Art and freedom
Extracts from the Manifesto on Artists’ Rights by Tania Bruguera (from ‘Why Are We Artists?: 100 World Art Manifestos, Jessica Lack, 2017, Penguin Modern Classics)
- Art is not a luxury. Art is a basic social need to which everyone has a right.
- Art is a way to build thinking, of being aware of oneself and of the others at the same time. It is a methodology for the search of a here and now in constant transformation.
- Art is an invitation to question; it is the social place of doubt, of wanting to understand and of wanting to change reality.
- Art is not only a statement of the present, it is also a call for a better future. Therefore, it is a right not only to enjoy art, but to be able to create it.
- Art is a common good that does not have to be understood in its totality.
- Art is a space of vulnerability from which what is social is deconstructed to construct what is human…..
- Artists have the right to disagree not only with affective, moral, philosophical, or cultural aspects, but also with economic and political ones.
- Artists have the right to disagree with power, with the status quo.
- Artists have the right to be respected and protected when they dissent……
- Artists also have the right to be understood in the complexity of their disagreement. Artists should not be judged but discussed. And certainly artists should not be put in jail for proposing an “other” reality, for sharing their ideas, for wanting to strike up a conversation on the way the present unfolds. If the artist proposal is not understood, it should be discussed by all, not censored by a few………
- Artists have the right to create the work they want to create, with no limits; they have the duty to be responsible without self-censure……
- Artistic censorship not only affects artists but also the communities they inhabit. It creates fear and self-censorship in them. It paralyzes the possibility to exercise critical thinking………………
- A society with freedom of artistic expression is a healthier society. It is a society where citizens are allowed to dream of a better world where they have a place. It is a society that expresses itself better, because it expresses itself in its entire complexity…………….
