A renowned South African artist is invited to exhibit his works in Europe, and is supported by a grant from the National Arts Council (NAC). As one of his works, and in protest against the government’s policy on Zimbabwe with its escalating human rights abuses, the artist urinates in public on a poster of President Thabo Mbeki.
Which of the following happens?
A. The president declines to respond to this criticism in his weekly Internet column but simply dismisses it by labelling the protagonist a typical piss artist.
B. Parliament cuts the budget of the NAC by half and threatens to merge it with the Scorpions.
C. The African National Congress initiates a five-part series on its website entitled The Sociology of Public Discharges.
D. The exhibition attracts record crowds and the artist donates a percentage of his sales to the Congress of South African Trade Unions’s next fact-finding trip.
E. The media are criticised heavily by ministers on SABC news for reporting on the incident ”unnecessarily”.
While this might be only a hypothetical situation for our young democracy to have to grapple with, Switzerland was caught up in an incident not too dissimilar to the one described above.
Thomas Hirschhorn, a well-known Swiss artist, held an exhibition in Paris entitled Swiss-Swiss Democracy, which was backed by Pro Helvetia, the Swiss arts council that distributes public funds in support of the arts. One of the components of the exhibition is a piece of theatre in which a ”dog” (played by an actor) urinates on a poster of Christoph Blocher, the Minister of Justice and a key figure in the Swiss People’s Party.
This resulted in the Senate cutting Pro Helvetia’s budget by one million Swiss francs, which unleashed a major debate about freedom of expression.
One political party proposed that the funding cut be reinstated, provided that the president of the arts council, Yvette Jaggi, resigns.
She declined, saying, ”I’ve always believed in a state that respects the independence of artists. The role of the authorities is to create favourable conditions for artistic projects.”
The president of the Senate commission for science, education and culture questioned whether this was the best way to use government money, particularly as the exhibition was critical of Swiss democracy, thus giving a bad impression of Switzerland abroad.
For its part, Pro Helvetia indicated that it does not necessarily share the opinions of the artists it supports, but simply fulfils it mandate of supporting the creation and distribution of Swiss art. The arts council vigorously opposed the cuts to its budget, labeling it censorship as it was a clear signal from politicians that they would punish the council for supporting projects that politicians deemed unacceptable.
As for the artist, apparently he has taken a stand that he will not exhibit in Switzerland while Blocher is in the Cabinet.
All of which goes to show that freedom of creative expression will always be contested, no matter the history or claims to democracy of the society in which it is being practised.
We are in the process of appointing a new NAC, a body established at arm’s length to the government, precisely to protect and defend the constitutional principle of freedom of artistic expression against political intervention.
Over the years, however, this principle has been eroded through ministerial ”ringfencing” of NAC funds for the minister to use as he wished, through the deliberate exclusion of independently minded individuals from the board, through changes to the law so that the minister now appoints the chairperson of the board (as opposed to the board electing the chairperson), providing a direct conduit of political influence and through the NAC itself telling an artist to change her work to make it more politically acceptable.
We have yet to have a board and a chairperson who have shown that they are able to stand up to politicians in defence of the arts and the practice of freedom of creative expression. What are the chances that it will happen this time?