TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN
Art activism and cultural boycotts have been with us for many years. In1968, the 34th Venice Biennale was marred in controversy. Police guarded the entrance as student protestors rushed to occupy several pavilions turning artworks to face the walls and replacing them with anti-war banners. The protests were eventually supported by artists who refused to show their work in solidarity with the students.
Fifty-three years later it seems almost rhetorical to ask if art activism actually works. The outcome of the Venice protests, according to the New York Times, was for the organisers to adopt a more provocative curatorial agenda, establishing the series of exhibitions – which had been founded in 1895 – as forums for cultural debate. For example, the 1974 Venice Biennale was called Freedom for Chile, in response to the military coup there. Has the broadening of Venice’s remit filtered through to other institutions both here and abroad?
These concerns were brought into sharp relief in the run-up to Christmas, when artists participating in January’s Sydney Festival began withdrawing from their scheduled performances in protest at, 2000, created by Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharin. The deal also allowed Israel to display a rainbowcoloured logo in the festival programme. I assume that $20,000 is a mere drop in the Festival’s overall multi-million-dollar budget, and would hardly be enough to keep a dance company in pointes for a year. But it was the moral implications of the sponsorship more than the money involved that attracted attention.
