Indecent Exposure: A Discussion and Screening of Films You Are Unlikely to See Elsewherel

On Monday, September 27, NCAC and BFA Department of Visual & Critical Studies at the School of Visual Arts will screen a special not-so-late-night double feature picture show of controversial films Destricted and Ken Park. A discussion with the filmmakers about censorship and its effects on art will take place during the intermission. These films have been banned in countries around the world and are almost impossible to find in the US.

The event will start at 6:30PM and will be at The School of Visual Arts, SVA Theatre, 333 West 23 Street, New York, 10011.

Banned from the U.S. in 2006, Destricted was produced by an international team of curators including Neville Wakefield, Mel Agace and Andrew Hale. They commissioned some of the world’s most visible and provocative artists and filmmakers to make films exploring the issues around representation and sexuality. The NCAC and SVA will screen shorts by Matthew Barney, Marco Brambilla, Cecily Brown, Marylin Minter, Richard Prince, and Sam Taylor-Wood. The films

highlight controversial issues about the representation of sexuality in art, opening up for debate the question of whether art can be disguised as pornography or whether pornography can be disguised as art

according to the film’s producers.

The second film on the bill is Ken Park, by Larry Clark, director of the controversial and acclaimed film, Kids. Banned in Australia, not even available in the U.S., Ken Park is another extension of Clark’s keen focus in the life of young people.

Exploitative, deliberately provocative pornography? Courageous revelation of the secret life of teens? Calculated sensationalism? Telling it like it is? These are the arguments that will inevitably cause fur to fly anywhere in the vicinity of Ken Park, a sexually explicit slab of teenage ennui.

– Todd McCarthy, Variety

Between the two films, there will be a discussion panel with Andrew Hale (a founder of Destricted), Neville Wakefield (another founder of Destricted and one of the film’s producers), filmmaker Marilyn Minter, and Amy Adler (the Emily Kempin Professor of Law at NYU).

UPDATE: Announcing Documentary Film Director Tony Comstock to join Monday night’s panel discussion.

Landmark Obscenity Trial: HOWL film and discussion, Friday 9/24

Beat-icon Allen Ginsberg is getting a resurgence of attention, 13 years after his death at the age of 70. A movie based on the story behind Ginsberg’s signature poem, HOWL, opens this Friday, September 24. It stars James Franco as the young poet embroiled in a 1957 obscenity trial over the poem, which ended in a landmark win for free speech.

Join NCAC at the screening of HOWL on Friday September 24 7:40PM at the Angelika Film Center in NYC. There will be a special Q & A after the film, lead by Peter Hale and Bob Rosenthal of the Bob Rosenthal and NCAC Director of Programs Svetlana Mintcheva. (Can’t make this one? Check out other screenings here.)

Reason.tv‘s Nick Gillespie looks at why Ginsberg—a champion of gay rights, free speech, nonviolence, and drug legalization—still has a lot to teach us.  You can watch the interview here:

The First Amendment Center discusses the memorable – and surprising – opinion of San Francisco Municipal Judge Clayton W. Horn in favor of the First Amendment during the HOWL trial:

The opinion vindicated Ginsberg (then vacationing in Paris), liberated Ferlinghetti (the publisher of Howl and Other Poems, who, during his obscenity trial, prominently displayed the book in his store window), and celebrated the First Amendment as a constitutional haven for cultural outsiders.

Horn’s unpublished opinion eloquently declared:

“The authors of the First Amendment knew that novel and unconventional ideas might disturb the complacent, but they chose to encourage a freedom which they believed essential if a vigorous enlightenment was ever to triumph over slothful ignorance. . . . The best method of censorship is by the people as self-guardians of public opinion and not by the government.”

Against that philosophical backdrop, he added:

“Would there be any freedom of the press or speech if one must reduce his vocabulary to vapid and innocuous euphemism? An author should be real in treating his subject and be allowed to express his thoughts and ideas in his own words. . . . If the material has the slightest redeeming social importance it is not obscene. . . . [Obscene words] must present a clear and present danger of inciting antisocial or immoral action. . . . [If words are] objectionable only because of coarse and vulgar language which is not erotic . . . in character, [they are] not obscene.”

It was pure John Stuart Mill, pure Louis Brandeis, pure protection for dissident expression. This municipal judge, whose daily routine was traffic offenses and other petty infractions, understood and developed obscenity law in ways that would take the Supreme Court — and Justice William Brennan Jr., too — decades to work out in a multitude of First Amendment cases. Pure poetic justice it was.

The film stars James Franco in a career-defining performance as Allen Ginsberg, John Hamm, Mary-Louise Parker, Jeff Daniels, and many more.  We hope to see you there!

Decency, Respect and Community Standards: What Offends Us Now?

TONIGHT, NCAC and The Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School have invited several prominent visual artists to participate in a discussion about visual expression that provokes controversy today. Some of these artists are associated with the culture wars of the 90′s, others were more recently censored during the War on Terrorism. Have attitudes towards representations of nudity and sexuality changed since the 1990s culture wars? Are religious topics still as inflammatory? What is considered offensive or inappropriate under our current political climate?

A discussion on controversial and banned art:

Wednesday, September 22, 2010 – 6:30 to 8:30 pm
The New School, Tishman Auditorium, 66 West 12 Street, New York
FREE ADMISSION, general seating.

Participants include:

• Wafaa Bilal, Iraqi American artist, whose installation Virtual Jihadi was closed down by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York;
• Holly Hughes, performance artist, one of the NEA4;
• Trevor Paglen, social scientist, artist, writer and provocateur;
• Carolee Schneemann, pioneering feminist filmmaker and visual artist who has battled censorship for the last fifty years.
• Moderated by Laura Flanders of GritTV

The panel is part of a series of events on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Congressional decision to require the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to consider “general standards of decency and respect” in awarding grants.

For more information about the program, please visit How Obscene Is This!.

Is “controversy” a dirty word for arts institutions?

Last Wednesday NCAC and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School were joined by Bill Ivey, Beka Economopoulos, Magdalena Sawon, Nato Thompson, Martha Wilson, and moderator Laura Flanders of GritTV, to discuss public funding of the arts, free speech and self-censorship, and the impact of the Decency Clause. (Check out their bios here.)

In an interview with Laura Flanders just prior to the panel, NCAC Director of Programs Svetlana Mintcheva explained how arts institutions have increasingly perceived controversy as “a dirty word,” for fear that controversy over artwork would result in funding being eliminated. You can watch Laura Flanders’ interview with Bill Ivey and Svetlana Mintcheva on GritTV , here:

The panel, “Survival vs. Autonomy: Public Funding of the Arts, Free Speech and Self-Censorship,” began with a discussion about how the boundaries of the permissible have changed over the last 20 years. According to Bill Ivey, if the NEA would implement the actual words of the Decency Clause in its most literal sense – which was to ensure that

artistic excellence and artistic merit are the criteria by which [grant] applicants are judged, taking into consideration general standards of decency and respect for the diverse beliefs and values of the American public

– good change could actually come into effect [emphasis added]. Instead, art has become politicized. Ivey later reminded us, “As annoying as the Culture Wars were, at least we were having national conversations and they weren’t commodified.”

Among the topics discussed, Flanders asked, “Is it even good to have government funding?” But the panelists appeared disenchanted by the idea. “I’m too old and wise to ask for it because it would be a wasted effort,” says Postmasters Gallery owner Magda Sowan. Martha Wilson of Franklin Furnace noted the irony in that it’s easier to obtain funding to preserve slides of Karen Finley’s groundbreaking performance than it would be to fund the same performance today.

So what do we do?

Art should be smarter, said Beka Economopolus, and Nato Thompson pushed for creating artistic infrastructures that are community-based, such as FEAST. But the real issue, Ivey said, is that “policy engages culture piecemeal,” and the architecture of the current cultural political system “stands in the way of creating legitimate artwork.” A new kind of government agency, he recommended, should focus on the architecture of a more unified system but “keep its hands off [artistic] content.”

Want to hear more? Come tomorrow, Wednesday Sept 22 at 6:30 for a second panel and Monday, Sept 27 at 6:30 for the film screening.

Public Funding of the Arts, Free Speech and Self-Censorship

Tomorrow, September 15 at 6:30 PM, NCAC and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics, presents the first of two FREE panels on art and censorship. Panel 1, “Survival vs. Autonomy: Public Funding of the Arts, Free Speech and Self-Censorship”, examines how the introduction of the decency clause and culture wars over arts funding in general have contributed to a growing distinction between conservative and avant-garde institutions.

Joining us tomorrow is Bill Ivey, Director of the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy and former chair of the NEA (1998-2001). In the following interview with Douglas McLennan of diacritical (an ArtsJournal blog) last June of 2009, Ivey discusses the future of art policies and funding in America and whether or not the arts will have a higher profile in the Obama administration.

Ivey describes the trials of obtaining money for the NEA through the economic recovery bill, saying,

I went to see John Podesta [co-chairman of the Obama-Biden transition team] and he told me…he just didn’t think it was a good idea to specify the NEA in that bill, because Republicans will use it as a wedge into attacking the entire stimulus effort. He is of course 100% correct, Republicans attacked it … it took some heavy lifting – Americans for the Arts, David Obey the Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee – pushing back, pushing to maintain that $50 million, and it got done. But it was symptomatic of how hard it’s gonna be, to really change the way government and public policy interact with the arts.

The panel will take place at the New School’s Tishman Auditorium (66 W 12 St, NYC). Panelists include founders of new alternative spaces that seek autonomy from government funding, leaders of art projects that have been supported by the NEA, and key figures in public art funding: Beka Economopoulos, Founder of Not an Alternative and The Change You Want to See Gallery; Magdalena Sawon, Owner and Director of Postmasters Gallery in New York; Nato Thompson, Chief Curator at Creative Time; Martha Wilson, Founding Director of Franklin Furnace Archive. Laura Flanders of GritTV, Moderator.

For more information, visit How Obscene Is This! The Decency Clause Turns 20.

Sherman Alexie novel officially banned from Missouri school

A disappointing ruling came out last night regarding Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian in Stockton, Missouri. The Stockton School Board voted 7-0 holding firm in its decision to remove the book from school classrooms, notwithstanding pressure from many educators to keep it. The board also ruled in favor of banning the book from the high school library.

This all because one elementary-school parent complained about the book’s content.

NCAC joined forces with National Council of Teachers of English, American Library Association, American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, Association of American Publishers, PEN America Center, and Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators opposing the decision, saying,

No educational rationale has been advanced for removing the book, nor could one be plausibly made. The novel has received universal acclaim by literary critics and educators alike.

But board member Ken Spurgeon wouldn’t have it. He says,

We can take the book and wrap it in those 20 awards everyone else said it won and it still is wrong.

High school student Dakota Freeze, who is against the ban, explains exactly what a young person might gain from reading it:

This book in a nutshell is my hope. It’s not about giving up. It’s about not letting people tell you you’re not worth it.

It is the board’s sheer refusal to listen to educators, reviewers and – especially – students speak about the educational merits of Alexie’s novel that harms young people of Stockton. Not the book.

How Obscene is This! The Decency Clause Turns 20

When it was founded in the 1960s, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), a central part of its  mission was to support individuals and institutions producing edgy and innovative artwork.

Twenty years ago, as a result of pressures on behalf of Republicans in Congress and the religious right, Congress amended the statute governing the NEA to require that it consider “general standards of respect and decency for the diverse beliefs and values of the American public” when awarding art grants. A few years later the NEA budget was slashed and individual artists’ grants were eliminated. In 1998 the “decency” amendment was ruled constitutional by the US Supreme Court because it added just one more consideration to grant giving and did not oppose specific viewpoint-based restrictions.

Looking back from the vantage point of 2010, it appears the decency amendment – coupled with the removal of individual artists grants – did not so much become a reason to censor specific work as have a chilling effect on programming at recipient institutions. It also seems that the amendment shifted the NEA’s emphasis from supporting innovative original work to supporting art and art education that would not likely disturb mainstream standards and values.

There are many questions we need to ask today:

• How much has the constriction of NEA funding affected art production in the US?
• Have large publicly funded art institutions become more timid and mindful of “community standards”?
• In the absence of no-strings-attached government funding can art programming remain free of market and political considerations?
• Are cutting-edge artists finding non-public sources of funding and are they still challenging “community standards”?
• Is public funding for the arts no longer relevant to contemporary artists?
• Is it possible and necessary to push for a return of individual artists grants?
• Is it still useful to talk about artistic freedom as connected to funding?
• Does an artwork that likely violates the decency standard have anything valuable to say today ­and who is its audience?

These questions serve as the basis around a series of programs NCAC presents this September in collaboration with the Vera List Center for Art & Politics at the New School and the BFA Department of Visual & Critical Studies at the School of Visual Arts. The programs include panel discussions, film screenings and event-specific videos.

Check out the full program and schedule and register online.