Can't stand the heat? Get out of the kitchen!

Ask yourself, is this photo pornographic? Hardly, you say. And I agree. So why has it been banned from an exhibition at the Ballarat International Foto Biennale (BIFB)? Because one person did not like it, complained and got their way. Now you, I and thousands of others who like our art uncensored will not get to see the picture. Where is the democracy in that? Where is the protection of free expression? Where the right to participate in a cultural life free of government interference? It should be noted that the photo was to be exhibited in a room with a notice outside warning that the content might not be suitable for children.

This is not an appeal for a free for all. Of course there is a balancing act between the demands of free expression and community values. But there are various laws and protocols in place to help adjudicate in such cases. The Australia Council for the Arts has produced a set of protocols for working with children in art. In a case like this the protocols would require the photo to be assessed by the classification board. It's hard to imagine that the image would warrant anything more than a PG classification (parental guidance recommended).

So why did no one at the BIFB have the courage and moral fibre to follow due process, a process that is designed to respect the rights of all parties, not just moral vigilantes? You guessed it, funding. Tourism Victoria - a publicly funded agency doling out your and my money and a sponsor of the show - told BIFB that to show the work might endanger next year's funding. Enough said? You bet. Self censorship is not hard to "facilitate". So now we have unelected, faceless tourism bureaucrats curating our arts shows.

So how can we - the people who can look at a photo like this and not think of sex - fight back and get the debate back on an even keel? Let's start with a boycott. Take the pledge that you will avoid the BIFB until the censorship stops and the picture is put back on show. If Tourism Victoria thinks censored art is good for tourism, let's show them it ain't.

Art can be controversial. It can generate debate. It should not be reduced to the least challenging common denominator. If Tourism Victoria cannot live with that, it should get out of sponsoring art shows. If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.

Reading the past

I love reading old newspapers. It is a great way to get direct access to the way people used to think. It also bypasses hindsight as we see the strength of opinions held then that now seem laughable. Anybody who reads old newspapers will take today's opinions and truisms with a slightly bigger pinch of salt. Old news also teaches us how little genuinely new there is under the sun.

Take The Times exactly one hundred years ago today. Back then the Times reader could delve into articles such as 'The Importance of Art', 'Works Of Art And The Tariff', 'Literature In The Colonies', 'Mr. Shaw's Play In Dublin' as well as the announcement of the establishment of the Imperial Arts League.

Public debate about the arts was clearly alive and well. Back then censorship was the cause of many debates. One of the most heated on this day a century ago concerned the production of a play by George Bernard Shaw, The Shewing up of Blanco Posnet downloadable here or readable online at Google Books). The censor was unhappy with the portrayal of prostitution on the stage and concerns were also raised about the use of certain phrases from a religious context.

Perhaps what is most conspicuously absent from the article is something that does set the cultural climate of 1909 apart from that of today: the lack of threats to withhold funding for the offending play. In 1909 theatre was almost exclusively a commercial operation. Governments did not fund the arts. Today, when almost all - especially controversial - art relies on state funding, the possibility of such funding being withdrawn as a result of public controversy has the potential to assume the role of the government censor in Shaw's time. The process is more subtle and less overt, but the outcome more or less the same. Self-censorship is often the result as controversial artists today rub against the boundaries of social norms, just as they did in 1909.

© Brian Long 2009