“Speech Matters”
curator: Katerina Gregos
link: The Danish Arts Agency
txt: Danish Pavilion 2011 Curator’s statement
The exhibition aims to provoke a considered debate and to complicate the issue of freedom of speech which seems, more and more, to be used as an empty slogan for political purposes, and subjected to a very simplified, biased or populist debate when in fact it is an extremely complex, often ambivalent issue which is contingent on subjective political, social, cultural, religious and personal circumstances. The discussion around freedom of speech is therefore not only complicated but also highly relative and debatable, and the exhibition aims to highlight these intricacies, ambiguities and grey areas, emphasizing the fact that freedom of speech cannot be exercised or applied in any programmatic or strictly proscribed manner.
Why an exhibition on freedom of speech at this time? Because it is one of the key issues in the current public debate and one that is becoming increasingly contested given the steady erosion of civil liberties, even in the ‘freer’, Western world. Apart from the fact that it relates to Denmark specifically, it is also highly relevant in relation to much of what is happening in the world today from press intimidation and censorship in Russia and elsewhere, to the recent Google episode in China, down to other issues such as increasing surveillance in the UK and the USA, and highly charged debates on the limits of freedom of speech in several European countries such as the Netherlands. Finally, it also touches on the essence of visual artistic practice per se, which fundamentally entails conditions of freedom.
video: Katerina Gregos – The Elastic Documentary (part 1) – kask on vimeo.com
