[spectre] TRACING UNDERCURRENTS: Sonic Routes Between

[Simon Biggs]

Hi Nat

It seems we are in agreement about what Israel has done and is doing and how
appalling that is. Our disagreement seems to concern how one responds to
that. I take the position that many took (myself included, at that time)
during the apartheid era in South Africa, which is that an economic and
cultural boycott can be an effective instrument to assist in persuading a
nation to change its ways.

If Israel was effectively boycotted, as SA was, things would change very
quickly. Of course any boycott would not succeed without extensive US
support, as it is the US that economically underwrites Israel's existence.
The same was true for SA. It was not until the UK (SA and the UK's economies
have always been intertwined) and most of the Commonwealth boycotted SA that
the boycott was effective. However, when that happened the SA government
recognised that they had little economic choice and had to start
negotiating. The debate prior to that boycott was more advanced than the
current debate around Israel is now, but it did start in more or less the
same way with individuals and groups (such as unions, cultural groups,
sporting bodies, a few companies, etc) initiating their own boycotts of SA.
When a large proportion of the population would no longer buy SA sourced
produce in their supermarkets things began to change, as those supermarkets
stopped sourcing from SA. The success of that boycott is reflected in little
details today, such as a senior minister in the current UK government
(Haine, ironically Secretary of State for Northern Ireland) having been the
SA born leader of the activists that initiated the boycott and picketing of
the SA embassy in London.

Clearly you do not accept the value of this approach. Can I ask you whether
you supported the boycott of SA at the time it happened? Would you still
support it, retrospectively? If not, why not, given that it was an effective
part of a change for the better and without it Mandela might never have been
released and apartheid still practiced there?

If you did/do accept the value of the SA boycott then why is this approach
unsuited to the current situation in Israel?

Best

Simon


On 11.10.05 19:15, "spectre-request at mikrolisten.de"
<spectre-request at mikrolisten.de> wrote:

> Message: 3
> Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2005 20:16:48 +0200
> From: nat muller <nat at xs4all.nl>
> Subject: Re: [spectre] TRACING UNDERCURRENTS: Sonic Routes Between
> To: spectre at mikrolisten.de
> Message-ID: <d140fa97d71dc17211ee26a03eae1946 at xs4all.nl>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed
> 
> simon et al,
> 
> 
>   i welcome any kind of critique and debate...even regarding PR
> announcements, but i have to say that i deplore the *ease* at which
> such harsh accusations as *zionist apartheid*, *israeli imperialism*
> have been thrown at a music program which after all is not political in
> content, and let's face it...all it is trying to do is bring some young
> artists from tel-aviv and jerusalem, who do cool things with music and
> electronics, to Amsterdam.  it is also part of a series involving
> artists from beirut and istanbul (hopefully to be expanded to other
> cities if the resources can ever be found). so this is its modest
> context, and please let us not forget it.
> 
> when i say not political in content, i do not mean that these projects
> are depoliticised: any cultural practice, or curatorial act for that
> mater is politicised, yet bringing some independent labels/sound
> artists over from tel-aviv and jerusalem to perform is very far from
> pushing a zionist agenda, or agreeing with israel's politics of
> colonisation. i really object to this kind of simplistic reductionism!
> 
> simon, whilst i appreciate your position on Israel (and actually agree
> to a large extent with you - but this aside), you raise a few
> fundamental issues which somehow seem to get lost, since the discussion
> spirals into israel's right of existence, and oppressive politics - a
> valid debate of course, but is it linked to this project?
> 
> these issues are a.o.:
> - the *political* responsibility of curator, organisers and artists
> when organising programs
> - the relationship between aesthetics and political correctness
> - the relationship between curatorship and tokenism
> - etc...
> 
> now, i have worked on various occasions palestinian artists, i have
> worked with israeli artists, and i have worked with israeli&palestinan
> artists together.  these collaborations have always been spurred by the
> type of project and the context the work is shown in, and the merit of
> the artists in question. on some occassions it totally made sense to
> have israeli and palestinian artists together, and on other occassions
> it didn't.  curatorial decisions were made based on their work and the
> concept of the project.  this is not to say that i don't recognise the
> fact there are very complex and sensitive issues involved in all these
> processes.  throughout my work i really try to make an effort to
> accommodate these sensitivities and let the artists' voice
> speak...knowing that - depending on the actors involved -others will
> pigeonhole me as being anti-zionist, or zionist, or feminist, or
> anti-feminist, or a technophile or a technophobe or whatever...so be
> it.
> 
> i abhor tokenism of any kind, just to be politically correct. to me
> this is a wrong departure point for critical cultural practice,
> especially for projects which from their onset do not pretend to be
> inclusive or representative in any manner.  i find it very exhausting
> that every time israeli artists are involved in a project the thematic
> HAS to relate to the conflict: it just gives a very twisted idea of
> what is going on in a cultural scene. nor do i think that every time i
> invite an israeli artist, i should invite a palestinian one, just for
> the sake of being politically correct.  mind you, many palestinian
> artists i know, would refuse that, for obvious reasons.
> 
> as for the strategy of cultural boykott: i respect your position, but
> personally i have never believed in (cultural) collective punishment.
> i remember similar discussions going on about austrian artists in 2000
> when haider got elected.  there are many israeli artists - many of them
> highly critical of the imperialist regime and with dissenting voices -
> whose work deserves to be shown abroad.  and on a more general note,
> isolating artists and critics merely because they happen to live in a
> country with imperialist politics, does not seem as a productive
> strategy for a critical cultural climate.
> 
> finally, on a last note... your comment stating because the mere fact
> that i invite israeli artists to perform, i have *explicitly accepted
> the right of Israel to exist and thus all the imperialist baggage that
> goes with it* is absurd.  i vehemently oppose this kind of logic.
> 
> 
> respectfully_
> 
> nat



Simon Biggs
simon at littlepig.org.uk
http://www.littlepig.org.uk/

Professor, Art and Design Research Centre
Sheffield Hallam University, UK
http://www.shu.ac.uk/schools/cs/cri/adrc/research2/