THE ART OF SUBJUGATION I was not intending to do so but I was persuaded to watch Sunday Morning Live - BBC 1 to hear what they had to say about the whole Brett Bailey, ‘Exhibit B - the Human Zoo thing. I applaud Lee Jasper for keeping his composure with virtually no support in an atmosphere of intimidation by a one sided and biased panel. The BBC even sought the views of irrelevant artists participating in an irrelevant festival in a place I forget. I am not sure I would have been that calm. It should now be clear to us that most of the media (and certainly the BBC) will either ignore or misrepresent each and every one of the many valid arguments put forward by the campaign. Some of us are of the mistaken view that this is because they do not understand what we were/are saying. No; it is precisely because they do. There are of course good reasons why we should remain engaged with the ‘wider’ debate. There are even more reasons why perhaps we should not - not at this point anyway. One of the things I believe we should not do is peruse dialogue with those that insist on describing the putting of African heritage people (or indeed any people) in cages so that people can pay £20 to gawp at them and calling it art. It is not art. Therefore the question of whether or not the campaign sought/seeks to censure art should not even be responded to, except maybe to restate that fact. Of course the counter argument will always be, what gives you the right to define what is and isn’t art. The response must always be ‘the same thing that gives you that right’. Remember if you have the right to define what art is then by extension you also have the right to define what it is not. They has to come a point when we stop having unrealistic expectation of the friends of Brett Bailey and the Barbican Theatre and focus on what we by now must know needs to be done.
Posted on: Sun, 28 Sep 2014 10:37:49 +0000
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