Olivares, Rosa
When forms become concepts

BILL VIOLA, The Messenger, 1996

Miss Peal is really saying that anything imaginative, anything unfamiliar, or simply anything she does not like, is dangerous”.

Arts Magazine, March 1956

In the evolution of culture, some things have not changed at all since the origin of humanity. While we go to the moon and mars, and we discover the origin of life, we clone sheep and even children of the future, we still cannot cure a common cold. While the media has revolutionized the very way of waging war -one of the most habitual sports of man throughout history- and art is rediscovered in a thousand continually transforming facets, censorship, fear of freedom and the need to limit the imagination, are still as timely and contemporary as they were during the Middle Ages. In fact, we could state that the infamous historical Inquisition is still in force not only in the methods of torture and humiliation of individuals, but also in that absurd need to silence those who wish to say things in different ways, those who search beyond what is permitted, what is habitual, what is correct. Technological development, along with the evolution of all types of languages, have significantly broadened the possibilities of causing pain and also of hushing and prohibiting, eliminating dissenters in one way or another.

The problem of censorship is that almost no one wants to call it by this, its most simple and authentic name. Nowadays, the forms of censorship are transformed -dressed up- into economic problems, self-censorship, aesthetic re-definitions, or other problems are cited to prevent specific works from being exhibited, or even produced, measures that make artists change their minds, leave their countries, cease to be artists and become mere civil servants. Although in some places, censorship takes the form of imprisonment or the most public and direct prohibition, in the countries known as advanced, democratic, and other synonymous terms, the official budgets, the granting or withdrawing of financial support for creation is often censorship enough. Or, more directly, the market will take care of smoothing out what deviates too far from the correct channel. Although that correct channel may not always appear to be so, because it is a verifiable truth that, nowadays, the most adequate channel, that most distinguished by the market and the critics, focuses on a sort of provocation that, almost always hidden behind the genius and brilliance of young artists, a conformity and a desire to enter the star system of art and the most select show business club, which annuls any real criticism. Once again, we must recall that excellent show When attitudes become Form. Live in Your Head (Kunsthalle Bern, 1969).

PHILIP GRIFFITH JONES, Sensation, New York, December 1999

When forms become concepts, ideas, we are before a situation which requires intelligence and imagination. Neither is it admissible that one image alone be considered an intellectual salvation, nor can we avoid the fact that forms are the embodiment, the physical transmitters, of ideas and of feelings, of all those things that can hardly be expressed and that we sometimes do not even know how to explain. What is censored is what is not understood, what unravels power. Difference, variety, that which strays from the habitual is censored. Hence all that is new, that implies changes and produces a certain insecurity is susceptible to censorship if it runs into someone fearful and powerful enough to exercise that control. Although first, if he is intelligent enough, he will generate a means for that fear and insecurity to penetrate society to the extent that individuals willingly censor themselves and can thus affirm that official censorship does not exist.

The varied strategies of censorship are present on all levels of human communication. Naturally, they are more strictly regulated in public arenas than in private ones, although in private spheres, from the family to the couple itself, self-censorship, obedience to rules that often lead us to lies, deceit or double standards, are the seeds of latent censorship. In the same light, the authoritarian, intransigent and even despotic character exercising his power over some people closest to him makes us think that censorship is, in the last analysis, nothing more than a way of wielding power, a power that in many cases needs not be understood or even accepted by those it is imposed on. In fact, we shall see, little by little, that real censorship is applied only in those regimes or societies in which power is practically absolute or, for whatever reasons, unquestionable.

Censorship is applied, it has always been applied, in those fields in which intelligence, imagination and creativity can be used to criticize or deconstruct the social, cultural, economic and any other type of situation that is erected by the established power. We are thus witnessing a fight between two opposing forces: real power, force, laws, money, on the one hand and the imagination, ingenious, and also innocence and obstinacy on the other. Once again, forevermore, we have the struggle between David and Goliath. It is in the press, in education and in mass media and in social relations where censorship is applied most forcefully and assuredness. The same arenas in which a regressive or progressive education is formulated, where citizen opinion-making is done. Sometimes, censorship is unnecessary. When there is a way to pass laws or erect social structures that are sufficiently strict and inviolable, certain aspects of censorship become unnecessary. If clitoral ablation of millions of women is practised, it is unnecessary to censor the sexual pleasure of these women already impeded from experiencing it. If there are laws prohibiting private property, censorship of corporate conglomerations, in sales and purchases, cannot be applied. If television is outlawed and the right to literacy denied, if newspapers and books are banned (as in the regime of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia) censorship of the press becomes absurd, almost a sophistication.

IAN BERRY, Sharpeville, South Africa, March 21, 1960

Obviously, these extreme measures are taken only in countries that are underdeveloped socially and economically, or in those ruled by cruel dictatorial regimes. More frequently, laws convey an appearance of justice and equality while the reality is something quite different and behind those laws, applications, forms and situations are created wherein the very laws are used to defend other things, for example, through specific committees and systems of control. We are not surprised if we are made aware of censorship in Pakistan, but the Pakistan people are not surprised that in the United States the press is ‘asked’ not to circulate Islamic press releases, or that its articles are subject to review prior to their publication. These are two kinds of censorship, different in form yet similar in their moral base and in their results: ignorance and fanaticism, oppression and lack of freedom.

Here, it is unknown what is censored in Arabian countries, but we are astounded by the fact that in U.S. radio stations songs by the Beatles are censored because they mention “a ticket to ride” or scenes are changed in movies such as Spiderman in which the Twin Towers appear repeatedly. If the Taliban force women to cover themselves with burkas, we are all appalled by what we believe to be symptom of inconceivable cultural backwardness; but that a Spanish, Italian, Romanian, Portuguese women, as well as those from dozens of democratic and supposedly advanced countries, ought to mourn a husband or a father and wear black for years, without going outside when not absolutely necessary, is acceptable. The fact that, according to the latest official statistics, one out of every four women is battered in Great Britain, does not seem to be alarming or a cause for protest of any kind. Nobody discusses the fact that, in Anglo-Saxon countries, young people are kicked out of their homes en masse right after their high school graduation. Nobody reflects upon the fact that there is always a double standard at the heart of the acceptance or rejection of the rules and regulations of other cultures.

In the United States the well known First Amendment presupposes the absolute protection of freedom to express and disseminate ideas, to publish any type of publication (including instructions how to murder, chemical formulas for explosives, etc.), however, Senator MacCarthy set in motion the greatest witch hunt in the history of cinema, ruining the careers and lives of actors, script-writers and technicians; another senator, Jesse Helms, censored and discredited some of the most important contemporary artists. The once acclaimed ex-mayor of New York City, Rudolf Giuliani, personally discredited, prohibited and penalized contemporary art during his term as mayor of the Big Apple, to extremes heretofore unheard of in the art world of the foremost city of artistic avant-garde. Nevertheless, the current mayor of the same city sees his presence “amicably” suspended in the Little Italy festival parade for appearing with two actors from a TV series about a Mafia family. Censorship for all tastes. And more. These are some of the incredible contradictions we experience daily in contemporary society.