2023-07-28 11:11:55
Marta Minujin, The Parthenon of forbidden books2017. Documenta 14 from Kassel
CENSORES
Marta Mantecón
“Every woman has known the torment of reaching the oral word, the heart that beats until it explodes, sometimes the fall into the loss of language, the ground that fails underfoot, the tongue that escapes; For a woman, speaking in public – she would even say that the mere fact of opening her mouth – is reckless, a transgression ”. The quote belongs to Hélène Cixous. Possibly, many of us have felt reflected in it at some time.
Silence has always been the best ally of repressive regimes. Taking the floor and creating our own voice in the public space has been one of our most valuable achievements.
In the late 1990s, the Iranian artist Shirin Neshat made Turbulent, a video installation on two opposite screens that won him the International Prize at the Venice Biennale in 1999. On the first, a man in a white shirt sings a popular song in front of an audience full of men dressed in the same clothing. In the second, a woman in black turns her back to the camera and waits for her turn. When the time comes, she turns and begins to sing. The sounds that she emits, deeply expressive and inarticulate, refer to an oral tradition that is transformed into a song of resistance, but the room is empty. Nobody listens to her.
Shirin Neshat, Turbulent1998
The relations between art and power have invariably been mediated by censorship, a disciplinary apparatus that has a history as extensive as that of our species, always with the same thresholds, from the Inquisition to the Witch Hunt through the Council of Trent, Nazism (and other totalitarian governments), until the expansion of neoconservative policies at the end of the last century and its prolongation in the neoliberal policies of the present. Restrictions on social media are just the tip of the iceberg. Self-censorship too.
In supposedly democratic contexts, the violence that the different forms of censorship entail draw an infinite repertoire: the veto against the representation of certain parts of the body of women (as long as the image in question is not covered by any stereotype), canceled projects, prohibited content, bureaucratic obstacles, cuts and economic suffocation. Casualization is one of the most dangerous forms of censorship, since it makes it impossible to work under minimal conditions of dignity.
Joan French, Silence1953
Since last May 28, 2023, the new far-right governments have begun to openly censor different cultural proposals due to their animosity towards any expression that comes from LGTBIQ+ and/or feminist groups. Two recent examples have been the ban on the staging of Orlando by Virgina Woolf in Valdemorillo (Madrid) or the screening of the animated film Lightyear by Angus MacLane in Bezana (Cantabria). The elimination of budget items dedicated to cycles, festivals and cultural projects related to our demands has only just begun. It is about muting ourselves, erasing ourselves, excluding ourselves and making ourselves invisible by imposing silence again. The reaction from different sectors of culture has not been long in coming and they are happening response actions in public space y announcements in defense of freedom of expression and creation, two inalienable rights recognized by the Constitution (article 20).
Difficult times are coming for culture and for women in particular, because periods of significant setbacks usually follow periods of significant setbacks – feminists know this well – and we run a serious risk of censorship and protection by some public bodies, which is extremely serious, since we start from the assumption that we are the institutions. How to defend ourselves from them then?
The history of censorship makes your hair stand on end, but it can also make you laugh. See, to give a case, the intervention of the Republican congressman Robert K. Dornan –from the second 42 of the video– in the House of Representatives of the Government of the United States, regarding the unusual debate on the installation of “The Dinner Party” (1979) by Judy Chicago. Today it is funny to listen to this nonsense, but the truth is that there is no worse deaf than the one who does not want to hear.
Ondina already said it in one of her best-known couplets*: “I don’t say anything bad / not even something daring / what happens is that people / have a very bad hearing”.
Who censors, is portrayed.
* The censorship
I would like the one who listens
never saw in my songs
not a single mischief
no second intentions.
because everything i say
there is nothing immoral
what happens is that people
he takes it all wrong.
And then I alone pay
many fines and displeasures,
when I what I want
is to please everyone.
and forgive me
those of censorship,
Well, I know that with me
they have it very hard.
I do not say anything bad
not even something daring
what happens is that people
He has a very bad ear.
And the consonant changes
in such a cruel way
that whatever I say
it is always immoral.
Just yesterday because I said
that my aunt is very deaf
some exclaimed:
I also have fat.
and forgive me
those of censorship,
Well, I know that with me
they have it very hard.
Undine (The most erotic couplets)
#CENSORSHIP #CENSORSHIP #MArt #Visual #Culture