Posts tagged censorship

Captives of the Cloud by Metahaven for E-Flux

“E-Flux this month includes an essay by Metahaven (Part 1 of 3) on cloud computing, international law, and privacy. ‘Citizens across the world are subject to the same Patriot Act powers’ the US has over its citizens’ as data stored overseas by US companies is still subject to US surveillance. The US also excersizes ‘super-jurisdiction’ in cases like the seizure of Megaupload, which was a Hong Kong-based company, the DOJ accused of “willful conspiracy to break US law” due it’s global user base. Furthermore, ‘all top-level domain names’ registered through VeriSign are subject to  US seizure, even if operated entirely outside the country. The essay continues, looking at examples of Apple’s App store censorship of Drones+, Google+ and Facebook real name policy, and other examples of the ‘cloud as a political space’”

America's H.R. 1981 A Turd Wrapped in Cotton Candy

“Background: H.R. 1981, the nefariously entitled ‘Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act,’ is actually a wide-ranging Internet surveillance bill that has no place in the United States of America. (Why not call it the Protecting Kittens From Harm Act? Or the American Prosperity Guarantee Act — just a B.S. name so that politicians in the House and Senate are strong-armed into voting for it, even though it contains utterly insane 1984-style Big Brother surveillance provisions. WebProNews recently called H.R. 1981 a ‘turd wrapped in cotton candy,’ actually one of the more diplomatic assessments of the bill.)” Videocast explaining H.R. 1981 in-depth at Business Insider.

PROTECT IP Act Breaks The Internet - PROTECT-IP is a bill that has been introduced in the Senate and the House and is moving quickly through Congress. It gives the government and corporations the ability to censor the net, in the name of protecting “creativity”. The law would let the government or corporations censor entire sites— they just have to convince a judge that the site is “dedicated to copyright infringement.”

The government has already wrongly shut down sites without any recourse to the site owner. Under this bill, sharing a video with anything copyrighted in it, or what sites like Youtube and Twitter do, would be considered illegal behavior according to this bill.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, this bill would cost us $47 million tax dollars a year — that’s for a fix that won’t work, disrupts the internet, stifles innovation, shuts out diverse voices, and censors the internet. This bill is bad for creativity and does not protect your rights.

Smut: Perversion for Profit: Vintage Anti-Porn Propaganda - “A vintage card from the Tea Party playbook, or what the Kama Sutra has to do with the fall of the Roman Empire” Fascinating look (from Dan Colman of Open Culture ), about the face of  Savings & Loan crisis of the late 1980s, Charles Keating and his involvement in Citizens for Decent Literature, and subsequent production of mid-1960s propaganda films like Perversion for Profit, which he hoped would make the visual case that pornography, and homosexuality threatened to undermine America as a civilization.

New Graphic Novel Documents Trial of 'Forbidden Art' Curators

“’Forbidden Art’ (Zapretnoye Iskusstvo), a 158-page documentary graphic novel published by Boomkniga Publishers in St. Petersburg earlier this month, deals with a situation in which the state and church joined forces to suppress dissent in present-day Russia. With drawings by artist Viktoria Lomasko and text written mostly by artist and former political journalist Anton Nikolayev, both from Moscow, the book documents the legal trial of the organizers of the ‘Forbidden Art 2006’ exhibition held at the Andrei Sakharov museum and community center in Moscow in 2008. The trial was brought by the Orthodox Christian nationalist movement Narodny Sobor (People’s Council)”

Facebook's Nudity Ban Often Runs Afoul of Art Groups

“Facebook has repeatedly disabled users’ accounts for posting images of Gustave Courbet’s The Origin of the World, 1866. The erotic work of art, in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, falls foul of the site’s prohibition of offensive materials. Facebook’s censorship has led to online campaigns encouraging users to change their profile pictures to show the work.”

Wojnarowicz Censorship Shit Storm Viewed From Britain

“Europeans are not, which is why they have reacted to the Smithsonian flap with the same mildly appalled bafflement that they express toward American opposition to the health care bill. It all seems inexplicable to them. Cultural free expression and the independence of public arts institutions, like the right to medical treatment, are taken for granted across modern Europe. Since at least the war these have been considered basic rights.”

Smithsonian Releases Report on Visitor Reaction To NPG’s ‘Hide/Seek’

From Tyler Green’s MAN: “A visitor study of  the National Portrait Gallery exhibition “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture” conducted by the Smithsonian’s own Office of Policy and Analysis and published yesterday found strong visitor approval for and appreciation of the show.  The report indicates that visitors formed strong intellectual and emotional connections with “Hide/Seek,” that visitors overwhelmingly praised the NPG for presenting a scholarly, inclusive exhibition that brought together social history and art history, and that visitors were perplexed by the Smithsonian leadership’s censoring of the exhibition.”

Do These Images Really Threaten the Very Fabric of Our Society, Corrupt our Children and Poison the Well of Moral Goodness We All Live by?

While poets and writers may wonder if anyone pays attention to their words, nobody can deny the power of images. Just ask the religious right. They are, after all, the ones who object the loudest, push the hardest, punish the harshest, and pray the loudest. More than anyone, they know the value of symbols, signs and metaphors.

Smithsonian Air-Clearing Forum on 'Hide/Seek' Exhibition Is Anything But

“…expect a two-day exercise in misdirection, generalized obfuscation and CYA posturing…Not on the agenda: the organized protest, based on anti-gay animus from conservative Christians, that led to the censorship”

The Wojnarowicz/Smithsonian Censorship Shit Storm Continues - Smithsonian Chief Defends Withdrawal of Video, digging a deeper hole, Clough pats himself on the back in an e-mail to staff. Meanwhile LA Raw is Staging A Protest Against Smithsonian Secretary Clough when he speaks on Thursday at the Biltmore Hotel.

The Wojnarowicz/Smithsonian Censorship Shit Storm Continues - Smithsonian Chief Defends Withdrawal of Video, digging a deeper hole, Clough pats himself on the back in an e-mail to staff. Meanwhile LA Raw is Staging A Protest Against Smithsonian Secretary Clough when he speaks on Thursday at the Biltmore Hotel.

Developing Stories About The David Wojnarowicz Smithsonian Censorship Scandal - Was Smithsonian Chief G. Wayne Clough’s hasty decision to remove a video by openly gay artist David Wojnarowicz from the “Hide/Seek” show at the National Portrait Gallery following protests by Republicans and conservative Christian groups influenced by a previous run in with anti-gay religious groups and Republicans at Georgia Tech?There’s a growing consensus that Clough should resign from his position, The Washington Post notes Clough’s lack of leadership and his continued silence on the topic. Tyler Green points to the growing growing second scandal in the Wojnarowicz censorship ordeal.A Canadian artist, AA Bronson is seeking to have one of his works withdrawn in protest from a National Portrait Gallery show. The work in question is Mr. Bronson’s “Felix, June 5, 1994,” showing the corpse of Mr. Bronson’s partner shortly after he passed away of AIDS. The National Portrait Gallery is refusing. Art Fag City explores What AA Bronson Can Gain From A Smithsonian Shit-In.Hyperallergic explores the Wojnarowicz scandal and the idea that a call for censorship breeds demand and dialogue.

Developing Stories About The David Wojnarowicz Smithsonian Censorship Scandal - Was Smithsonian Chief G. Wayne Clough’s hasty decision to remove a video by openly gay artist David Wojnarowicz from the “Hide/Seek” show at the National Portrait Gallery following protests by Republicans and conservative Christian groups influenced by a previous run in with anti-gay religious groups and Republicans at Georgia Tech?

There’s a growing consensus that Clough should resign from his position, The Washington Post notes Clough’s lack of leadership and his continued silence on the topic. Tyler Green points to the growing growing second scandal in the Wojnarowicz censorship ordeal.

A Canadian artist, AA Bronson is seeking to have one of his works withdrawn in protest from a National Portrait Gallery show. The work in question is Mr. Bronson’s “Felix, June 5, 1994,” showing the corpse of Mr. Bronson’s partner shortly after he passed away of AIDS. The National Portrait Gallery is refusing. Art Fag City explores What AA Bronson Can Gain From A Smithsonian Shit-In.

Hyperallergic explores the Wojnarowicz scandal and the idea that a call for censorship breeds demand and dialogue.

Art Critic Jerry Saltz’s Open Letter to the Republicans of the 111th Congress

“I would like you to know about a similar threat to decency. Right now, during the season when many children are passing through the Metropolitan Museum of Art on their way to see the Christmas tree, there are on view numerous Greek vases that depict men with erections, many of them cavorting with one another; paintings of children standing on their mothers’ laps and urinating; multiple depictions of mothers breast-feeding infants; scores of Oceanic wooden sculptures that depict male figures with enormous multiple penises; Rene Magritte’s painting showing only pudenda covered in a damp mat of dark pubic hair; Francis Boucher’s naked woman alone in bed rubbing her vulva on the bedsheets, and another holding a dog between her legs…” (go ahead keep reading it’s quite good…)

Barbara Kruger’s 1989 Controversial Mural For MOCA - “Barbara Kruger was commissioned by MOCA to paint a mural for 1989’s “A Forest of Signs: Art in the Crisis of Representation,” a sprawling show that also included works by Barbara Bloom, Jenny Holzer, Jeff Koons, Sherrie Levine and Richard Prince. But before the publicly prominent mural went up, curator Ann Goldstein presented the plan at a neighborhood meeting. All hell broke loose…”

Barbara Kruger’s 1989 Controversial Mural For MOCA - “Barbara Kruger was commissioned by MOCA to paint a mural for 1989’s “A Forest of Signs: Art in the Crisis of Representation,” a sprawling show that also included works by Barbara Bloom, Jenny Holzer, Jeff Koons, Sherrie Levine and Richard Prince. But before the publicly prominent mural went up, curator Ann Goldstein presented the plan at a neighborhood meeting. All hell broke loose…”

Blu Says MOCA's Removal of His Mural Amounts to Censorship

MOCA director calls the fiasco a communication mishap that would have offended the nearby community, reactions are mixed. Corporate whore and street art appropriator Shepard Fairey proves once again, that his stupidity is matched only by his lack of talent; runs to Deitch’s defense.