democracynow.org
Stories:
No More Torture: World's Largest Group of Psychologists Bans Role in National Security Interrogations
By a nearly unanimous vote, the American Psychological Association’s Council of Representatives voted Friday to adopt a new policy barring psychologists from participating in national security interrogations. The resolution also puts the APA on the side of international law by barring psychologists from working at Guantánamo, CIA black sites and other settings deemed illegal under the Geneva Conventions or the U.N. Convention Against Torture, unless they are working directly for the persons being detained or for an independent third party working to protect human rights. The vote came at the APA’s first convention since the release of a report confirming the APA leadership actively colluded with the Pentagon and the CIA torture programs. The sole dissenter was retired Col. Larry James, former top Army intelligence psychologist at Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib. We play highlights from the vote, including APA President-elect Susan McDaniel, and speak with two of the leading dissident psychologists who have been pushing the APA to reverse its stance on interrogations for nearly a decade, Steven Reisner and Stephen Soldz, founding members of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology. We also speak with the president-elect of the British Psychological Society, Peter Kinderman.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: By a nearly unanimous vote, the American Psychological Association’s Council of Representatives voted Friday to adopt a new policy barring psychologists from participating in national security interrogations. The resolution also puts the APA on the side of international law by barring psychologists from working at Guantánamo, CIA black sites and other settings deemed illegal under the Geneva Conventions or the U.N. Convention Against Torture, unless they’re working directly for the persons being detained or for an independent third party working to protect human rights.
The vote came at the American Psychological Association’s first convention since the release of a report confirming the APA leadership actively colluded with the Pentagon and CIA torture programs. For the past decade, a group of dissident psychologists have protested the involvement of psychologists in interrogations at CIA black sites and Guantánamo and moves by the APA to rewrite the organization’s ethics policy. For years, the dissidents had been ignored and ridiculed. But that all changed with the recent release of the "Hoffman Report," a 542-page independent review commissioned by the APA’s board of directors. The study undermined the APA’s repeated denials and confirmed some of the APA leaders were complicit in torture. Following the release, four top APA officials resigned, announced early retirement or were forced out.
Democracy Now! was in Toronto to capture the historic American Psychological Association vote on Friday. Here are some highlights in the minutes before the vote. This is APA President-elect Susan McDaniel.
SUSAN McDANIEL: We’re here today to reset our moral compass and ensure that our organization is headed in the right direction. As I said on Wednesday, I believe in psychologists’ capacity to make the world a better place. We’re here today to decide how to do that. And next in order of what you, Council, saw as priorities is the prohibition on psychologists’ participating in interrogation in military or intelligence context. Dr. Reisner?
STEVEN REISNER: This new substitute motion is here to rectify 10 years of deceitful and underhanded and secret collusion to impede the will of the membership. So what we are doing and what we added—and we added this in full collaboration with the board, the non-recused board—is to rectify that, which is why this, once and for all, puts a prohibition on psychologists being involved in those national security interrogations, as all other health professionals are prohibited from that. It doesn’t stop training, in general, about what makes for a non-harmful interrogation. It stops us from being involved in these abusive circumstances. It puts our moral compass right.
ALI MATTU: Ali Mattu, speaking for Division 53, clinical child/adolescent psychology. And I want you to take a very clear look, right here, right now. We know the Milgram research. We know if you push off the humanity of another person, it is easy to engage in torture. But this is the face of people who were tortured. It is people of my race, of my ethnicity, of my faith, that were silenced and tortured by psychologists in the name of APA policies. And this is a time to act and correct our course. And everyone out there in the galley, in the peanut gallery, as we so affectionately call it, thank you for coming here, and thank you for setting our moral compass right.
EMILY VOELKEL: Emily Voelkel, here representing the student constituency as APAGS chair, also board of directors. Christine, my colleague, spoke yesterday to a survey that we had. I’m quoting here: "I chose to study psychology because I perceived it as a field that shared my values of social justice. After reading the report, I felt personally and professionally betrayed," end-quote. Next quote: "My reaction was one of concern, but I was not surprised." We should be ashamed that our students are not surprised by these actions.
LARRY JAMES: Good morning, Dr. McDaniel. Larry James from Division 19, Society of Military Psychologists. Gosh, I get it. Abuse, human rights, no torture—who’s going to disagree with that? But I’m worried about second-, third-order effects, unintended consequences. So, I need to know: Does international law supersede U.S. law? Because if the answer to that is yes, this has dire negative consequences for all federal employees, particularly in the VA and the department of homeland defense.
DOUGLAS HALDEMAN: Good morning. Doug Haldeman, Division 42, Psychologists in Independent Practice, and also the chair-elect of the Council Leadership Team. What is torture? You know, we’ve spent a lot of the last decade talking about torture as if we knew what it was. But there’s actually a lot of fine print involved in the resolutions that we’ve adopted about torture and a lot of fine print that I suppose most of us, I hope—all of us, I hope—would not agree with, which actually means that we have unwittingly, tacitly, consciously even, supported the Bush administration’s manipulation of the definition of torture in such a way that it constitutes inhumane, degrading and cruel treatment and punishment. This resolution corrects that and brings us in line with the Geneva Convention and the international definition of torture.
SUSAN McDANIEL: So now we’re voting on the main motion. The secretary will call the roll.
JENNIFER KELLY: Kenneth Adams.
KENNETH ADAMS: Yes.
JENNIFER KELLY: Luisa Alvarez-Dominguez.
LUISA ALVAREZ-DOMINGUEZ: Yes.
JENNIFER KELLY: Martin Amerikaner.
MARTIN AMERIKANER: Approve.
JENNIFER KELLY: Larry James.
LARRY JAMES: No.
JENNIFER KELLY: Gregory Jurenec.
GREGORY JURENEC: Yes.
JENNIFER KELLY: Peter Sheras.
PETER SHERAS: Yes.
JENNIFER KELLY: Sandra Shullman.
SANDRA SHULLMAN: Yes.
JENNIFER KELLY: Lynn Kahle.
LYNN KAHLE: Yes.
JENNIFER KELLY: Barbara Ziegler.
BARBARA ZIEGLER: Yes.
JENNIFER KELLY: That’s it, ladies and gentlemen.
SUSAN McDANIEL: The motion passes.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Friday’s historic vote by the American Psychological Association barring psychologists from participating in national security interrogations. Retired Colonel Larry James cast the sole dissenting vote. He was the former top Army intelligence psychologist at Guantánamo. He was also at Abu Ghraib. Moments after the vote, I spoke to the two leading dissident psychologists who have been pushing the APA to reverse its stance on interrogations for nearly a decade.
STEPHEN SOLDZ: Stephen Soldz.
STEVEN REISNER: Steven Reisner.
AMY GOODMAN: And your position?
STEVEN REISNER: I’m a member of council of the APA, and I’m a co-founder of the Coalition for Ethical Psychology.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you explain what just happened?
STEVEN REISNER: What just happened is that after nine years of collusion and deceit between the American Psychological Association and the Department of Defense and the Bush administration, after nine years of what has now become a major scandal, the APA council, the APA—sorry, the APA council turned that around. The APA council acknowledged that it had been led down a deceitful path, that all of our policies in the past, which claimed to uphold human rights, were shams. But today, for the first time, we passed a real policy that upholds human rights and prohibits psychologists from being involved in any way in torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, insofar as those are part of national security interrogations, in detainee conditions. Any way that our national security apparatus abuses detainees, we have said that we are opposed to that. We demand human rights be applied in all cases and that no psychologists will ever participate in any detention camp, in any interrogation, in any of that, because there are abuses going on, and we want to stop those abuses.
AMY GOODMAN: Who determines whether it’s inhumane? What is the resolution that was passed?
STEVEN REISNER: Well, there are two parts. First of all, it simply holds a bright line against any psychologist being involved in any national security interrogations or detention conditions. It’s a bright line. So it doesn’t matter who determines it or not. So there’s that. But second, what we did was we took the decision on what is the judgment on what is torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment away from U.S. law, away from the United States’ reservations to the United Nations Convention Against Torture, and aligned APA standards with international standards, with the United Nations convention, with the United Nations Committee Against Torture, with what the U.N. rappateurs against torture and rapporteurs for human rights—what they say is now APA policy. We bow to their international human rights judgment, and we will follow it.
AMY GOODMAN: And what is a national security interrogation?
STEVEN REISNER: A national security interrogation is—we defined it. It’s any interrogation, or any conditions of confinement in support of an interrogation, that takes place outside of the protections of domestic criminal law. So it could be for the DOD. It could be for the FBI. It could be for the CIA. It could be in black sites. It could be foreign governments that do interrogations on our behalf. It could be private contractors. We have prohibited psychologists from being involved in any of those. The only exception has to do with domestic law enforcement, where constitutional law, Miranda rights apply, that we carve that out for the time being. We are fully aware that abuses go on domestically, as well, and we are very concerned about that. But this particular issue has to do with the fact that psychologists were responsible for our nation’s torture program. And now the APA is no longer supporting psychologists in those roles, but actively and clearly opposing any possibility of psychologists playing those roles.
AMY GOODMAN: And what if someone does participate? What does that mean? What does it mean to pass an APA, an American Psychological Association, resolution?
STEVEN REISNER: Well, that would be very serious now, because this resolution is implementable. We are moving to our ethics committee to make sure that such people will be held accountable for ethics violations. If someone is held accountable for an ethics violation at the American Psychological Association, that is in turn taken very seriously by state licensing boards. So, for people to violate this resolution, their license could be on the line. So I’m just—I’m going to put it, though, in the other way: What this does is it protects psychologists in the military, in national security settings. It lets them know that they have the APA behind them when they refuse to participate in any torture, cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment. We have their back. They are obligated to refuse, and we will support them.
AMY GOODMAN: Can a psychologist participate in any CIA or Pentagon interrogation?
STEVEN REISNER: No. At this point, a psychologist cannot participate in any such interrogation whatsoever.
AMY GOODMAN: And so, how many psychologists does that affect?
STEVEN REISNER: We don’t actually have the exact number. I don’t think it’s thousands. I think it’s probably hundreds. But I am glad to say that, for them, it is now clear what their ethics responsibilities are, and they will now represent psychology in a way that we can all trust. And I’m hoping that this is a huge step toward the profession regaining the public trust, which is what we have to do.
AMY GOODMAN: Is there anything else you want to accomplish here at this APA meeting?
STEVEN REISNER: Well, there are many things I want to accomplish at this APA meeting, but I am totally satisfied with this one.
AMY GOODMAN: And, Stephen Soldz, your response? You’re wearing a button that says?
STEPHEN SOLDZ: "First, do no harm." This is the result of nearly a decade of effort by hundreds and thousands of people. We are—we’ve been spokespersons, but there have been many, many, many people involved in this. And when the membership of the APA spoke in 2008 in a referendum, they voted 59 percent to get psychologists out of Guantánamo and CIA black sites, but a small group of APA insiders undermined that. This reverses that, after seven years of deceit. So, it’s a victory for our movement. But I also want to emphasize that it’s a victory for the anti-torture movement, that the APA has moved from being complicit in the state-sanctioned torture to being among the leaders in dealing with state-sanctioned torture and taking strong policies and moving its members out and taking at least a beginning level of accountability for the people in the association who were involved in this. And so I think the APA moves from the back of the pack to being a model for other parts of society about how to deal with this.
AMY GOODMAN: And can you talk about the organizing that it took to get to this place after almost a decade?
STEPHEN SOLDZ: Well, it was basically—for many of us, it was basically our life for the last decade. We—writing hundreds of articles; organizing psychologists; making alliances with human rights groups, alerting them to what was going on; working, like Steven did, within APA and getting on the APA council and Jean Maria Arrigo on the APA council; working outside to alert the public; working with reporters; getting the public and the APA leadership to realize that this was a major issue, that this was a scandal that could not be allowed to stand. And, you know, it takes involved people and dedicated people, and we had a lot of them.
AMY GOODMAN: Steven Reisner, would you like to add to that?
STEVEN REISNER: Yes, I just want to—I just want to say how grateful we are to the entire community that we worked with. We have our talents, but there are enormous talents that it required—that are required to change the world. And when talented people get together and are dedicated to good, to human rights, human welfare, to change—using our skills, our individual skills, for good, it may take 10 years, like this one did, but this shows that it is possible to make a significant change. Because right now, even the Obama administration is on notice that the American Psychological Association is opposed to some of the policies that are still in existence. For example, the interrogation policy of the Obama administration includes the Army Field Manual Appendix M. That appendix uses techniques or permits techniques that have been banned by the U.N. Committee Against Torture. Today, the American Psychological Association is saying to the Obama administration that we consider that cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, and none of our members can participate in any of those activities; it’s time for you to change that Army Field Manual; it’s time for the United States to follow the American Psychological Association and ban any technique, any condition that is considered still to be torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. We want to lead the way and have the Obama administration follow us.
AMY GOODMAN: How many people are on the council?
STEVEN REISNER: There are 172. And the vote was overwhelmingly in favor. There was only one opposed. So—
AMY GOODMAN: That person opposed?
STEVEN REISNER: That person opposed was Larry James. And Larry James has been a strong voice to keep psychologists in those settings, in the interrogation room. And he once—he was part of, you know, the—he was part of the group that bent the American Psychological Association’s rules, I would say, and policies, in a way that was secret and, I would say, part of what the Hoffman investigation interrogated. But that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t actually have his own strong feelings about that, which he expressed.
AMY GOODMAN: And worked at Guantánamo, headed up—
STEVEN REISNER: He worked at Guantánamo. He was supervising these interrogations.
AMY GOODMAN: And he’s now at Wright State in Dayton, Ohio.
STEVEN REISNER: I believe he’s still at—he’s at Wright State. But what was really important today was that Larry James was the lone voice, that everyone else on this council who voted yes or no, everyone else voted in favor of this policy change. And his voice was not only the minority—
AMY GOODMAN: There were a few abstentions.
STEVEN REISNER: There were a few abstentions. There were a few recusals. But we voted overwhelmingly in favor, and he was the lone voice against.
AMY GOODMAN: Why was this so important to you personally? Why did you wage this 10-year battle?
STEVEN REISNER: Well, I come from a family where people were tortured in the Holocaust. I have seen what happens when standards of decency, human rights and ethics are thrown out in a wave of totalitarian or government zeal. I have seen what happens when you have a government that turns to the dark side and breaks all the rules in favor of doing whatever they want. And I have spent my life trying to uphold those standards, trying to make it—I’m a psychologist because I believe we answer to an authority that—of what is right, not what is law, because what is law can be twisted and do evil. But so, this particular fight, when I saw that psychologists were part of this, that psychologists using their expertise strategically to help torture and abuse, that psychologists were behind this, I knew I had to speak out. And I did. I didn’t expect it to lead to this. I just, you know, spoke out. I’m a psychoanalyst. I usually sit behind the couch silently. But I needed to speak out. And then we joined together with a group of people who spoke out, who felt the same way, and we made the change.
AMY GOODMAN: And, Stephen Soldz, for you, personally, why this was so important?
STEPHEN SOLDZ: Well, I kind of wandered into it by writing an article on the APA. But it became clear after a while that if a small group of people didn’t really keep the struggle up, they were going to get away with it. And when I was a kid, my hero was Henry David Thoreau, who sat in a jail cell, maybe only for a night, because he was opposed to slavery. And the image of standing up—and as I explained to my wife sometimes when I would be preoccupied, when I should have been paying more attention to her and my family, I said, "I just can’t be one of those who doesn’t stand up when I have the opportunity. I can’t live with myself if that’s the case." I’ve always admired those who did. This was my time to do it. And I knew that if a few of us didn’t keep it up, this policy would keep on. And couldn’t live with that.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you feel like you made history today?
STEPHEN SOLDZ: Definitely.
STEVEN REISNER: I do.
AMY GOODMAN: Psychoanalysts, Drs. Steven Reisner and Stephen Soldz, founding members of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology. Following the American Psychological Association vote to ban psychologists from national security interrogations, I also spoke with the president-elect of the British Psychological Society.
PETER KINDERMAN: So I’m Peter Kinderman. I’m president-elect of the British Psychological Society and representing them here at APA. And thoughts for today? I think it’s wonderful. I think it’s great. I think it’s well overdue. I was joking earlier that this represents American psychologists rejoining the 17th century and repudiating torture as a means of state power. And, yeah, I think that there’s an element of "about time," but I think it’s great. As I read it, the agreement is that American psychologists would respect agreed international definitions of the abuse of detainees and agreed international standards for judicial process. We shouldn’t be involved in abusing detainees, and we should remain within domestic and international law. That strikes me as commonsense, obvious. It’s what the public would expect. And about bloody time, too.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Peter Kinderman, president-elect of the British Psychological Society, speaking in Toronto, Canada. To see all of our coverage of the historic APA vote, you can go to our website at democracynow.org. When we come back from break, we’ll talk about what’s happening here in Venice, Italy, the oldest biennial art exhibition in the world. We’ll talk politics and art. Stay with us.
Art and Social Change: Creative Time Summit at Venice Biennale Features Artists and Democracy
As part of the Venice Biennale, the oldest and most prestigious international art exhibition, a New York-based group, Creative Time, is hosting a three-day summit dubbed "The Curriculum." Speakers include Afghan President Ashraf Ghani with his daughter, the artist Mariam Ghani, members of Spain’s left coalition Podemos, as well as the famed Italian political philosopher and activist Antonio Negri. We speak with organizers Anne Pasternak, the new president of Brooklyn Museum, and president and artistic director of Creative Time; and Nato Thompson, chief curator of Creative Time and author of the new book, "Seeing Power: Socially Engaged Art in the Age of Cultural Production."
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s a Detroit-based MC, Ilana Weaver, aka Invincible. This performance was a part of the 2013 Creative Time Summit, "Art, Place, and Dislocation in the 21st Century City." This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. We’re broadcasting from Venice, Italy, the site of the Venice Biennale, the oldest and most prestigious international biennial art exhibition. As part of the art festival, the New York-based group Creative Time is hosting a three-day summit dubbed "The Curriculum." Speakers include Afghan President Ashraf Ghani with his daughter, the artist Mariam Ghani, as well as the famed Italian political philosopher and activist Antonio Negri.
We’re joined right now by Anne Pasternak, the president of Creative Time and the new president, the incoming president, of the Brooklyn Museum. She is leaving her job as president and artistic director of Creative Time. Nato Thompson is also with us, chief curator of Creative Time and author of the new book, Seeing Power: Socially Engaged Art in the Age of Cultural Production.
Anne and Nato, welcome to Democracy Now! Anne, let’s start with you. The significance of the Venice Biennale and Creative Time being here?
ANNE PASTERNAK: Well, let’s just say that this is a very rare opportunity to have artists convening from all around the world to talk about art and social change. And, you know, we often hear that artists are—they provide a mirror to our times. But actually, today’s artists are doing much more than providing a mirror, they’re actually getting into the gritty work of actual social change work. They’re working with communities, working on legislation, policy all over the world, tackling the big issues. And that’s what we’re here to discuss and to be inspired by.
AMY GOODMAN: And, Nato, if you could talk about Creative Time’s role in the Biennale? It’s the first time you’ll be holding this kind of summit.
NATO THOMPSON: It’s very unique, I mean, to have an organization like ours come in and actually do a summit here. It’s the first in the history of the Biennale itself. And so, what’s also magical about it is it’s an international exhibition, but in some ways this is an international summit. So it’s a convening around art and politics, but with the players around the globe to actually use the venue as a space to discuss and think.
AMY GOODMAN: You know, it’s interesting, Anne. You’ve been with Creative Time for what? More than two decades?
ANNE PASTERNAK: Yeah, almost 21 years.
AMY GOODMAN: And yet, now you’re going to a brick-and-mortar institution, and you’re making some history yourself as a woman going to the Brooklyn Museum.
ANNE PASTERNAK: You know, it’s very exciting. The Brooklyn Museum has a long history of not only artistic excellence and having an encyclopedic, global collection, but also really standing up for things that we believe in at Creative Time. Artists should have opportunities to experiment, that our cultural institutions and our public spaces are the places for the free exchange of ideas, places for democracy to be enacted. So I’m looking forward to going to a museum, having a collection to work with, but also to think about how we can think of the museum as a place of true democracy.
AMY GOODMAN: And the people that are coming for this Creative Time Summit, Nato, talk about what went into the thinking of bringing them together. You’ve got the president of Afghanistan. You’ve got this leading radical philosopher.
NATO THOMPSON: Well so, it’s a kind of complex algorithm, in the sense that you have grassroots activists who kind of are skeptical of famous people, but you’ve also got people in political positions. We also have the cultural minister from the Spanish left-wing organization Podemos, who’s come into power. So we have politicians, we have academics. Some are very theory-heavy. But also we have people that are in the kind of trenches, who no one would know their name, but they’re doing the hard work. And we think that that is the kind of spectrum of radical politics we want in one room. And so, that is the thinking. And also, geographically spread, so you have Africa, you have South Africa, you have Argentina, you have the United States, you have Western Europe. It’s a big globe. But we think it’s important to have that kind of spectrum here in one room, and it’s exciting.
AMY GOODMAN: So, Anne, if you’d talk about—in the United States, it’s, you know, controversial to have arts funded. There’s a big battle with conservatives. Yet here you have, in Italy, the Venice Biennale—it is over a hundred years old—countries coming together from all over the world. But you also have repressive regimes. They have pavilions. You have governments like Iceland that just had their pavilion shut down by the Venetian authorities because the artist they commissioned turned the church that they were given as their space—it was a church that hadn’t been used in 40 years—into a mosque.
ANNE PASTERNAK: Right. You know, the truth is, is that people often think about art in terms of beauty. And it’s wonderful when we can go into a museum and see, let’s say, a Bellini, which I saw this morning at the Museo Correr—a beautiful Bellini of the Christ ascending, and the putti are holding him up out of his tomb, and they’re in utter agony—agony—as they’re looking at their—you know, their dead savior. And it’s a beautiful painting, and we think about beauty. But we also have to think about the actual emotions of the death of the savior, right? And the agony of Christ. And so, the artists are not only always dealing with beauty; they’re dealing with the very real issues of our time. And they are freethinkers. They’re seeing the world. They are our mirror, and we need them to be free. And sometimes the things that they communicate and that we experience are going to be very difficult and very painful. And that’s absolutely appropriate.
AMY GOODMAN: Interestingly, the Guggenheim has come up. The Gulf Labor committee that is part of the Venice Biennale talked about the Guggenheim and what’s happening with the labor force that’s building it in Abu Dhabi. You’ve signed onto the petition around the Guggenheim?
ANNE PASTERNAK: I’ve signed onto the fact that artists should have, and academics should have, free range of movement to come in and out of these regions and to speak freely. You know, Creative Time has always been a proponent of free expression. And, you know, these are inevitable consequences and difficulties that we have as the art world has become truly global and the art market has become truly global, as we see here in the Venice Biennale, that there are going to be conflicting traditions and economies and histories that we have to come together and work through. And we have to listen very carefully and respect people’s rights, their basic human rights, and work together to produce change.
AMY GOODMAN: Ten seconds, Nato. Your book is called Seeing Power: Art and Activism in the Twenty-first Century.
NATO THOMPSON: Sure. So we live in an incredible era where this sort of confluence of art and activism is very evident in all our social movements, from Occupy Wall Street to the Arab Spring. It’s not something that’s over here and over here; they’re really mixed. And with that comes a lot of tensions and complexities. And the book is a kind of thinking through that in this particular age we’re in.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you both for being with us, Nato Thompson and Anne Pasternak of Creative Time, though Anne is going to become president of the Brooklyn Museum.
And that does it for our broadcast. A very special thanks to our team here: to Denis Moynihan, John Hamilton, Mike Burke, Amy Littlefield, also to Renée Feltz and Nermeen Shaikh and the whole team in New York that made this broadcast possible. Special thanks to Julie Crosby. I’m Amy Goodman in Venice, Italy. Thanks for joining us.
Art & Protests at the Venice Biennale Highlight Labor Conditions, Climate Change and Austerity
We are broadcasting from Venice, Italy, the site of the Venice Biennale, the oldest and most prestigious international art exhibition, where this year’s theme is "All the World’s Futures." The gathering has not been without controversy. In May, Venice shut down Iceland’s pavilion after the artist Christoph Büchel, working in collaboration with the Muslim communities of Venice and Iceland, turned a 10th century church that had been closed down for 40 years into a working mosque. Police claimed the art project was a "threat to public safety." Last week, the Gulf Labor Coalition staged an hour-long occupation of the second floor of the Israeli Pavilion. The group has also protested the use of migrant laborers to build Guggenheim’s new museum in Abu Dhabi. We discuss past and present protests at the Biennale with Marco Baravalle, a Venice-based artist, activist and author who spoke at a panel discussion organized by the Gulf Labor Coalition called "Who Needs Museums and Biennales?" Baravalle also examines the impact of climate change and austerity on life in Venice.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re broadcasting from Venice, Italy, the site of the Venice Biennale, the oldest and most prestigious international biennial art exhibition. The theme this year is "All the World’s Futures." And in an introduction to the Biennale, the curator, Okwui Enwezor, writes, quote, "How can artists, thinkers, writers, composers, choreographers, singers, and musicians, through images, objects, words, movement, actions, lyrics, sound bring together publics in acts of looking, listening, responding, engaging, speaking in order to make sense of the current upheaval?" he asks. We’ll speak with Okwui Enwezor, the curator of the Venice Biennale, tomorrow.
This year’s Biennale has not been without controversy. Many countries have pavilions with art exhibits inside. In May, the city of Venice shut down Iceland’s pavilion in the Biennale after the artist Christoph Büchel, working in collaboration with the Muslim communities of Venice and Iceland, turned a 10th century church that had been closed down for 40 years into a working mosque. Police claimed the art project was a threat to public safety. Last week, the Gulf Labor Coalition staged an hour-long occupation of the second floor of the Israeli Pavilion. The group has also protested the use of migrant laborers to build Guggenheim’s new museum in Abu Dhabi. On Sunday, the Gulf Labor Coalition held a panel discussion called "Who Needs Museums and Biennales?" I spoke to one of the speakers after the event.
MARCO BARAVALLE: My name is Marco Baravalle. I’m a member of S.a.L.E. Docks collective of Venice.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you tell us what S.a.L.E. Docks is?
MARCO BARAVALLE: Sure. S.a.L.E. Docks is an independent space for arts and cultural production. We occupied the space in 2007. It was an abandoned salt warehouse, an ancient building in the heart of Venice. And when I say "we," I mean a group of artists, art workers and activists, and also our students of the different university of art in Venice. And in 2007, the reason why we decided to occupy this ancient space—which is owned by the city, by the way, so the property is the property of the city—was because at the time we were witnessing a new development of the city, meaning that from being the traditional museum city that everyone knows—Venice with gondolas and an art history—we were seeing the fact that a new economy of contemporary arts and a contemporary culture were growing. And this was an extremely interesting development, but at the same time we had many contradictions and many, many kind of dark sides, let’s say—dark sides that are the fact that these investments were investments that were made, for example, by financial tycoons, by billionaires, that really use art as a kind of tool that can boost their status, or the fact that many of these very rich art institutions and foundations were and are using precarious labor and unpaid workers. And, of course, as people who are living in Venice and working in Venice, we needed a space that could become a critical point of view on all this development, which is, again, economic, social and political, and at the same time was a laboratory, so that we’re not only protesting, but that we also organize and produce culture, exhibitions, seminars, actions, publications and so on.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you tell us the history of Venice, in a nutshell, but for people who perhaps know it as this city of canals? But tell us about Venice.
MARCO BARAVALLE: Venice is a unique city and still is—I mean, I think what is really, really extremely unique in Venice, beside the fact that it is beautiful—and that’s, of course, banal, but it’s real—is the fact that the city was built in an incredible balance between the human people intervening in the environment and a respect for the environment. And this is something that went throughout all the history of Venice, which is a history that has more than 1,000—the 1,000th year now.
And, for example, if we refer to the present time, this history of a unique balance between human intervention and nature now is put in danger, for example, by the big cruise ships that you have may seen here passing inside the canal. These monsters of the sea, these huge ships that are really passing in front of the San Marco Square are posing a serious threat to the environment, to the lagoon, which is a very, very kind of delicate and unique environment.
And I’m mentioning this campaign because this tells you some more about what we do in S.a.L.E. Docks. We are not only focused on art and art things, but we are an activist space in nature with other activist realities, with other social organization and movements in Venice. So, for example, we are also very much committed to the struggle against big cruise ships, which is now very crucial in Venice, and I would say it’s one of the things that more is posing a threat to the history of this city.
AMY GOODMAN: And are you concerned about climate change here?
MARCO BARAVALLE: We’re pretty much concerned about climate change. Of course, Venice is impacted by climate change. Not only Venice, but it’s mainland. For example, you come from the U.S. Not later than a few weeks ago, there was happening near Venice, close to Venice, a tornado, a tornado which we usually see in the U.S. and we don’t see so often here in Italy or in Venice. And this was, of course, only a symptom, but a clear symptom, of climate change effects, of climate change happening. It was extremely destructive and extremely, I think, tragic for Venice.
But, of course, the other issue is that of the raising of the average of the sea level. We are in a lagoon. We are very close to the sea. The sea enters the lagoon. So, in a way, if all the prediction about the raising of the sea levels are real, we must be worried. We must be worried because we could be one of the first cities to go underwater, more than we already experience high tides and so on. And it is a city of canals because, basically, Venice is now the result of a few of different islands that were linked through bridges. That’s why, of course, he had gondolas and boats and so on, because in the first years of Venice, Venice was not as you see it now, was not different islands linked, but there were islands without links, without bridges. So it is really an archipelagos, let’s say. That’s how Venice kind of was founded, and it developed.
AMY GOODMAN: And with austerity sweeping the continent, of course, in Greece and Spain, how does that affect Italy? And how does that affect the Biennale, the Venice Biennale, which is so well known for this massive exhibition of art that is—also has a lot of support from the state? In the United States, conservatives might be listening to you and saying, "I agree with his critique. The Biennale shouldn’t be supported. The arts shouldn’t be supported."
MARCO BARAVALLE: This happened in Italy even before austerity. So our politicians didn’t need austerity or crisis to not support arts. This is unfortunately a typical feature of Italian politics, especially during the 10 years of Berlusconi government. It was famous, the statement of one of his minister of culture, who said, "You don’t eat with culture." And the consequence is, if you don’t eat with culture, we are not funding it. So, unfortunately, apart from such big and important international events and traditional events like the Biennale, the public funds for art are almost non-existing in Italy.
Concerning the austerity, of course, we are a Mediterranean country. That means that we are deeply affected by crisis. And we are on the edge, really, of austerity, of austerity policies, which were hitting Italy very hard, not as hard as Greece, but we probably will be the next in line, meaning that, of course, the troika and the so-called European institutions asked to the governments of Italy brutal reforms, reforms that really are going to the direction of cutting—of further cuttings to welfare, to culture, to environment and so on. And unfortunately, we must say that both right-wing and leftist politicians in Italy really obeyed, were really completely obedient to this command of austerity of the troika.
Speaking of austerity, another huge problem is housing policies, for example. The private market of houses and of rents in Venice is completely crazy. It’s out of control. So, for example, you don’t see—if you come here, just walk from Rialto to Piazza San Marco, you don’t see it. But there are networks of people who occupy apartments that are very, very large. I mean, there is an organization which is called ASC, Assemblea Sociale per la Casa, Social Assembly for Housing. And this is a network of more than 50 occupied apartments in Venice. And it puts together migrants, young people, students, but also Venetian families, families that before austerities could not—I mean, could pay the rents, and after austerities and with the crisis, they cannot afford to pay these rents anymore.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you tell us the history of the Venice Biennale, what it means?
MARCO BARAVALLE: It is a very complex history. The Venice Biennale was the first biennial of the world, was founded in 1895. And since then, it really—it developed out of the model of the word "exhibition," the exhibition of the 19th century, which all the different nations were bringing their last technological discoveries and so on. And it took this model from the word "expo" and basically adapted to the arts. So that’s why the Biennale was organized with national pavilion and still is organized with national pavilions. And the Biennale has a very complex story of political and economic ties with the city, too. Of course, there is all that official history of the Biennale, but there is a very strong counterhistory and counternarrative of the Biennale. We spoke today about the protests of 1968, protests that of course were happening in Venice and touched the Biennale, too.
AMY GOODMAN: And why were the protests happening in Venice?
MARCO BARAVALLE: Because it was 1968, and so there was basically a world revolution going on. Of course, it was a big time for social movements all over the world, and Venice was no exception to this stream of protests. And the protests touched the Biennale, too. The Biennale was accused of basically repeating a colonialistic vision of the world by having these national pavilion hosted, of being a nationalistic event, very, very much tied to the official politics of the countries that were hosted here. And the interesting thing is that after these protests, the Biennale basically started a very radical institutional reform, because it needed to be a more democratic—a more democratic institution. At the time, the statue of the Biennale was the statute that was written directly by the fascists, by Mussolini. So it was still that kind of institutional structure that the Biennale had.
And nowadays, a collective like S.a.L.E. Docks or present-time activists working in Venice are keeping to approach the Biennale from a critical point of view. Of course, problems are pretty much different from those that you could find in 1968, but you still have many different problems when coming to such an art event. I’m just mentioning two of them, which we touched in today’s discussion in the Gulf Labor panel.
First of all, the problem of labor. So, the Biennale is a very rich institution. Lots of money are invested both by private and public institution here. And the Biennale generates a large amount of labor, but this labor is precarious or is largely unpaid. There is a problem, for example, with university internships. We don’t know how many university interns work for free, not for the Biennale directly, but for all the linked exhibitions that happen in the city.
Second problem is the problem of the relationship between the exhibition and the city. So we are speaking of the very famous creative city. And how does the Biennale work as the Venetian version of the creative city policies. Basically, these 100 or so events that you have in town pay very high rents to be here in town. And to who does this money go? They go to the pockets of the landlords of the city. It goes to the pockets of the biggest real estate owners and actors in the city. So that’s why we see a paradox. And S.a.L.E. Docks is trying to intervene within these contradictions, for example, by creating an alternative model of a pavilion, in which it is basically the city and the people working for the city, the art scene of the city, which takes advantage of an event like the Biennale and in which the labor is fairly paid. So, this is only one example of what we’re doing here.
AMY GOODMAN: Marco Baravalle, a Venice-based artist with the group S.a.L.E. Docks, speaking here at the Venice Biennale. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. When we come back, we’ll be joined by the president and curator of Creative Time, which is holding a summit at the Biennale here today through Wednesday. We’ll be back in a minute.
Headlines:
Ferguson: Black Teen Shot on Commemoration of Michael Brown’s Death
In Ferguson, Missouri, police shot and critically injured an African-American teenager on Sunday night amid the protests commemorating the first anniversary of the death of Michael Brown. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch is identifying the teen as 18-year-old Tyrone Harris, a graduate of Normandy High School. Michael Brown also attended Normandy. Tyrone Harris’ father told the Post-Dispatch his son and Michael Brown were "very close." The police say four officers opened fire on Tyrone Harris after he shot at them with a 9-millimeter gun that was recovered from the scene. A video posted to Twitter by a Ferguson activist appears to show a police officer standing over Tyrone Harris’ body as he lies on the ground, his hands cuffed behind his back, with blood on his white T-shirt. In the video, the activist pleads with the officer to get the young man some help.
Activist "Give him some help, man. Please, get him some help. He’s bleeding out, man. Please, get him some help, man. Please, get him some help, man. Please, get him some help. He’s bleeding out, man. You see it. He’s breathing, man. Please, get him some help."
Harris was later taken to the hospital, where he remains in critical condition. Earlier in the day, protesters commemorated the death of Michael Brown with a four-and-a-half-minute moment of silence to mark the number of hours Brown’s body lay in the street. His father, Michael Brown Sr., also led a march this weekend and spoke about the continued struggle.
Michael Brown Sr.: "To be honest, I wouldn’t even care if they was listening or not. I just want to get on the TV and let them know I’m not stopping."
Interviewer: "You’re not stopping. What does that mean?"
Michael Brown Sr.: "I’m not stopping."
Interviewer: "What does that mean? Tell us what that means."
Michael Brown Sr.: "Every time you turn on your TV, you’re going to see my face. So I’m trying to make it uncomfortable for people that think that this is OK to do this to us."
#BlackLivesMatter Protesters Shut Down Bernie Sanders Campaign Speech
In Seattle, Black Lives Matter protesters interrupted Bernie Sanders during a campaign speech Saturday to call for a commemoration of Michael Brown’s death and to demand Sanders do more for racial justice. Seattle activist Marissa Janae Johnson took the microphone and said that if Sanders is really part of a grassroots movement, then he will be more vocal in his support for Black Lives Matter.
Marissa Janae Johnson: "Tomorrow is the one-year anniversary of the ruthless murder of Michael Brown. It is time that we honor that here and now. Bernie says that he’s about the people, about grassroots movement. The biggest grassroots movement in this country right now is the Black Lives Matter movement."
Following the interruption, Sanders published a statement saying he was "disappointed" by the interruption. The following day, he published a racial justice platform on his campaign website. It includes demilitarizing the police, addressing voter disenfranchisement, banning private prisons and ending the war on drugs.
Texas: Police Fatally Shoot Black College Student Christian Taylor
Meanwhile, in Texas, the FBI is investigating the death of 19-year-old Christian Taylor, an unarmed African-American college football player who was fatally shot by a white police officer in the Dallas suburb of Arlington Friday. Authorities say that police shot Taylor after he did not comply with initial calls to surrender during what authorities are describing as a potential burglary at a car dealership. The officer has been placed on administrative leave. Taylor had spoken out against police brutality on social media. In a now much-circulated tweet from late July, he wrote, "I don’t want to die too young."
Turkey: 8 Die in Attacks on Police, Shots Are Fired at U.S. Consulate
In Turkey, at least eight people have died in attacks on Turkish security forces, including an attack on a police station in Istanbul and a roadside bomb that killed police officers in southeast province of Sirnak. Gunmen also fired at the U.S. Consulate in Istanbul.
Thousands Rally Across Europe to Denounce Turkey’s Bombing of PKK
Meanwhile, thousands of people in Istanbul, Paris and Cologne, Germany, held peace rallies over the weekend to denounce the Turkish government’s attacks against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, known as the PKK, which began in late July.
Mexico: Activist Who Led Search for Missing 43 Students Found Dead
In Mexico, an activist who has led the search for the missing 43 students in the southern state of Guerrero was found shot dead inside a taxi on Saturday. The activist, Miguel Ángel Jiménez, had uncovered mass graves near the city of Iguala, where the 43 students disappeared after an attack by local police in 2014.
Mali: 12 Die in Hostage Situation, Including 5 U.N. Workers
In news from Africa, at least 12 people died in Mali following a hostage situation at a hotel in the trading town of Sevare. Five of the dead are U.N. workers. The army said that the gunmen are affiliated with Islamist group the Macina Liberation Movement.
Yemen: U.S.-Backed Airstrikes Kill 20 Allied Fighters by Accident
In Yemen, officials say a U.S.-backed, Saudi-led airstrike killed at least 20 allied fighters in a friendly fire incident Saturday. This comes as the president of the International Red Cross visited Yemen and called the situation "catastrophic."
Afghanistan: Explosions Kill Dozens as Taliban Reorganizes Leadership
In news from Afghanistan, multiple explosions in the capital city of Kabul killed over 40 people on Friday in attacks outside an Afghan military base, a police academy and a U.S. Special Operations Forces base. On Saturday, a suicide bomber killed 29 people at a meeting of pro-government forces in the northern Kunduz province. Another attack outside Kabul’s airport Monday morning killed at least five people. The wave of violence comes as the Taliban reorganizes its leadership following the recent announcement of the death of former leader Mullah Omar.
West Bank: Father of Baby Killed in Jewish Firebombing Dies of Wounds
In news from the West Bank, hundreds of Palestinians attended the funeral for the father of an 18-month-old baby killed in an arson attack by Jewish settlers two weeks ago. Saad Dawabsheh succumbed to his injuries Saturday. The rest of the family remains hospitalized.
American Psychological Assoc. Bans Participation in Torture Programs
The board of the American Psychological Association has voted nearly unanimously to adopt a new policy barring psychologists from participating in national security interrogations. The new rules come after an independent investigation documented how the APA leadership actively colluded with the Pentagon and the CIA torture programs. We’ll have more on the vote later in the broadcast.
James Holmes Receives Life Sentence for 2012 Aurora Theater Massacre
In news from Colorado, a jury has sentenced James Holmes to life without parole for the 2012 Aurora movie theater massacre, which killed 12 people and wounded 70 more. Prosecutors had sought the death penalty, but jurors did not unanimously agree. Holmes had pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.
Donald Trump Under Fire for Comments about Fox Moderator Megyn Kelly
And Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump has sparked outrage with his comments implying that Fox News debate moderator Megyn Kelly was asking him tough questions during the first presidential debate because she was having her period. He made the comments speaking on CNN Friday.
Donald Trump: "She gets out, and she starts asking me all sorts of ridiculous questions. And, you know, you could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her, wherever."
Following the comments, Trump was disinvited from a conservative event in Atlanta, where he was slated to be the keynote speaker. The organizer of the RedState Gathering event, Erick Erickson, explained his decision.
Erick Erickson: "So, after all of this was over, Mr. Trump went on Twitter and said that I was a weak and pathetic leader, which is OK. I actually think it’s really weak and pathetic to take a tough question from a journalist and assume she’s having her period and that’s why she asked you a tough question."
Among the many to criticize Trump for the comments is Republican candidate Carly Fiorina. Trump fired back at Fiorina, writing on Twitter that she gives him "a massive headache."
Donate today:Follow:
WEB EXCLUSIVE
VIDEO: A Year of Protests & Organizing After Unarmed Black Teen Michael Brown Killed by Ferguson Cop
SPEAKING EVENTS
8/11 Venice, Italy
WORK WITH DN!
Social Media Editor
207 West 25th Street, 11th Floor
New York, New York 10001 United States
____________________________
____________________________
No comments:
Post a Comment