An Intense Conversation about Politics and Art, Followed by Furniture Music. by risa
I received this invite to a happening/magazine launch/conversation in a mass emailing today. This gang of arty hoodlums down at the Societe des Arts Technologiques is opening up the floor for dialogue about the murder and censorship of Zahra Kazemi. And so this has me thinking, this morning, about the layers of technological and social silencing that are being wrapped around Kazemi, and the communal, creative way that the Upgrade is seeking to disrupt.
Illegally imprisoned, beaten and murdered while taking pictures of the protesting family-members of Iranian prisonners, someone, drunk with power and maybe even confusion and a kind of mindless fear, must have thought they’d stopped her relentless witnessing for good. And then, in little old Cote St Luc library, just a quick drive up the street from here, a few upset patrons had five of her photographs removed from an exhibit they had helped pay for. That is the meaning of a ‘patron’ after all- and personally, I always picture a condescending father figure paying for the world to look like what he likes when I think of patrons. This is the first recognizable fear involved in entangling art up in financial, contractual engagements: the fear of art becoming subject to power. Fundamentally, we fear that truth and our knowledge of the world will be distorted by power. Either by the power of patrons, or governments, or the web editors who removed the 5 photos from the one place they were on line, or liars, or murderers. This is the fear that haunts communication acts like art, but we sort of muddle our way forward anyway, feeling out relationships, trying to build a balanced and productive understanding. Every relationship –between nations, or patrons, or lovers– is caught in endless versions of this same old power sway. We are at the whim, in some ways, of each other’s fears and and nightmares and sorrows and desires. And always we fear our own disappearance.
With a little more effort I can imagine a patron with his or her own nightmare history, and decades of burrowing beneath business, family, and donations to a local cultural center, who does not just want to shape the world with patronage, but who fears an image’s power to erase complexity. Fearing the way an icon can obliterate the grey places of history, the sorrow and goodness and mistakes of all the lives on both sides that remain outside the photos frames.
This sentiment, if it actually is a part of the tangled narratives overlapping around this event, would be understandable but still, I think, misguided. I think for peace to be possible all kinds of truth would need to be told. So much truth that it is in excess of the simplified and sticky stories deployed by power to justify violence. We need heaps of pictures and personal stories to wash over the edges of the isolated, apocalyptic ideologies that stand like towers on either side of this strange old Muslim / Judeo divide.
Hopefully, people with all kinds of memories of the stories that have been lost, and the pictures that go unseen from Israel, Canada, Iran and Palestine will come out into Montreal’s nightlife on November 2nd to communicate, and then to maybe have a free drink with me and listen to the furniture sing.
UPGRADE! :: NOVEMBER ::
This month the Upgrade! ushers in the Fall with the Montréal
launch of FUSE magazine. FUSE is one of Canada’s longest-running
English-language arts and politics publications.
Montréal artist and activist Freda Guttman will discuss her work in the arts as well as its
intersection with activism and technology surrounding the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In particular, drawn from the upcoming
FUSE issue which will be available at the Upgrade, the topic of the
gathering will be the censorship, at the Côte St-Luc Library, of
murdered Canadian journalist Zahra Kazemi’s photographs of Palestine.
In this capacity the Upgrade welcomes Kazemi’s son Stephan Hashemi,
who will speak on the issue. We welcome discussion and debate, and
will present an intimate and open atmosphere to pursue dialogue. The
free event begins promptly at 7pm, followed by an open bar after the
presentations with electronic furniture music from curator and dj
tobias c. van Veen.
WEDNESDAY, the 02nd of November, 2005
La Société des arts et technologiques (SAT) - 1195 St. Laurent
19h00 - 22h30 / 7pm - 10:30pm
GRATUIT / FREE
http://theupgrade.sat.qc.ca | http://www.fusemagazine.org
Also this month, the Upgrade, as part of an international and
ever-expanding network, is pleased to present three new additions to
its curatorial team: Anik Fournier, Ruth Burns and Sophie Le-Phat Ho,
three active members and organisers of Montréal’s arts and academic
communities. Stay tuned as the Upgrade gears up for 2006.
- tobias, Sophie, Anik & Ruth
November 2005
== HORAIRE ==
19h00 - doors open / ouverture des portes
19h15 - Introduction à Upgrade & FUSE
19h25 - Stephan Hashemi: Zahra Kazemi exhibit @ Côte St-Luc Library
19h50 - Freda Guttman
20h15 - table-ronde / discussion
musique avec dj tobias c. van Veen
22h30 : Finito
=========
tobias c. van Veen
Concept Engineer, The Upgrade! Montréal
tobias @ sat . qc . ca
Sophie Le-Phat Ho
artivistic @ yahoo . ca
Ruth Burns
ruth . burns @ elf . mcgill . ca.
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