Sightlines

Must today's artists meet certain conditions before they can work in Quebec and Canada ? A first glance tells us that censorship and repression remain exceptional and rare forms of proscription here at home, where they are inevitably met with cries of protest from the intelligentsia, cries that are sometimes seconded by the general public. The situation is quite different in countries under the yoke of military dictatorships like Argentina's,' in totalitarian states such as the Soviet Union, or wherever there is obscurantism associated with the kind of fanatacism we see in Iran. In this connection, we may read the following comment from the Association internationale de defense des artistes victimes de la repression dans le monde (AIDA) : For having recounted true events, artists-be they writers, filmmakers, musicians, or painters-are intimidated, censored, proscribed, incarcerated, tortured, and murdered in a growing number of countries. Reasons of state, which serve as arguments in the absence ofproof, forbid all criticism and individual freedom of expression or opinion, particularly where artists are concerned.

The intolerance our state apparatus shows towards certain groups or individuals does not rely on denunciations carried out in a climate of fear and systematic violence. Rather, a pluralistic array of ways of thinking and acting only camouflages quieter and more subtle, but no less effective, forms of censorship. In the words of Ignacio Colombres, "self-censorship begins where censorship leaves off, and what happens then is sadder and more sordid."' In place of fear, one has strategies designed to transform citizens into "harmless and docile subjects." It is important to keep in mind that any criticism by artists of those accommodating or validating functions the powers that be would have them perform is met with either censorship or self-censorship, regardless of whether we are dealing with television, radio, newspapers, books, music, visual arts, or education. This political relationship will always be marked by failure, for contemporary art turns all forms of censorship into a loss of institutional control despite the fact that, in its quest for control, the existing ideological apparatus has a powerful trinity to deal with every imaginable form of dissent.

First among these are government regulations, whether national or municipal. In the form of laws and standards, these regulations define and sanction socially acceptable forms of behaviour. In them we find, under the sign of violence or the sacred, coercion as the foundation of social life. Historically, good and evil, normal and abnormal, healthy and pathological, legal and criminal have been filtered through a variety of controlling agents ranging from the priest to the soldier and including the judge, psychiatrist, technocrat, and educator. Everything begins and ends with rules. In art it was the Academies which, as arms of the state, sought to regulate and standardize artistic creation; in this endeavour, they have dwelt less on actual works and more on the very imaginations that produce them.

In the second place we have propaganda which makes use of an official style in totalitarian countries and a pluralist permissiveness in liberal regimes. In both cases, however, the function is the same: to make cultural production conform to the norms of economic and political consumption. At this juncture the state institutes, under the cover of progressive reforms-insofar as social struggle and change can modify existing policies -a real and increasingly sophisticated process of recuperation that systematically forestalls the subversive impact of even the slightest deviation from the norm. The demand that the "techno-bureaucratic society of controlled consumption "6 makes on artists and citizens is quite simple: accept the limits set by the system. In Argentina, for example, the junta requires that artists abstain from all social criticism, every form of abstract or politically committed art, and all denunciations of militarism-actions the authorities consider "inimical to national traditions. " In Canada and Quibec, political polemics and artistic experimentation are permitted, but in low-impact "parallel" venues and among experts of the art elite.

The third controlling force consists of a brutal restoration of order involving punitive repression or the destruction of works deemed to have transgressed accepted limits. This is the stage in which censorship assumes dramatic features. Repression, censorship, and self-censorship form the very core of class society, regardless of whether it is capitalist or socialist. Every time the authorities resort to such means, the set-back is felt along two fronts: the shock to the system is as great as the rebuke experienced by the rebellious. Every act of repression only draws the noose tighter around those forces that keep the ilite, with its codes of good conduct, in power.

Every society argues for a sense of identity (e.g., nationalism) commensurate with a specific cultural development and economic system. In this quest, the fine arts have always been entrusted the task establishing a system of rules that reflect the homogeneity and tradition of power. Today, the aims of cultural policy (even when it is progressive) and those of art converge in an apparently harmonious manner to meet the objectives of the dominant class through works that glorify the values and prestige of those who have been successful; or, failing this, art serves as a neutral witness to reality, to what justifies this "success."

In Quebec society, there is no doubt that the art market has subjected artmaking to the laws of commerce. Despite this subjection, however; cultural policy has certainly been advantageous to contemporary art. The emergence of numerous public programmes funded by Quebec's ministère des Affaires culturelles and the Canada Council have opened up new options to artists

This new "social" contract has, as it were, given a breathing space to a number of art projects that are incompatible with the servility demanded by both private sponsors and the world of business. But let us not deceive ourselves. This organized system of art is shrewdly intended to create the kind of "funded" mentality associated with regular monetary support from cultural programmes. Acquired outside the art market, such permissiveness is enshrined in rules of operation and a specific type of venue, the universe of "parallel" art spaces.

At this stage it is more appropriate to talk in terms not of censorship but of recuperation via self-censorship. The impact of political denunciations of power in galleries serving a small, informed clientele is inevitably negligible. Intended from the outset to be cunning, the trap combines a "funded" mentality with little-known and poorly frequented outlets designed for siphoning off those "issue-driven" energies whose message is condemned to be understood only by those in possession of the proper codes. This is one of the political dimensions of Explorations and other programmes, such as the Ose-Art grants made to community groups.

Is this the "liberal" solution to the control of art? Obviously not, because this willingness to support whatever happens to favour the system of power-the money doled out to official art institutions is many times what artists receive in grants-and its control of anything likely to contest it, necessitates censorship. This situation can be explained as follows. The new options open to artists have placed renewed emphasis on a certain level of social commitment, a development that can be observed in a number of practices confined to the "avant-garde," notably, criticism of art institutions and the dematerialization of the art object.' Often, strategies such as these clearly do not fit into the official mould.

Recipes for artistic production (training in art departments, exhibitions in private galleries or state museums, academic art history) that were meant to tie professional success to economic status have been less effective than anticipated.

Official art discourse rarely mentions such dysfunctional episodes as the iconoclastic destruction of works or images, or the highbrow pillaging of popular culture in the industrial, urban age. With sponsors, publics, institutions, artists, and works all in the fray, obvious distortions keep creeping into the picture. An artist transgresses the limits set by a client, a work or an artist is rejected by the sponsor or public, institutions ignore certain works, succumb to in-fighting-the censorship one observes in each instance points to a disruption of the established order.

If certain art practices inevitably draw censure upon themselves, this is not (says Hervé Fischer) owing to any quality, intention, or subversive militancy attributable to the artist, but simply because the system reacts negatively to questioning." Censure is heaped upon the arts every time they (in however marginal a way) say something that is not in the official discourse. Yet an artist who shakes up the social scene neither necessarily nor deliberately attacks the authorities-except (and this is fundamental) insofar as he or she draws attention to the conditions that initially prompted him or her to act. The threat to society comes not from art works but from the social conditions that so often prompt artists to act. The most vehement exhibitions or calls to revolution are weak compared with the brutality of daily life, with its regular diet of violence, injustice, and hypocrisy."

We can safely say, without any risk of error, that the social role of contemporary artists hardly justifies the extent of the repression they feel world-wide. Yet the authorities obviously take the opposite view. In their estimation, the degree to which docile art glorifies them signifies the potentially corrosive power it can acquire once it becomes confrontational. The tables can easily turn; all it takes is an accusing finger levelled at the authorities, or some action or work that discloses the aspects of reality slated to be suppressed. Moreover, censorship reappears the minute politicized artists adopt institutional means of production to denounce social injustice.

Recent events confirm that "unofficial" art milieux bear within themselves the first faint stirrings of socially oriented communication aimed at a concerned and nonelitist public, impulses that eventually find an outlet in the public forums of the streets and mass media. For example, during the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal, artists made use of large-scale events such as Corridart to get their message across. There is no way that art works and practices that take place in the public sphere (as opposed to within the confines of the avant-garde) can avoid censorship. Nothing unforeseen or planned must be allowed to stand. Fly the flag at half-mast! In a pluralistic society, such institutional attempts to censor are publicized and denounced, in the process generating debates that occasionally even make it to the courts. Every act of repression, whether it takes place in the courts (the liberation of Paul Rose), the theatre (the fate of the play Les fees ont soif), or the visual arts Uordi Bonnet's mural at the Grand Theatre in Quebec, Corridart in Montreal) exposes the nature of the dominant ideology. It becomes easier at such moments to see the relationship between the values those in power truly espouse and the means they are ready to use to co-opt and repress every trace of opposition.

Debates engendered by acts of repression or censorship also throw light on the collusion that exists between the various agencies controlled by the establishment-for example, the news media, the judicial and legislative apparatuses. Two cases will illustrate my point. The first involves the dispute kindled by the message that artists Peloquin and Bonnet inscribed on the mural of the Grand Theatre in 1971. It read: "Aren't you sick of dying, you bunch of suckers! Enough is enough." At that time, private televison stations in Quebec were unstinting in the airtime they made available to Roger Lemelin, then spokesman for the ruffled bourgeoisie and subsequently president of the newspaper La Presse. Likewise, in a judgement handed down in 1981, a certain Judge Deslauriers concurred with the view that art should promote such elitist values as complacency and honour. He gave institutional, legal, and moral sanction to the dismantling of Corridart, a decision taken unilaterally by the Mayor of Montreal.

While such events do disclose certain forms of repression, we should not forget other more sophisticated forms that are just as real.

Budget cutbacks and administrative wrangling ostensibly justified by financial restraints weigh heavily on most of those cultural and artistic groups who depend on grants for survival. In this, censorship and selfcensorship reign freely. In 1975, for example, Québec City's Galerie Comme lost its Canada Council funding just as its members decided to adopt a political approach to artmaking. And in 1980, Montreal's Articule received no financial backing for an event that supported Amnesty International by showing artists' solidarity with political prisoners around the world. Surely these are vexing coincidences! Such conditions of repression and censorship, here as elsewhere, confront contemporary art strategists with a political choice: either conform willingly to the laws of the art market and grant-application criteria and produce charming but silent art, that is, make art for art's sake; or opt for a course of action which, while acknowledging the limited usefulness of existing cultural structures, takes every opportunity to force institutions to break their silence and speak out on the conditions affecting artists in particular and citizens in general.

I have already put forward the idea of cultural guerrilla warfare as a form of opposition to permanent careers within institutions." In other words, one should create works, events, and other forms of intervention that not only flout the sophisticated mechanisms of prohibition but also show solidarity with cultural workers. In this connection, AIDA's position on the fate of persecuted artists is worth reading: It is imperative that artists the world over now join together in order to collect and distribute information, record testimonies and make the name of the most humble of the oppressed, whether interred in some dungeon of Buenos Aires or sequestered in an insane asylum in Moscow, known throughout the world. Artists must no longer be satisfied with signing petitions, but must take to the streets and display their solidarity instead of providing security for those in power. They must ask questions and make their own governments accountable, something which the latter tend to resist. Finally, they must fight alongside those who have already fought to secure a basic respect for human rights."

Of course this type of committed action is in conflict with the established order and makes no concessions to servility. Yet censorship by itself tends more and more to signal an admission of failure insofar as it leads to the denunciation of the commodities sought by those in power. In opposition to repressive mechanisms, contemporary art must promote the challenge of social change. "Mercantile art, which depends on a score of merchants or functionaries, is, in the eyes of some, a dead end."' Thus we must, as Fischer so aptly put it, "relinquish the symbols of social standing and the elements of aesthetic decoration"" in favour of the lucidity that comes with being an artist. He breathes new life into those art practices that probe beneath the surface of social reality.