 2015.
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/jan/22/journalists-reporting-on-asylum-seekers-referred-to-australian-police?CMP=share_btn_fb
2014 – coverage of the Sydney Biennale 2014 and repercussions for this author-arts journalist. A few selected post (more on blog The Daily Fugue), starting in February 2014.
http://ruthskilbeck.blogspot.
There is more on this on the site.
No comments:
Post a Comment