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 Biennale Board responded with an open letter stating that
“without Transfield there would be no Biennale”, and that they would do
nothing.
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withdrawn, act in protest at the source of funding from Transfield, Biennale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.”
Charlie Sofo has also withdrawn his work
from the 19th 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.
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.