RE: [-empyre-] February 2006 on -empyre- soft-skinned space

["Nicholas Ruiz" <nr03@fsu.edu>]

The recent posts regarding art, and government removal or questioning of art
and its patrons, highlight the intimacy, if not conflation, of individual
moral perspective and societal juridical policy.  As far as I know, laws do
not exist in Australia, that serve to restrict the use of flags in art
(though some may be forthcoming), regardless of the editing the flag
receives in the way of artistic treatment.  In the U.S. no such law exists,
though there has been a recent move to restrict citizens from the activity
of flag desecration, which we assume would extend to art.(1)  

However, discrimination of art on 'moral' grounds runs rampant globally.
The recent cartoons of Mohammed in Copenhagen; the former NYC mayor, Rudy
Giuliani and his attempt to stop the Brooklyn Museum and the "Sensation"
exhibit in 1999; along with the other examples brought to light by
participants in this discussion, and so on.  

It is this moral pulsion that we must fear; that most threatens art and
speech acts.  




(1) http://www.aclu.org/freespeech/flag/11257prs20050622.html 


NRIII


 

Nicholas Ruiz III
ABD/GTA
Interdisciplinary Program in the Humanities
Florida State University
Editor, Kritikos
http://garnet.acns.fsu.edu/~nr03

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