The lines that mean so much
COMMENT: Some lines on a piece of paper caused the Swedish artist to lose his freedom. Here at home, we can not have a freedom of expression commission without it going completely wrong.
It went a big way through me a little over a week ago when it started ticking in messages that the artist Lars Vilks was dead. In the name of honesty, there is reason to assume that knowledge of his art is limited. Rather, it was his “crime” that made him famous and a symbol of some of the most important and beloved things we have in a modern democracy. That is, the right to express ourselves freely.
The “crime” was a drawing. It was a line drawing of the Prophet Muhammad. Even as a so-called “roundabout dog”, ie a roundabout dog. The newspaper Nerikes Allehandai Örebro printed it, in 2007, as an illustration of a commentary on freedom of expression. Although other Swedish newspapers had published it earlier, it came to mind. Al-Qaeda promised a bounty to anyone who managed to kill him.
There were also some as experiments. In 2009, police unveiled and comprehensive plan to kill ham. In 2010, he was attacked at the University of Uppsala, before some tried to put me on his house a few days later. In February 2015, the attack came on Krudttønden in Copenhagen. The target was Vilks. Film director Finn Nørgaard was killed in the attack. Later that day, the same man, a 22-year-old Danish-Palestinian, attacked the synagogue in Krystalgade. A security guard was shot and killed.
Vilks lived with police protection around the clock. With good reason. He lost his freedom completely. Because of a drawing and because he exercised his freedom of speech.
Here at home, the government has appointed a freedom of expression commission. One can always discuss the need for a commission like this, but the debate around it has been removed absurdly. One of the members, Begard Reza – who is general secretary of Salam Norway, and organization for gay Muslims – withdrew in protest. The reason was that, according to an article she herself wrote in VG, “already in the first days of the Freedom of Expression Commission heard gross sexualized jokes about transgender people and #metoo activists”, that she can not “be an alibi for a politicized commission” and that “the Waste Ombudsman »Is Søberg became possible to attend an input meeting.
This led to 15 artists ‘organizations, including the Norwegian Writers’ Association, signing a petition requesting that the Freedom of Expression Commission “must address and take seriously” that “the climate of expression that has developed around artists living and working in Norway has in recent years become harder and of more attacking in character ».
That organizations that live by freedom of speech mean pictures of things was quite startling.
– Called on technology to place restrictions on free debate. I can not be a member of an association that supports the message of working artists against criticism and harassment, Roy Jacobsen told VG. And resigned from the writers’ association.
Then it just got wilder, because there were not so many concrete examples of actual threats. However, Therese Bjørneboe could, in the Norwegian Shakespeare magazine, point out that the stage artist Tormod Carlsen had received a number of anonymous Messenger messages, «of which to be perceived as very serious threats and reported to the police». According to Bjørneboe, the reports were “put under investigation, and the identities of the two senders were revealed, but the parties agreed that the case should be brought before the Conflict Council” and that “the two (still anonymous to the public) senders were fined”.
The problem is only with Carlsen’s case seems to be completely fabricated. What I all fall for is certain, is by the Conflict Council believe that I am abusing in the cause of the case and have reported Carlsen to the police for forgery.
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What about the rude, sexualized jokes? In early August, Nettavisen was able to reveal that Begard Reza had sent a new column to VG. Her framer can not stand as a freshman at VG that I can contact them to get a comment on your stand. And that was the sociology Kjetil Rolness. This animal we we because Rolness himself chose to go out with accusations which were directed against him in the article – which was never published.
In the unpublished article, Reza is said to have written that Rolness and another commissioner allegedly talked about and showed off their own genitals, albeit “under their clothes” – allegedly to “document that they were / were not trans women”. This must have happened in a dock.
Do some people believe this? That two of the participants in a meeting of a government-appointed commission show the genitals to document that they are not trans women? The task of art is to broaden perspectives, but this is crazier than most people can imagine.
You know a lot about freedom of speech, the outspoken Rolness, the “Waste Ombudsman” and the debate climate in social media and elsewhere, but it has all become a sad sight. Where results are unfortunately that the real and important debate about the position of freedom of expression in Norway has disappeared completely.
One can certainly be critical of the “Waste Ombudsman”, but it has actually been done where I can search for how public grants for the performing arts are used. He has, for example, pointed out that Vegard Vinge and Ida Müller have received NOK 37 million in public support to spray paint out of their asses. Which is to put it all on edge, but it’s not entirely untrue; parts of the 12 (!) hour-long production of “John Gabriel Borkman” in Berlin in 2012 are available on YouTube, and anyone interested in watching can do so.
If you choose to let your own art provoke, it is provocative for most people that you allow yourself to be provoked by others being provoked. When interpreting Ibsen with paint and paintbrush in the rectum, one should not be surprised if anyone has opinions about it. Especially not when the community is involved in taking the bill.
We spend hundreds of millions on supporting art and culture in Norway. That’s obviously true, but we should not tolerate a debate on this? Should art be so unassailable, free and privileged that its task is only to inspire, criticize and provoke – not to be the subject of criticism?
Of course not, because if we can not, we approach and reality that is similar to the newspaper and cartoonists are in. Here you can fool around, but not with everything. Religion, for example. The Prophet Muhammad should not be fooled. In any case, do not draw. Satire has its limitations.
I do not doubt that many artists, whether they interpret Ibsen with butt paint or something else, have experienced hardship. Threats too, probably. Some journalists also get, just so it is mentioned. And threats or the use of violence are never okay.
But there is a certain difference between messy messages in your inbox and getting Islamists after you. Which will really kill you. Lars Vilks experienced it. Kurt Westergaard experienced it. Because they drew the prophet.
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I’m not an art critic, but Vilks’ drawing of the Prophet is a very simple line drawing. Had it not been for the fact that it says “the prophet M. as a watchdog” at the bottom, the drawing would have been perceived as what it is. That’s nice. The lines – some might call them doodles – become quite significant.
And explosive. The violation hysteria we wade around in on a daily basis, where we allow ourselves to be offended and offended by trifles, becomes just and mild breeze for comparison. I am, by no means, a supporter of offending for offending. It is completely unnecessary.
But we must defend the right to do so. Therefore, I think I can place to the rapporteur in Porsgrunn that SIAN are welcome to Grenland this weekend. Even though everything they say makes me so reluctant that I get sick of it.
Happy weekend, Telemark!