Shame on UN for Censoring Gun Sculpture.

I am most amazed that the United Nations, of all the institutions in the world, would succumb to pressure to censor art about the “Art of Peacemaking: the Gun Sculpture” by Edmonton artists Sandra Bromley and Wallis Kendal.  It is even more ironic when you consider the nature of the UN event in Vienna where the Gun Sculpture was displayed.  The UN Academic Council was meeting on "New Security Challenges" and
having speakers on the UN and the Media. (sic).

Sheila Pratt of the Edmonton Journal broke the story on the front page yesterday.  Congratulations to the Edmonton Journal for giving this important but not conventional story such prominent display.  Others have picked it up including the Montreal Gazette and the CBC, amongst others, with more interest being shown all the time.
I am very attached to this piece of art and have helped promote it in my own way for the past few years. I have helped bring it out of storage and brought it back from Europe for a display at The Works festival in Edmonton a few years ago. I am mostly interested in finding a permanent home for it...even considered the UN headquarters in New York, but with this development by the UN – you have to think twice.

The Gun Sculpture is one of the best examples I know of art doing its job. In no small part this piece tells us something about the human condition, ourselves and provokes strong reflecting reactions. By doing so, it becomes effectively controversial in a number of ways...all of them positive from my point of view.

The Chinese delegation at the Vienna International Centre was offended because a couple of the Gun Sculpture related photographs showed Tibetan victims, but did not reference any direct Chinese involvement with the victims. The Chinese delegation to the UN event objected to officials and insisted the Gun Sculpture be removed. The fact that the UN partially capitulated to such political pressure and removed the photographs of victims that forms an integral part of the exhibit is absolutely alarming. It makes you wonder what they were thinking especially since China was not singled out and this artwork has been displayed all over the world without similar incident.

The message of the Gun Sculpture is critically important.  It is in the form of a prison cell and made up of 7000 thousand of decommissioned weapons from handguns, to AK- 47s, to ammunition and landmines.  It challenges “accepted ways of thinking” about violence and “acts as a catalyst that makes (people) respond to the suffering” these small arms weapons cause for so many people in the world.

We need more artists like Bromley and Kendal and artwork like the Gun Sculpture to provoke our thinking and to make us reflect on our values, beliefs, perceptions and attitudes. I hope the artists get a formal apology from the officials at the UN, including those who made this decision to censor the Gun Sculpture.

Free speech is not free and if we are not aggressive in using it and vigilant in protecting it – we will lose it. The UN censoring of the Gun Sculpture is a shameful example of the erosion of free speech.

I hope this story has legs and others start to help to ensure this story travels around the world.  We need to get the Gun Sculpture message out and deplore the kind of violence and suffering these weapons are causing in so many places, in so many ways to so many people. 

We also need to get the message out about the place of art in illuminating this kind of core message about violence, suffering and aggression in the world. You would expect more support from the United Nations for endorsing that kind of core message and more respect for art as a way to communicate it, at least one would like to think so!  This shameful example of capitulation and censorship is not the kind of action we would or should accept from the United Nations.  They need to be more accountable and thoughtful about their role and responsibility on these core issues too.

Please forward this blog post around.  Share it with as many people as you can who care about free speech, the role of art in our society and who decry institutionalized censorship.

Is Harper Hiding From the House to Deliver the Quarterly Economic Report Card Tomorrow?

Prime Minister Harper will announce the next Quarterly Economic Report Card from New Brunswick tomorrow morning...not the House of Commons. This way he avoids the national media asking questions. There will be no news conference of scrum of the Prime Minister by the Ottawa media who follow the federal political scene day afer day. hard to conclude anything else that Prime Minister Harper is trying to bury the story tomorrow.

Here is a link to the CTV Question Period show with an interview of the Honourable John Baird, the Minister responsible for the stimulus program. Judge for yourself if he answers straight forward questions with the truth or just something that is "plausible."

This way our Prime Minister, the Right Honourable Harper does not have to respond to questions from the Opposition in QUESTION PERIOD. The economy of the country is in crisis but Leader of our country will not show up in an accountable, available and transparent way to advise the nation about the state of the nation.

Our Prime Minister Harper also avoided the Climate Change discussions at the UN and the General Assembly last week. Prime Minister Harper visited a Tim Horton's Donut place instead. We have hard issues to deal with in this country and we need a governing leadership that will show up and be accountable...and be capable of telling us the facts and in dealing with the facts.

I wonder if we can trust the truth of comments Prime Minister Harper will make tomorrow about the Canadian economy? Will he only give us "plausible" pronouncement and will he release documents that prove his claims about the economy in his presentation in St John New Brunswick tomorrow morning?

So far Mr. Harper has been consistently and chronically very wrong about telling Canadians what the Federal deficit really is and why. So there is reason for us to be suspicious of what he says. He has squandered any right to the benefit of the doubt from Canadians. What are the chances he will redeem himself and be truthful and forthright tomorrow?

There are also serious accusations about preferential stimulus program payments being made to Conservative ridings (are you thinking Conservative Adscam?). Prime Minister Harper has yet to counter those criticisms with any facts or other proof that they are wrong or inaccurate. He claims 80% of the stimulus money is already in the field so surely he can tells us where the funds are being spent on a constituency by constituency basis and how he arrives at that calculation.

Harper is clearly ducking the House tomorrow. Why? Is it beause he will also be ducking the facts and avoiding accountability and scrutiny of Parliament tomorrow. I hope his is not hiding and hedging the truth again. Canada needs the straight goods from its Prime Minister. The consequences are too serious for political gamesmanship form our Prime Minister. We need a Prime Minister who is capable of statesmanship. Which will we see from our Prime Minister tomorrow? I will be tuning in, that is for sure.