Clinton Fein (born 1964) is a South African born artist, writer and activist, closely identified with his controversial web site,Annoy.com and his notable Supreme Court victory against Janet Reno, Attorney General of the United States, challenging the constitutionality of the Communications Decency Act in 1997, where Fein's right to disseminate his art was upheld in a landmark victory for First Amendment rights.
Hello Apartheid My Old Friend.You've come to talk with me again.
Today South Africa passed the 'Protection of Information Act' that mocks press freedom despite vociferous opposition by protesters donning black in the cities of Johannesburg and Pretoria. This dark day, commonly referred to as 'Black Tuesday,' is a sad, blatant kick ion the face to all those who fought to end Apartheid, spilling blood in the pursuit of freedom.
The Sound of Silence is the secrecy this act protects and the freedom it desecrates.
The ANC today demonstrated once and for all that it is no longer fit to associate itself with Nelson Mandela or anything that he fought for and stands for.
Four pieces from my Tortureseries are included in “Please Lie to Me,“ Montreal art gallery, Art Mûr’s, exhibition opening next week to celebrate the gallery’s 15th anniversary.
“Please Lie to Me,” (PDF invitation) features an exciting mix of globally diverse artists, including the Gao brothers, a duo of extraordinarily talented, highly controversial Chinese artists, with whom I had the pleasure of spending an evening trading censorship stories in Beijing in 2007 while I was exhibiting Torture with New York's Michael Petronko Gallery.
Torture is a series of staged and digitally manipulated photographic images that recreate the infamous torture scenes from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, transforming the diffuse, muted and low-resolution images into large-scale, vivid, powerful and frightening reproductions. I focused on the choreography and sexualization of torture, which included images of prisoners stripped naked, wearing hoods or sandbags as they're forced to stand in excruciatingly uncomfortable positions, simulate sexually degrading acts, are plastered with feces and subject to egregious humiliation.
In spite of the horror, the images, stylized with fashion-photography lighting, radiate a profound beauty and eroticism that is all at once seductive, disturbing and unsettling.
The series, unfortunately, is as relevant today as it was during the Bush administration that inspired, enabled, condoned and justified the torture perpetrated in America’s name. President Barack Obama has refused to deal with this issue seriously and hold those responsible accountable. That the orders came from the top are no longer theories, but chapters from the books of Dick Cheney and other players who not only admit to their illegal. globally condemned, human-rights-violating, trickle-down torture policies, but vow they would do it again. This blight on America’s moral standing remains, and will continue to. Dirty, ugly and embarrassing.
Euphemisms like “enhanced interrogation techniques” for torture and “looking forward” as an excuse for a failure to prosecute war crimes doom us to repeat the same mistakes down the road. And render any attempts to promote democracy around the world nothing more than a waste of time, effort and money. Until Dick Cheney and his cohorts are at down in handcuffs before a court, whether in Nuremberg, Johannesburg or Baghdad, America’s ten year adventure in Iraq will prove the costliest and deadliest public relations disaster in American history.
The coverage of the Torture series was quite expansive, and included interviews and explanations as to what inspired the show and what was learned as a result. I have included a few for those who haven’t seen it or been exposed to it.
Art Mûr is located at 5826 rue St-Hubert , Montréal, Québec, and the show runs from November 5 – December 12, 2011.
Additional artists include Lois Andison, Simon Bilodeau, Dominique Blain, Susan Bozic, Renato Garza Cervera, Cooke-Sassville, Clinton Fein, Sarah Garzoni, Karine Giboulo, Dina Goldstein, Nicolas Grenier, Jonathan Hobin, Guillaume Lachapelle, Cal Lane, Nadia Myre, Jennifer Small, The Gao Brothers, Diana Thorneycroft, Barbara Todd, and Colleen Wolstenholme.
Fein's counterfeits are not intended to reprise tired debates about originality and authorship. Unlike Sherrie Levine, who rephotographed Walker Evans's Depression-era images, or Thomas Ruff, whose enlargements of Internet images preserve and accentuate the flaws of screen grabs, Fein seized upon despicable amateur images, which unexpectedly had acquired public notoriety and probative value, and re-presented them in enhanced, painterly terms. His invocation of old-master painting, far from summoning up Christian martyrdom as do the Abu Ghraib canvases of Fernando Botero, delivers us to the dark threshold of inhumanity conjured by Goya.
The recent show, titled "Torture," consisted of staged and manipulated photographic images. Fein felt that the low resolution of the pictures taken by the GIs participating in the Abu Ghraib abuses - the images that later appeared in the press - had the effect of muting and veiling the actual horror of the scenes depicted. Only sharp, high-resolution images, he concluded, could convey the full impact of the humiliating atrocities and show what the corrupt leaders of a supposedly civilized nation routinely endorsed.
Like Loan's execution and America's lynchings, the acts recorded in the original Abu Ghraib images look like performances for the camera's eye, as though the greatest shame of all was to have the moment documented for an audience, for posterity. And by including himself within the exhibition, Fein engages head-on this question of the photographer's presence at scenes of violence. Perhaps the artist is as sinister a figure as the original prison guard. Perhaps Fein enjoyed making violence as beautiful as this, and now asks us to enjoy it-asks us to take as much pleasure in these scenes as the original prison guards, with their grins and gestures. Perhaps Fein's camera, which demanded of his models full nudity and physical exhaustion, is as aggressive as the prison guard's club.
Several contemporary artists have tried to evoke the grotesqueries of war...But no one else has reached the peculiar extremes to which Fein goes. Using hired models, he re-enacted and photographed scenes of cruelty that were recorded in the notorious unofficial photographs of "detainee abuse" at Abu Ghraib.
Fein presents these images as giant panel-mounted chromogenic prints. To viewers who remember the Abu Ghraib images, Fein's pieces will look both grimly familiar and oddly aestheticized. Two are his inventions.
Encountering them in an art gallery provokes tangled responses: outrage that someone would advance his own ambitions through the degradations the Abu Ghraib photos record; perverse temptation by the opportunity to study the mise-en-scene of the original pictures, safe in the knowledge of seeing simulations; despair that history has again diverted the resources of art away from pleasure and contemplation to bleak and urgent critical functions; and, finally, the recognition that, after all the barriers between art and life come down, nothing insulates our enjoyment of the arts against toxic pollution from our knowledge of real events.
The constant comparison of Occupy Wall Street protesters and the Tea Party crowd (before they were coopted by Dick Armey, Sarah Palin, Batty Bachman and the Republican establishment) has been marvelously simplified by one James Sinclair.
His diagram makes one thing very clear. The biggest obstacles in the pursuit of consensus are labels.
The activist group, Gays Without Borders, are organizing "Gay Is Good: San Francisco Celebrates the Life and Legacy of Frank Kameny," to allow friends and admirers of gay pioneer Frank Kameny an opportunity to commemorate his life and teach a younger generation who he was and the contributions he made.
The celebration -- organized by Michael Petrelis, Bill Wilson and yours truly -- is set to take place at the base of the controversial flagpole in Harvey Milk Plaza in the Castro, where a wreath will be laid honoring the decades of Kameny laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery on Veterans' Day to honor and remember fallen lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender members of the U.S. military.
The flagpole itself is mired in a petty, bitter, nine-month old controversy over control of the pole, the rainbow flag that flies atop it, and the process by which it is occasionally lowered to recognize the lives of those who have made a valuable contribution to the community or events such as 9/11.
While it is understandable that lowering the flag too frequently will weaken its poignancy and reduce its meaning, many community members and activists (myself included) find the secretive and inconsistent process through which requests are made and randomly granted by Merchants of Upper Market and Castro (MUMC) unacceptable for a community space on city property. MUMC has refused to put forward a methodology that invites community involvement, or a transparent articulation of their vetting process which appears to be at the whim of one or two people on their board.
In an apparently unprecedented verbal contract with the San Francisco Department of Public Work giving MUMC custodianship of the flag and flagpole, their stubborn and childish refusal to cooperate with concerned members of the community despite repeated requests, or to meaningfully address their grievances, have resulted in steps currently underway to challenge MUMC’s custodianship and return the plaza to the citizens of San Francisco.
Whether MUMc lowers the flag to commemorate Kameny’s life or not, however, is irrelevant at this point, as laying a wreath at its base is better suited to remember him and his anual pilgramage to Arlington.
The date of the celebration and wreath-laying at Harvey Milk Plaza is designed to fall on the same date as a similar celebration taking place in Washington, DC, Kameny’s hometown, and will be announced once it is determined by the executors of his estate and his longtime friends.
On October 12, 2011, 86 year-old Frank Kameny died. It cannot be overstated what an incredibly brave man he was, and the extent to which the modern gay rights movement in the United States rests firmly on his shoulders.
In 1993, Steve Campbell and I had the pleasure of interviewing Mr. Kameny on video in his home in Washington DC (which I will optimize for the web and post in days to come), for the CD ROM version of "Conduct Unbecoming: Gays & Lesbians in the U.S. Military . Randy Shilts’ epic masterpiece of investigative journalism remains the ultimate history of gays in the military up until Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.
On July 14, 2011, California Governor, Jerry Brown signed into law the Fair, Accurate, Inclusive and Respectful (FAIR) Education Act, authored by Senator Mark Leno, to amend the Education Code to include social sciences instruction on the contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people. Despite the hysterical outcry from homophobes and those who would deny historical accuracy (much like they do science), Frank Kameny's contributions to civil society, not just gay rights, should be taught and acknowledged with the same respect and accuracy as Malcolm X or Susan B. Anthony.
Frank Kamney was an activist's activist. The Thomas Jefferson of Gay Liberation. In the excerpts below, Shilts captures just a glimpse of who Frank Kameny was, what he stood for, and what he achieved.
Clinton Fein
UNTIL 1959, DR. FRANKLIN KAMENY had been a happy, eccentric scientist performing his tasks in observational astronomy for the Army Map Service. He had a doctorate in astronomy from Harvard, and everyone agreed that he was very good at what he did, but this made no difference when his boss called him in and told him he was fired because he was a homosexual, since under the rules of the Civil Service Commission no homosexual could work for the United States government. Kameny had never demonstrated much of a political bent in the past, but as a man of science he was devoted to reason and could not fathom how his behavior in the privacy of his bedroom affected his job as a government astronomer. An intellectual, he was also not about to suffer fools gladly. Rather than quietly accept the termination and seek employment elsewhere, he decided to fight.
For the next two years, Kameny labored over his petition for certiorari, or a request of review by the Supreme Court. He developed legal arguments against the government’s action and formulated his own ideas about what would later be called gay liberation. In March 1961, when the high court turned down his petition, he began to seek out organizations championing homosexual rights. He found only five or six of them in the country. He soon set up his own group, the Washington chapter of the Mattachine Society. From that moment on, he had three goals: to end the Civil Service’s ban on gays working for the government, to end discrimination against homosexuals seeking security clearances, and to end the exclusion of gays from the military.
BY THE TIME TECHNICAL Sergeant Leonard Matlovich appeared at Frank Kameny’s two-story brick house a half block from the Potomac River, he had already confided that he was indeed the “friend” for whom he had placed the phone call several months earlier. Kameny’s enthusiasm built as Matlovich recounted his military resume. The man held the Bronze Star, a Purple Heart, two Air Force commendation medals, and a recent Air Force Meritorious Service Medal, had done three tours in Vietnam, and had altogether eleven years of unblemished service. Central casting could not have provided a better test case to take to the Supreme Court. Kameny, however, was no lawyer. Fortunately, a former Air Force lawyer had already volunteered for the job.
Matlovich’s decision to fight the military’s exclusion of gays came as he settled into a new routine within the huge array of military bases around the Norfolk area, the region locals called Hampton Roads. At night military men with their telltale short haircuts and without the longish sideburns fashionable in the posthippie era packed the local gay bars. For the first time, Matlovich could socialize with other gay military people, but when he spoke of challenging the regulations he found that such talk genuinely frightened many of his new friends.
Matlovich would not be deterred, however, even though he dreaded both the moment when he would tell the Air Force he was gay and the inevitable aftermath of telling his parents. Still, he felt he had no other choice. For years, he had spoken about the need for the United States to attain justice and equality for all its citizens. Now, he had actually begun to believe it.
With Washington activist Frank Kameny, [Bruce] Voeller aggressively lobbied both the American Psychiatric Association and the federal Civil Service Commission to make what would be historic changes in their antigay policies. He also began cultivating relationships with national news organizations, believing media exposure, not radical confrontations, was the better means of educating the country about gay injustices.
MEMORIAL DAY, 1980 TOMB OF THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA
GAY ORGANIZER FRANK KAMENY had made it clear that if the Army did not grant permission to lay his wreath on Memorial Day, he would do it, anyway--even if he got shot in the process. But it was White House intervention and Allison Thomas’s persistence that finally moved the Army to accede just days before the scheduled ceremonies.
On the morning of the wreath laying, three high-ranking civilian officials from the Department of the Army stood at the ready to make sure the gay activists did not instigate a subversive act, and a squad of armed military police waited out of sight in the tunnel complex beneath the tomb. At the appointed time, Kameny and a handful of other members of the Gay Activists Alliance stepped solemnly down the wide marble staircase to the broad plaza where the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier sits, its pilastered facade facing Washington. From the tunnels below the staircase, an honor guard in Army dress blues emerged with the wreath into the plaza.
This was not a great turning point in the history of the United States, Kameny knew, but it was a small victory. He had known gay men who had died for their country in World War II and in the Korean and Vietnam wars, and he would be damned if they would be denied this honor any longer.
Being a stickler for detail, however, Kameny also noticed the difference between the Gay Activists Alliance commemoration and the others.
While every other group was announced before it placed its wreaths, no announcement was made for the gay activists. And Kameny noticed someone had placed a spray of flower petals to cover the word Gay, so their identifying ribbon read Activists Alliance. And although the wreaths remained on the tomb until it was time for the next ceremony, the gay wreath was gone by the time Kameny and his friends reached the top of the stairs on their way out.
Not long afterward, Kameny received a phone call from a stranger who asked whether he and his lover might pay Frank a visit. As the grand old man of Washington’s gay community, Frank was accustomed to such cryptic requests, and when the couple arrived Kameny recognized one of them as part of the Old Guard that had handled the ceremonies that day. He was here to thank Kameny for the wreath. There were a lot of people in uniform that day, he said, who appreciated what Frank had done.
Copyright 1995-2011 Innoventions, Inc. All rights reserved. Copyright 1993 Randy Shilts. Copyright 1994 Estate of Randy Shilts. All rights reserved. Published by arrangement with St. Martin's Press.
From its inception, as part of a First Amendment lawsuit challenging the Communications Decency Act, our role was to ensure that both language and imagery, crude in style and execution in its early days, was intentionally as indecent and annoying as possible.
The targets of Annoy.com’s wrath – politicians and the media – were excoriated with unreserved venom and vitriol, with the foulest language imaginable and frequently graphics to support it. And top of that list, from day one, was Rupert Murdoch and his media properties.
The biggest irony of all, was that our small company had waged a First Amendment battle, the resolution of which would protect the likes of News Corporation. No one could argue that online transmission of content of the New York Post, The Sun, News of the World and later Fox News, would meet the vague definitions of both indecent and annoying.
Almost every month, our disgust for Murdoch and the extent to which he was singlehandedly and irreparably degrading journalism was published on Annoy.com.
All this time we’ve been railing against Murdoch, it felt like we were swimming upstream alone. Long before Keith Olbermann began his vendetta against Fox News and later Murdoch. But the Internet has a memory, and despite the vulgarity of some of the expression, here is a compilation of what Annoy.com published. Vindication has taken a long time, but it looks like finally it may just have arrived.
Is Israel really the only genuine democracy in the Middle East, as it is so often portrayed? Not if the Knesset has anything to do with it.
In a stunning move, Israel’s Knesset voted 47-38 to pass a bill that will make it illegal to support an anti-Israel boycott.
According to Britain’s Telegraph, “Under the terms of the bill it will be a civil offence to back an anti-Israel boycott, be it consumer, academic or cultural; and initiators of a boycott will be subject to litigation. The law also prevents the government doing business with any company that initiates or complies with boycotts.”
What exactly does “back” a boycott mean? Can you criticize it? If there’s a boycott on a performer, do you have to actually go see the performer to prove you aren’t boycotting?
I’ve been harshly critical of Israel’s policies, not Israel, nor her people, nor her right to exist. Ever. And I’ve felt that Israel was strong enough, and vital enough and committed enough, and democratic enough to handle it, so my expectations have been high.
Under this policy, given my art and writing, visiting Israel would constitute a risk for me, although I have yet to determine what the actual punishment would be, or who could sue me for what dmages once the litigation began.
A spokesperson for EU’s foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton stated: “The EU recognizes Israel's sovereignty in the legislative process. Furthermore, the EU does not advocate boycotts. However, as part of such fundamental values as free expression and speech that the EU cherishes and shares with Israel, we are concerned about the effect that this legislation may have on the freedom of Israeli citizens and organizations to express non-violent political opinions."
I can only hope the Israel’s courts have better sense than their politicians, and this ridiculous, anti-democratic law is struck down by Israel's High Court of Justice immediately.
I'm incredibly honored. In this Authors@Google Presents talk, Bill spends a considerable amount of time discussing landmark First Amendment cases that set the stage for any Internet law to follow. Renv.ACLU, in which I filed an Amicus brief, and ApolloMedia v. Reno in which I was the plaintiff. He also dicusses Wikileaks and Julian Assange.
In addition, he discusses other important cases and their implications, including Yetta Stromberg (the first time in American history that the court struck down a law on First Amendment grounds) to Ku Klux Klan leader, Clarence Brandenburg, Earl Caldwell (the journalist who covered the Black Panthers and refused to hand over his notebooks and recordings to the FBI at the behest of J. Edgar Hoover), Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Larry Flint (editor of Hustler magazine).
Bill’s book provides an incredible history of the First Amendment – how “fighting words” or “shouting fire in a crowded theater” and other familiar First Amendment principles came to be. I will definitely be discussing more of Bill’s book, chapter by chapter, in posts to follow.
Introduction" 1 Yetta Stromberg 2 Jehovahs Witnesses 3 Dannie Martin 4 Raymond Procunier and Robert H Schnacke 5 Earl Caldwell 6 Richard Hongisto 7 Clarence Brandenburg 8 Larry Flynt 9 Clinton Fein and the ACLU Afterword
Because I'm known as a First Amendment purist and activist, I've received a number of messages and questions regarding Tracy Morgan and the First Amendment. I think it's worth expressing the following.
First and foremost, only a government can censor speech. Organizations such as NBC also enjoy a First Amendment right to express themselves, and as a private corporation can legally choose to deny someone a voice on their media properties if they so choose. And while we refer to it as corporate censorship, it is not really censorship at all in the context of the First Amendment.
Tracy Morgan is protected by the First Amendment. And while some may argue that his diatribe crossed the line into inciting violence, such a shouting fire in a crowded theater, it would not meet the strict standards that are applied that guarantee us our First Amendment protections.
That said, the First Amendment right to freely express oneself does not mean that speech is without consequence. Eminem can sing homophobic and misogynist lyrics, and the targets of his expression can just as loudly and freely berate him, mock him, pity him and boycott him.
Anti-gay organizations can spew their vile hatred under the guise of morality or religion, but it doesn't mean they won't be ripped a new one for it.
Tracy Morgan has the right to say whatever he wants about how he feels about gay people. That does not mean he has the right to be employed by NBC or Tina Fey if he crosses a line that either displeases them or reflects badly on them.
Rush Limbaugh can make as many racist, vile and ugly statements as he likes. It doesn't mean he is protected from it being attributed to a pathalogical, racist, vile, bloated Oycontin addict.
Ann Coulter can say that if she had a gay child she would tell the child he or she was adopted. And we can say that if Ann Coulter told a child she was a mother, the child could, and most likely would, say he or she was adopted.
As public figures shoot their mouths (and themselves in the foot), and laws that tackle hate speech are being crafted in congress, we need to be careful to make sure that context, mood and occasion are incorporated into how expression is assessed and managed as opposed to blanket condemnations of words.
Nigger, faggot and other epithets have an important historical relevance, and the outright ban of those words would be chilling and dangerous. We can't teach why these words hurt and sting without being able to use and reference them.
While it may be really tempting to silence people like Tracy Morgan, Mel Gibson, or Michael Richards, the best way to counter the lies and the hatred they spread is through countering misinformation. That means more, intelligent, constructive expression that neutralizes -- or better nullifies -- the original speech , not less expression.
Tracy Morgan may yet learn the hard way just why the kind of garbage he spews in unacceptable (not to mention unamusing and ignorant). In terms of fans, job opportunities, and goodwill, to name a few. But he still has a First Amendment right to express himself, as do all Americans.
Just because we have free speech does not mean it is without cost.
Despite a recent article, Budget Showdown: Senate Democratic Women Preserve Party’s Principles by my friend Tanya Domi about those Democratic lawmakers who stood up for Planned Parenthood (and those Republican women who didn't), it's obvious that this problem transcends party politics and national boundaries, and I don't think this global, ugly war on women is about capitalism either, as another friend Joanne Kalogeras suggested among other things (other than the fact that today is Equal Pay Day, reflecting the amount of time a woman must work into 2011 to receive the same pay that men earned in 2010).
The revolting treatment of women is even worse in dictatorships and theocracies, and while the forced abortion policies in China alone say enough about a non-religious domination of women, as does the Soviet treatment of women, the powerful role of patriarchal religions are at the source. And while enlightened people can look at ancient doctrines for a more inclusive, respectful role for women in the church or synagogue or mosque, it’s an uphill battle that is exhausting to even contemplate.
Without any reference to my position on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, people often use this quote, disputably attributed to Golda Meir: “Peace will come when the Arabs start to love their children more than they hate us.”
I believe that this increasingly alarming war on women can only be won by having men join forces which can be achieved by capitalizing on the love they have for their mothers, sisters, grandmothers, daughters and wives. And that this war on women must be recharacterized as a direct attack on families, not just women. Reproductive rights, sexual abuse support systems, medical services etc. etc. must stop being characterized as women’s issues.
Crass is it sounds, let’s leverage misogyny, so that depriving a woman of choices and services is equated with denying a man the right to decide with his family what the best options are. Tackling the misogyny itself can come next.
I read a recent New York Times story about an 11-year-old girl who was repeatedly gang raped (18 suspects so far!) which chilled me to the bone. This wasn’t yet another Sharia-inspired, inappropriately and euphemistically termed “honor killing,” or the horrific story of a fourteen-year-old girl lashed to death for adultery after being raped.
Rather, this is an all-American, poverty-enabled, technology-glorified objectification that showed as much disregard for a young girl as John Boehner’s, Obama-green-lighted attacks against not only women, but families, in the name of deficit reduction.
Men. If you want to call yourselves that, stop attacking, raping, assualting and killing women with such unbridled hate, because they are my mothers, my sisters, my nieces, my grandmothers, my cousins and my friends you attack, and so me.
And trust me; with every weapon in my arsenal, I will fight you back.
