The Turner Prize is unfailingly controversial. Each year the finalists in the Tate Gallery's leading contemporary art prize are attacked for setting out to shock their audience, rather than to make art. One year Chris Ofili's elephant dung was in the doghouse; the next, Tracey Emin's dirty, unmade bed upset visitors. Two years later conventional art lovers were affronted by Martin Creed's simple and ultimately award-winning room featuring only a light switch.
But the controversy now breaking around one of the nominated works of art this year cannot be dismissed as a clever gimmick. At the last minute, the centerpiece of a challenging display put together by Turner finalists Langlands and Bell has been withdrawn from the competition because it has fallen foul of the law.
PHOTO: AFP
The unexpected decision, taken by the artists on the advice of the Tate Gallery lawyers, will leave a big hole in the prestigious annual exhibition of the shortlisted artists, which was due to open its doors to the public tomorrow.
The Tate became aware of the legal problem at the end of last week, just as the show was being put up. With regret the artists were told, in an unprecedented development, that the artwork would have to be withdrawn immediately if the gallery was to avoid the possibility of prosecution.
The legal issue revolves around a 12-minute film made by the artistic duo of Ben Langlands and Nikki Bell while they were in Kabul in 2002. The artists had been commissioned to go to Afghanistan by the Imperial War Museum to create art that responded to the situation in the country following the toppling of the Taliban regime.
The film they shot there depicted the trial of a man in the supreme court of the Afghan capital.
"We just went into the court and sat down in one of the rows with our video camera," Ben Langlands said.
The resulting trial footage was to have dominated their exhibit in the Tate and to have provided the context for their other pieces, including a photographic work which uses the acronyms, icons and symbols of all the different aid agencies working in Afghanistan at the time and a virtual reality tour of the home of Osama bin Laden.
Now, due to the start of the Old Bailey trial of another man, Faryadi Sarwar Zardad, who is charged with "conspiracy to torture" and "conspiracy to take hostages," the Langlands and Bell film has been judged potentially prejudicial to the new proceedings.
"We can't pretend we didn't make this film. The film exists," Nikki Bell said. "But for the sake of the witnesses we will go along with the advice we have been given."
At the start of the Zardad trial the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, told the court that the defendant, who has lived in south London for several years and worked, among other things, as a pizza chef, is accused of overseeing the torture, imprisonment and murder of innocent people.
His case represents a legal landmark in its own right since it is the first time a British criminal court has tried alleged crimes which were committed abroad, especially as neither the defendant nor the alleged victims were British.
Lord Goldsmith explained to the court that "there are some crimes which are so heinous, such an affront to justice, that they can be tried in any country."
Zardad denies the charges against him and is defended by Cherie Booth's legal chambers, Matrix Law.
The two artists affected by the decision are now planning to ask the Tate if they can project a legal notice to explain the missing film. The notice would fill the gallery wall on which their film was originally to have been shown. Langlands and Bell, who have been working together for a decade, are best known for architectural work and pieces using models.
The extraordinary withdrawal of the film is, in fact, strangely in keeping with the mood of the Turner Prize show that opens to the public this week. Three of the nominated artists, Jeremy Deller, Yinka Shonibare and Langlands and Bell, have all chosen work with a serious theme and a relevance to world politics.
Jeremy Deller has made a film about US President George W. Bush and Texas, while Yinka Shonibare has recreated the assassination of King Gustav III of Sweden in 1792 in order to draw parallels with modern political fears.
And while Kutlug Ataman, the final shortlisted artist, has not created a work which deals directly with politics, he has revealed that he was the victim of torture during his youth in Turkey. As a young man in 1980 he filmed a protest march and was arrested by the police and held in captivity for 38 days, on 28 of which he says he was tortured.
No one would have predicted it, but it seems the Turner Prize is unremittingly grown-up this year. For once it will be hard for critics to dismiss it as a mere sideshow.
April 28 to May 4 During the Japanese colonial era, a city’s “first” high school typically served Japanese students, while Taiwanese attended the “second” high school. Only in Taichung was this reversed. That’s because when Taichung First High School opened its doors on May 1, 1915 to serve Taiwanese students who were previously barred from secondary education, it was the only high school in town. Former principal Hideo Azukisawa threatened to quit when the government in 1922 attempted to transfer the “first” designation to a new local high school for Japanese students, leading to this unusual situation. Prior to the Taichung First
The Ministry of Education last month proposed a nationwide ban on mobile devices in schools, aiming to curb concerns over student phone addiction. Under the revised regulation, which will take effect in August, teachers and schools will be required to collect mobile devices — including phones, laptops and wearables devices — for safekeeping during school hours, unless they are being used for educational purposes. For Chang Fong-ching (張鳳琴), the ban will have a positive impact. “It’s a good move,” says the professor in the department of
On April 17, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) launched a bold campaign to revive and revitalize the KMT base by calling for an impromptu rally at the Taipei prosecutor’s offices to protest recent arrests of KMT recall campaigners over allegations of forgery and fraud involving signatures of dead voters. The protest had no time to apply for permits and was illegal, but that played into the sense of opposition grievance at alleged weaponization of the judiciary by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to “annihilate” the opposition parties. Blamed for faltering recall campaigns and faced with a KMT chair
Article 2 of the Additional Articles of the Constitution of the Republic of China (中華民國憲法增修條文) stipulates that upon a vote of no confidence in the premier, the president can dissolve the legislature within 10 days. If the legislature is dissolved, a new legislative election must be held within 60 days, and the legislators’ terms will then be reckoned from that election. Two weeks ago Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) proposed that the legislature hold a vote of no confidence in the premier and dare the president to dissolve the legislature. The legislature is currently controlled
RSS