Graffiti & Censorship II

Are chalk drawings illegal under local laws? Moreland Council city infrastructure director, Nerina Di Lorenzo said that chalk drawings were illegal under Moreland Council laws. (Tessa Hoffman, “A message for all” Moreland Leader 27/9/10 p.1) I have tried but have been unable to get a comment from Nerina Di Lorenzo but it does appear that Moreland Council has made it illegal for a child to draw a hopscotch pattern on a Coburg sidewalk.

The Moreland Council is highly unlikely to prosecute a child drawing in chalk on the sidewalk. The legal threats were the council’s response to the political demands of the chalk marks as that were part of the campaign for a high school in Coburg. Letters to the Moreland Leader the following week were all in favour of the chalkboard hoarding. The campaign for high school in Coburg doesn’t care they have also been using a sticker campaign to get their message out.

One un-stated reason for the state to enact draconian anti-graffiti legislation has been to censor and control the public space. And anti-graffiti legislation goes further in providing an excuse to censor computer games, films and magazines about graffiti because they promote illegal activity. For example, in 2007 70K, a local film about graffitists, including Renks who was a member of the 70K graffiti crew, has been censored by the OFLC (Office of Film and Literature Classification) and cannot be shown in MUFF (Melbourne Underground Film Festival). “The Classification Board also refused classification for the film, 70K, because it deals with crime (the defacement of public property) in such a way that it offends against the standards of propriety generally acceptable to reasonable adults. The film features documentary footage of people, with masks, disguises or their faces blurred out, vandalizing passenger trains and applying graffiti to walls in Australian cities, including Brisbane and Melbourne. The film is edited to rock music and does not feature commentary, interpretation, justification or explanation. In the Board’s majority view, the film glamorises and attempts to legitimise what are criminal acts committed in Australia and which have a negative impact on Australia and the Australian people.” (OFLC Report p.57) The filmmaker’s obvious mistake, as far as the OFLC is concerned, was not to have a pompous pedantic narrator and a soundtrack by Hildegard Von Bingen.

For more about graffiti and censorship see my blog entry from 2009: Graffiti & censorship. Trying to control and censoring the messages on the street is a reason for enacting anti-graffiti legislation. Anti-graffiti legislation is about censoring the young and poor. People passionately quote Heinrich Hein about burning books but anywhere that they destroy and censor they will also destroy people.

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Censorship is Offensive

Power will be asserted where it can be asserted. Censorship is an exercise in power. One person can’t change what is shown on TV, in public library books, at the NGV or Young and Jackson’s. But one person can get Melbourne City Council to censor an art exhibition because of nudity. The censorship of Cecilia Fogelberg and Trevor Flinn’s exhibition at Platform, ‘The Puma, The Stranger and The Mountain’ is an example of how easily Melbourne City Council caves in to pressure when it comes to art.

Melbourne City Council could have responded to the single complaint with the first point in the council’s Protocol on Artworks: “To encourage lively, critical debate and public conversation in an understanding atmosphere. This contributes to the perception of Melbourne as a city which manages its arts and related issues, however contentious, in an intelligent and informed manner.” (Protocol on Artworks, City of Melbourne 2005) But they did not; instead they joined in with the complaint. The perception now is Melbourne is a city which manages it art, when contentious, in an unintelligent, uninformed and knee-jerk manner.

We are, unfortunately, still in a culture war between religious zealots who believe that nudity is sinful and those who don’t hold this belief. The Melbourne City Council has showing which side of this war it is on, while pretending to “encourage lively, critical debate and public conversation in an understanding atmosphere”. Now some people maintain that Fogelberg and Flinn went too far, others that they didn’t. I think that this debate is a sidetrack; it is essentially a plea for tolerance of censorship. It is a way to avoid the real issue of why do we tolerate censorship? I find censorship offensive but Melbourne City Council would not do anything to appease my complaint because they do not believe that censorship is offensive – but they believe that some art is.

When I was looking at the ‘The Puma, The Stranger and The Mountain’ before it was censored a group of women passing commented on the nudity. But they weren’t really interested, not enough to look twice. Perhaps, Fogelberg and Flinn’s mistake was not putting up warning notices about the nudity, like everyone else does. Of course, these warning notices might have had the effect of drawing attention to the nudity and attracting hoards of school children to the art.

The Age 11th May 2008 has a report about the censorship of this art exhibition; http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2008/05/10/1210131335180.html And read my review of the exhibition in Platform & Counihan.