In the wake of the attacks of September 11th, 2001, the governments of Canada and the United States have passed sweeping anti-terrorism bills that effectively lay the ground work for the criminalization of ideas. One consequence has been the renewal of an old tradition in Western governance-the policing of freedom of expression. In Canada, a post-September 11th exhibit of contemporary Arab-Canadian art at the National Museum in Ottawa was abruptly cancelled by the organizers to allow the curators to "reconsider" the political works on display: the exhibition did go ahead as scheduled, but only after a determined public campaign challenging the museum's actions. In the United States events have taken a more sinister turn. FBI and Secret Service agents have begun investigating "un-American" art on the supposition that it aids and abets terrorism. The intentions are two-fold. Firstly, the investigations intimidate the artists, the owners of the art, and the institutions where the art is exhibited. Secondly, they assert the right of the state to police political expression. The following interview was conducted with James Harithas and Tex Kersten of the Artcar Museum in Houston, Texas, where one such "investigation" was conducted in early November, 2001. - Allan Antliff
Allan Antliff: Tell me about the Artcar Museum, its community mandate and past (politically radical) art exhibits.
ARTCAR: The Art Car Museum is a private institution dedicated to contemporary art. It is an exhibition forum for local, national, and international artists. Its emphasis is on art cars, other fine arts, and artists that are rarely, if ever acknowledged by other cultural institutions. The museum's goal is to encourage the public's awareness of the cultural, political, economic, and personal dimensions of art.
The museum was founded in early 1998. Below is a list of some of our previous exhibits that could be construed as politically radical.
"Secret Wars" is the exhibition the FBI and Secret Service investigated. September 2001 - February 2002
Richard Mock, "Hits and Kisses" featured Richard Mock's political linocut prints. May through September 2001
"Civil Society" was an exhibition of contemporary political posters from groups such as PETA, Refuse and Resist, the Coalition to Ban Landmines, and many others. November - December 2000
Ron Hoover, "Mr WTO" featured sinister portraits of the men behind UNOCAL, MAXXAM, and a host of corporate and military autocrats. May - December 2000
Antonio Turok, "Quien Es Marcos?" was a survey of his portraits of the Zapatistas. March - September 2000
Frank Fajardo, "Politics of Space," featured conceptual art from the 1970s and 1980s dealing with border issues, Chicano identity, and liberation theology. February - June 1999
"Bicycles to Bosnia" featured the photographic documentation of a relief expedition to Mostar Bosnia that distributed bicycles to Bosnian children from both opposing camps and brought them together in a cross-city parade.
November 1998 - February 1999
When did the FBI show up? Why did they state they were there? What did they do at that time?
An agent from the FBI and an agent from the Secret Service, working together, (presumably in connection to the joint terrorism task force which was convening for a conference in Houston this same day,) visited the museum on Wednesday November 7, 2001 at 10:30 in the morning. The museum opens at 11 a.m. They flashed their badges and told Donna Huanca, the museum docent who was opening the museum, that they had received anonymous complaints of Anti-American activity that they had come to investigate.
Ms Huanca gave them a guided tour of the show, and attempted to explain the works on view and answering their various questions. Some of the questions were general-they asked about the Museum's funding, its administrative infrastructure, its methods of advertising, and its average attendance. Others, however, were less relevant. They asked Ms Huanca personal questions such as "Do your parents know you work here?" and "What do you study in school?" Then, as abruptly as they had entered, they left.
What was the show on display? What specific content was deemed worthy of investigation by the FBI? On what grounds were they investigating it?
The show they were looking at was Secret Wars. The theme of this exhibition is artistic dissent to secret wars, a very open subject, and each of the 18 artists in the show responded very differently to the theme. There is work on race relations, stalking, vegetarianism, environmental policy, AIDS, and family histories. The show was organized in June 2001.
The majority of works in the show had already been selected by August, but after the events of September 11th a few of the artists created new works expressing their reactions to the events. Among these was Eric Avery's wall-size mural of the WTC in the moment after it had been struck by the first plane, above which an Arabic woman cowers in apprehension of a retaliatory US airstrike, and also a mural of the WTC collapsing painted in the fashion of Guernica by Warren Cullar. Interestingly enough, these works hardly registered with the agents.
The agents claimed they were responding to a complaint about a work that threatened the president. It turned out they were referring to a wall sculpture called the Empty Trellis Revisited by Houston artist Tim Glover. This piece consisted of a sculptural trellis, fashioned in the form of an exfoliated globe with intercrossing leafless vines, behind which he had drawn President Bush in charcoal. The piece bears an environmental message, obviously, but the agents wanted to know what the President was doing behind barbwire.
Other works that warranted their attention were Tim Glover's Flag, a floor mounted sculpture of the US flag in which the stars have been replaced by jet fighters and the stripes are alternately filled with oil and sand, a Gulf War diorama by Forrest Prince, which contains the alters a biblical text to read "Its Easier To Get a Camel Through the Eye of a Needle Than to Get an American Into Heaven," and a large painting by Lynn Randolph of an apocalyptic Houston skyline complete with George Bush Sr's head in the belly of a rampaging beast. Curiously, all of these works were completed during the first Gulf War.
How was the issue resolved? Or was it?
How they resolved it remains to be seen. We do not know whether they are continuing their investigation. What we have resolved to do is continue our work. We are adding work to the exhibition and extending it through February 2002. As the story has been circulating on the Internet we have received an enormous response from people across the country. People of all stripes have written us to describe their concern and occasionally outrage that the government is engaged in activities tantamount to thought control. The suppression of artists is an attack on free speech and unconstitutional.
For now, our position on this issue is as follows:
With the anthrax in the mailrooms and the blood in the air comes the death of ordinary time and the eclipse of freedom. As bombs fall, blood spills, and the coffers drain, a crosshair looms over our inalienable civil rights. Even our language has become a crime scene, with the FBI, Secret Service, and other police forces hurrying to monitor public discourse and shunt dissent. Memory, compassion, and clear thinking suffer. Under these conditions, artists become heroes. Their work alone can hold out against the choreographed emotions of wartime.
Your position on freedom of expression reminds me of a statement by the American anarchist Carl Zigrosser written during World War 1. I cite this statement in my book, Anarchist Modernism: Art, Politics, and the First American Avant-Garde. Let me quote it for you in full:
"I am opposed to all state-waged wars-all warfare organized and conducted by national governments. Such warfare is merely violence on a large scale instituted and made efficient by the state. It is legalized murder, the shifting of responsibility from an individual to an abstract and therefore souless corporation. . . . I am unwilling to give up in any crisis my privilege of free speech and intelligent criticism. It is only by the most relentless vigilance and examination that elements of civilization are refined and progress is ensured. And it is only be an absolute stand against the war that the path for abolishing it can be cleared. There are some things about which there can be no compromise."
Zigrosser regarded freedom of expression as inherently revolutionary. Can you elaborate on the social role of the Art Car Museum in this regard-as a forum for freedom of expression?
The government's attempts to force various thoughts, words, into the category of the unutterable, affirms our belief in the power of expression. Over the past several months our government and its hagiographers, has displayed a preference for a system of total control that is as close to Josef Stalin as it is to Joseph McCarthy. What they have tried to construct is a climate where they can imply treason, threaten artists, revoke grants, and bring their weight down against dissenters in all public forums. Real art begins with the potential for infinite expression and therefore threatens their control. That's the kind of art we're looking for.
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