Is cancel culture killing the arts?

[Music] foreign [Music] delighted to be chairing this panel on whether cancel culture is killing the Arts there's obviously a lot more to it than just a kind of whinge I hope and I think that the panelists can bring out some of the nuances on this conversation but there's obviously an issue I've just been chairing the keynote on the culture wars and when you've got our culture wars then actually culture the Arts often becomes embroiled in it and although it might not be the case that we have explicit censorship we all know that there are threats to Artistic freedom and artistic expression in this country that we want to explore I think as well we want to have some Nuance in the conversation because for example I have been recently horrified by attempts at Banning Russian Art for example in light of the Ukraine war I think that cultural boycotts can sometimes have a unintended consequence of demonizing art so I don't think it's straightforward where we all stand on this and do we want free speech come what may does that mean that plays as was recently the case an artistic theatrical predict production which actually seemed to be encouraging the very young children who would attend it to participate in adult sexual activity and was dragged into the whole transgender Wars issue but you know what I just say oh I don't care I believe in autistic Freedom Let It Roll right so are there any lines where do they lie what's happening in the Arts world this session is uh organized in partnership with a new organization in the UK not in the world because it exists in other countries which is the common sense Society um it's got a stall outside is a a new kid on the Block and we're lucky that we've got its new director Emma here and so in addition to her remarks on the art she's also going to say a little bit about the common sense Society so you can find out what that's all about format for those of you are new to the Battle of ideas is that each speaker's got between five and six minutes each um Emma will add in as I say a little extra on the common sense Society um I will then go straight out to the audience and we'll just open up what is going to be a public conversation don't feel frightened of challenging the speakers um if you disagree with them if you think they're talking nonsense say so they're all grown up they'll cope uh feel free to ask hesitant unsure questions it doesn't matter you're not expected to have the answers it can be that you're confused and you can see both sides of the story in which case feel free to say that and as I said earlier today the main thing is not to say I find that offensive and storm off if you find something offensive explain why and argue a different point of view so let's meet our panel we've got Emma Webb here who is the director of the Common Sense Society UK she's the host of Newspeak she's the co-founder of save our statues she is a regular contributor now to GB news is a regular commentator on all things arts and culture and I always find her opinions and her insights uh very interesting and always slightly against the grain of where I think so she never lets me be lazy it's good to have some uh Insight in that way so I'm delighted to have you Emma then sitting next to me we've got Winston Marshall who is a musician uh he was one of the founders of Mumford and Sons and then he was canceled so the Arts might uh not be the victim of cancer culture but he was um and um he's a writer and he also hosts a a really important podcast I think called martial matters in which he actually discusses this very question regularly with people from the Arts world and I recommend that you listen to that it's it comes out via The Spectator so we're delighted to have you here Winston um we then are going to hear from Rosie K who is an award-winning dancer and choreographer who actually ended up getting canceled by her own dance company which was a blow and she's the CEO an artistic director now of k2co limited and Rosie has been I think incredibly uh an important voice in shining lights on what happens when some of the culture wars issues hits the art world and actually leads to Art itself being undermined as a consequence and I think that that even though she's dusted herself off and you know here to fight the good fight and the dance company is I hope about to embark on a hugely successful tour and so on it's not easy it's difficult when they go for you um and then finally we've got Dr Tiffany Jenkins who is a a writer and a broadcaster she's the author of keeping their marbles how Treasures of the past ended up in museums and why they should stay here which was a well received if not controversial incredibly important academic and easily accessible read on the disputes around museums and their artifacts and is about to have out strangers and Intimates the rise and fall of public of of private life which I know is going to be an incredibly important contribution to our understanding of matters of privacy and things which uh I think historically she will help us understand how we got to the place that we are a very important academic voice artistic voice and what's more is she used to work with me so we're great friends so I'm delighted to have her here can we give our panel a warm welcome please [Applause] Emma will you kick us off please declare I apologize in advance I think this is actually going to be a bit of a wind but I promise it's not going to be an unmitigated whinge um so I'm going to take a slightly different tack to normal I'm not going to list lots of examples of why I think people um in the Arts are being canceled or examples of how cancer culture is killing the Arts instead I want to look at the way that I think it's creating a sort of psychological culture that is terminal basically for artistic expression because I'm sure we'll come to a lot of the points that Claire's already made when we get to the Q a so first I think that Council culture creates this climate of censorship through fear which basically amounts to men to side the killing of the Mind a very good example is what happened to Winston so Winston tweeted something that was so completely benign you basically said that you read a book and that you liked it and that you thought that the author was Brave and I think that this is actually part of it the fact that it's benign is a power move it's it's a way of whipping up a storm around something that is benign that makes other artists look at that and think well if this can happen to Winston then this can happen to me because I also say benign things so it creates this impression that the tripwires are always changing and that uncertainty solidifies social control and that leaves the artist with two choices you either have to live in fear and resign yourself to the fact that one day you might be asked to make a gesture that goes against your conscience or that you'll be asked a question that will if answered truthfully end your career and you are basically forced to accept that everything that you've worked for probably since you were a child you might need to sacrifice for your conscience or on the other hand um you may have to sacrifice your conscience in order to protect everything that you've worked for um so consciously or not you prevent yourself from having any original ideas or thoughts because if you did then you might expose yourself so whenever someone makes a public apology especially if they recant later usually on Twitter this conflict always reminds me of the line from the end of The Crucible where John Proctor having already confessed that he's a witch finds that confessing wasn't enough basically and he has to have that confession nailed to the church door as well and so he tears up his confession he explains why he says because it is my name because I cannot have another in my life because I lie and I sign myself to lies so the second way the art kills the cancel culture kills Art Is by stifling the production and consumption of art it limits what people can do it limits who can do it and it prevents the audience from accessing anything that deviates from the Orthodoxy and all of this creates an atmosphere of spiritual death that is completely terminal for a creative person so what I'm going to do is I'm going to take you through two books that I think have really important insights into this psychological process the first is by a guy called milosh who was I'm not going to try to pronounce his first name so sorry to any polls um milosh was a Polish man who was a dissident and he wrote a book called The Captive mind in 1951. and he goes into great detail about the psychological process that an artist has to go through in a totalitarian society and how he adapts he talks about the necessity of submitting and the seduction of it and he talks about the impossibility of creating art in that environment and he talks specifically about the German poet rilker and I'll read you out the full quote he says contemplative poems such as his could never appear in a people's democracy not only because it would be difficult to publish them but because the writer's impulse to write them would be destroyed at its very root the objective conditions for such poetry have disappeared and the intellectual of whom I speak is not one who believes in writing for the bureau draw he curses and despairs over the censorship and demands of the publishing trusts so milosh describes what he sees as the frightening Shadows of internal Exiles irreconcilable non-participating and on the other hand you have those who do swallow the ideology and they do find success but they also don't escape unscathed he describes how he sees a particular extinguishment that is often imperceptible in the twist of the lips so that also is a kind of psychological and spiritual creative death and he recalls a poet a conversation with a young polish poet about how the creative process is frustrated and I think this will sound very familiar to all of you so I'll read it out the poet says my own stream of thought has so many tributaries that I barely succeed in damning one off when a second third or fourth overflows I get halfway through a phrase and I already submit it to Marx's criticism I imagine what X or Y will say about it and I change the ending and so the second book is won by a lady called um Azana feezy who wrote a book in 2003 called reading Lolita in tehrad and I would highly recommend it to everyone nafisi was a literature teacher in the Islamic Republic who set up a secret reading Circle for female students to read forbidden literature the reason she did this was because in the Islamic Republic teaching was to quote her subservient to politics and subject to arbitrary rules the reason that she she did this um as I say was because she basically felt that the life was being strangled um out of the enjoyment of literature and her comments particularly on nabokov's invitation to a beheading are really important and tie into what milosh was writing about nabokov's protagonist is sentenced to death for the crime of Gnostic turpitude his crime is that citizens are supposed to be transparent but he happens to be opaque he's like the women in the reading group or like free-thinking artists nafisi says and this is a quote what Nabokov creates for us is not the actual physical pain and torture of a totalitarian regime but the nightmarish quality of living in an environment of Perpetual dread those of us living in the Islamic Republic of Iran grasped both the tragedy and absurdity of the cruelty to which we were subjected this is one reason that art and literature became so essential to our lives what Nabokov captured was the texture of living in a totalitarian Society so the point that I'm trying to make is that cancel culture is much more Insidious than Graham Norton thinks it is it's in the air it's poisoned the well the artistic well it's poison creative activity and nafisi said that her class was quote the color of her dreams she said it entailed an active withdrawal from a reality that had turned hostile so that leads me on to the common sense Society because that's exactly what the common sense society means to me and it's what the common sense society means to all of the people who have become a part of it over the years as part of our International family in the Netherlands in Hungary in the United States and soon in other countries as well as the United Kingdom whether they're artists dissidents writers musicians journalists academic or anyone else we have become an active refuge in every country where we have a presence we want to keep the flame of civilization burning by protecting and helping to thrive the conditions that we believe are fundamental for human flourishing Liberty prosperity and beauty so to finish on that note our branch in the UK will be launching on the 20th of October and if you'd like to sign up to our mailing list we have an iPad outside where you could enter your details and we'll invite you to future events and please come and have a chat to our international team we've got people from the UK and from the United States as well so thank you very much thank you [Applause] and then I was an excellent start to this discussion and it's just interesting because in the opening culture wars debate one of the speakers quoted Philip Roth's um American pastoral and it's a which is an excellent novel to try and understand something about kind of civilizational um existential moment that we're in now even though it's written some time ago and somebody on the way out said um you said you loved that novel but I do think Roth is really problematic um I then I mean you know that's you might be shocked but that's actually much more common than being shocked by it because roughly is controversial and then Emma you mentioned Nabokov and as you know there are people as we speak because of his novel Lolita he would say that he should not be uh taken seriously as the novelist and so on and so forth so these things are constantly as you say in The Ether in the air okay let's hear from Winston your thoughts please thank you and uh is this one yeah uh baroness Fox thank you so much for inviting me no one's allowed to do that right it's embarrassing carry on so uh I anticipated that everyone here would argue that cancer culture is killing the Arts and I thus will take the opposite opinion I don't think cancel culture is killing the Arts oh contraire I think it's only going to make the Arts better so cancer culture is not a new phenomenon it's a new name for a very old phenomenon de tocqueville described cancer culture and Democracy in America he said when and ideas which were once debatable became toxic those people who held those ideas had to be expunged from the community we can go back even further Galileo of course was in the Inquisition uh his ideas which we now know to be true uh he lost it all I think I can't remember exactly what happened in prison or something but anyway he had the courage to come out after and say a person more of a the uh of course it still turns around referring to the Earth around the Sun um so cancer culture is not a new phenomenon it's just a new name now uh so do I think Council culture is killing the Arts I don't and the reason is because well we're not arguing whether or not they exist I notice which is what obviously Graham Norton and JK Rowling and Billy brag are doing on Twitter at the moment but if we assume that it does exist um look at what its impact is having on people my esteemed co-panelist Rosie K who was forced to resign from her dance company because she held the wrong opinions gender critical opinions is now back with a new dance company which I am sure will be even more successful than the previous one uh then there's the case of Ariel pink the American musician who didn't attend the Capital Hill storming on January 6th but did attend the preceding Trump rally he was dropped by text message from his uh record label about 130 articles besmirching his name he lost it all but I have heard the music he's been making since and it's even better and it's been influenced by those experiences Hemingway said of Dostoevsky writers are forged in Injustice as a sword is forged in a fire uh of course there are caveats now what's happened to Salman Rushdie in Upstate New York Chautauqua uh uh because of uh his writing and uh that is clearly a caveat because it's almost literally killing him but I would say on whole I think that the a new generation of artists who uh have gone through this uh horrible experience will come out with some great art [Applause] I like an inspiring Call to Arms I feel quite I feel like going and Manning the barricades as we speak but anyway Rosie basically you've come out of this better darling so don't mode right anyway Rosie K everyone let's cancel culture your first stop you can't kill the Arts the Arts will live on and continue maybe in different ways maybe in different formats but human urge for creativity to reconstruct the world to look at it uniquely will not end but that doesn't mean you can't kill artists or attempt to kill their ability to make and show art and I mean this literally and metaphorically in some of the most authoritarian Road teams in the world artists are targeted arrested imprisoned tortured and executed the very Act of thinking freely acting out impulses creatively bringing in new ways to look at the world to the public can make you a Target in the west we are not at that stage but make no mistake the punishment for the crime of wrong think of heterodox thought of even simply independent thought is pretty dire artists some in the room and such as myself face multiple repeated complaints smears defamation de-platforming cancellations invitations are rescinded opportunities are funding rejected bookings for performances or exhibitions canceled and it becomes impossible to make a livelihood our theaters our Arts institutions our colleges and our conservatoires are decaying they are rotting hulks whose mission and purpose for the meaning and the cultivation of art has been lost they are like the Mary Celeste wants great ships built to support and house new thinking creativity mastering of skills of an artistic apprenticeship and to show and share the best ideas in the world are now empty full of propaganda involved in their own political polemics of inquisitivity and dynamism without of the voices of the artists heard true and bright and contrary and difficult and onto these rotting hulks come the activists the people who call themselves artists activists but who actually are propagandists they seek to destroy to shut down to silent or Worse to re-educate the poor ignorant audience but they have nothing to offer but group think they have no originality of their identity and they have spread like a mold mushrooming across the country polluting our theaters our institutions and our training academies we have theater seriously in Peril right now in danger of shutting down due to spiraling costs and lack of audiences returning and what do they program theater program production mostly ceased through covid there is a dearth of good shows the funding system is currently favoring work that is measured not on artistic quality but on its ability to deliver on diversity inclusion relevance or environmental responsibility no wonder audiences are not returning to these institutions for me the place of the Arts is a place of honesty of truth of facing our deepest fears and our greatest Joys it's a place of discipline hard work ritual routine and learning from person to person artist to artist a master to Apprentice to this means I've written and sort of designed a charter of creation that anybody joining my company can voluntarily sign and it kind of says something like I believe in the joy and the beauty of dance that we are here to look at the depth and height of human human existence we are free to think and to speak in the studio free from being silent shut down or canceled and that we listen and share our views and we do not impose beliefs on others but discuss and debate our work the Arts cannot thrive in a Culture of Fear fear kills creativity we must base our creativity on a foundation of Truth and honesty without this everything and nothing is performative and performance what truth can ever be found from an audit for an audience member if we are in character all the time I honor my profession of dance and I honor the Masters who came before me and whose teaching is passed down body to body dance to dance human to Human all the alarm Bells Are Ringing we must not ignore them [Applause] I'm more sober called to arms and but I think indicates the seriousness of what we face and why this isn't you know just a kind of woke versus anti-woke uh um sort of swapping around of of insults or anything or just a whinge as I character at the beginning because I think that you've made some very important points there Rosie that we'll come back to you Tiffany 25 years ago you show called sensation and it was a sensation it hit the Press you had Damien Hurst pickle shark you had Tracy Emmons all the people that I've ever slept with and you had that picture of Myra hindley made with the hand prints of children it was controversial it wasn't necessarily surprising but it was it generated a ton of headlines and so what I want to do is look at how we went from that to an instance where for example just to pick one a couple of years ago Manchester Museum took down from display a watercolor from the Victorian period of naked nymphs you can just imagine what that picture was like very nice little beautiful naked nymphs frolicking around in a pool of water and they did this to start a conversation which you can read as end the conversation around me too issues and there was a massive public backlash and it was reinstated but this is not a new phenomenon of Institutions basically compelling us how to think about these works if they leave them on the Shelf at all I want to look at where this has come from because Winston is right there are many kind of there are many moments where Arts have been put to utilitarian purposes where they have been used by political regime so what is new about today um and where did it come from I think in its modern form the most the first flash point around culture War issues around the Arts was at the Met Museum in 1969 so 1969 height of the civil war Civil Rights movement and institutions were trying in a way to become relevant this was an institution that was 100 years old and it organized an exhibition called Harlem on my mind it was an anthropological social history of Harlem and what it did not do madly is include any black artists from Harlem so black people were treated almost as kind of anthropological they were treated more on the basis of their identity than their achievements as artists so I think what you have there is two kind of phenomena and I think the relationship of those two phenomena has brought us to where we are today one is what I would call the crisis of authority crisis of purpose and institutions it's very clear that institutions for some time have been very uncomfortable with their foundational mission of art truth beauty dissemination knowledge and within those institutions there's been a kind of war between those who want to try and find new sources of authority and it comes and it goes and it goes back and forth and at each stage of the war those that are on the side if you like truth and beauty and dissemination of knowledge have taken a step further back but the other is the rise of this concept really of the personal is political which I think is it's a feminist Mantra but it sort of turns politics and private life inside out so who you are as an individual matters more uh really than the public political sphere and it's kind of turned it inside out you've seen culture War flashes really from that period and sometimes it's not been uncreative so artists have become much more political some of it's very interesting Cindy Sherman for example very interesting critical feminist uh photographer and plays with imagery so there's some it's not been entirely uncreative um in turn you've got something like piss Christ I don't know if anybody has seen that I've got a few nods so this is a plastic crucifix in urine photograph and that was a culture War for the ride for Catholics who didn't want that to be displayed so that's your sort of 8 18 1980s come 1994 the Enola Gay the airplane that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima was displayed at the Smithsonian and it had to be taken down it had to they had to change it because there was such a backlash so we think the history Wars are new that's really when they took off in America so where does that leave us today how is it how is it new I certainly think that institutions have come to try and gain new legitimacy themselves by being on the front foot and so what you have now is something like the Hogarth exhibition I don't know if anybody saw this a fantastic material but I just have to read you one of the labels because it's utterly it's utterly shocking so it's a self-portrait of the artist at work the chair in which the Hogarth sits and this is what the label tells you the audience as you're walking around an exhibition that you've paid to go see because you want to see Hogarth the chair in which he sits literally supports him and exemplifies his view on beauty which we already know is probably a little bit suspect the chair is made from Timbers shipped from the colonies via Roots which also shipped enslaved people Roots which also in shaped Slave people could the chair also stand in for all those unnamed black and brown people enabling the society that supports his vigorous creativity I.E he's complicit and you are too because you're looking at this painting you can't even find that a piece of abolitionist art and treat it as a piece of political propaganda so the example I just want to leave you with on this section is figures of emancipation carpo recast which is an abolitionist sculpture so made by an abolitionist about and it's a sort of figure of annealing woman an enslaved woman it's an argument against slavery from the 19th century life-size burst and so you may have thought that this was a piece of political propaganda with which you might agree I is abolitionist but when it was displayed at the Met the label text reads as follows while the subject's resisting Poe's defined expression and a company inscription have long been interpreted as conveying a powerful anti-slavery message the bust also visualizes long-standing European fantasies about the possession of and domination over black people's bodies so you can't even take as read a piece of political art you will think this your eyes deceive you your thoughts deceive you so is this killing the Arts I think in some very real ways people's lives like Winston's and roses are being altered profoundly irrevocably they can't choose not to sit out the cultures you cannot even be silent and I think in two ways it's really Insidious one the way in which our institutions which have been crumbling for some time but they have a responsibility they have a responsibility to the art to preserve it to disseminate it and to create a common culture they have a responsibility to engage with it aesthetically and they are reneging on that and turning instead into kind of vehicles of propaganda and instruction but I think the most profound and this is what I think is happening now is what Emma talked about in terms of it's in the air it's in the air and I think you have to think about it you know when you go as an artist or a member of the audience to an art gallery is a private encounter that you are having with a piece of work or when you're an artist you go away in your Garrett and you spend a long time in the kind of private contemplation and it's no longer permitted to be a private act we aren't allowed private thoughts um or that's how it feels and that's why it's the most Insidious so you know you mentioned salmon rushby as we I think all feel in this room is that the impact of those 30 years since the fatwa was issued is that we have internalized it we have internalized it and that is death because you cannot think and that's why I'm afraid although I didn't want to begin or end with a pessimistic note I do think it's very serious okay thank you very much thanks so much Tiff I think we can see from the the breadth and depth of those introductions that there's a lot to dig into here isn't part of the problem that we're conflating art with morality we expect our artists to be good people and the reality is is that artists are by their nature Fringe they're the people who look in on society they're the people who are not part of society for a variety of different reasons if you think about the van Gogh the toulouse-lautrecs the people like that and by being Fringe that is how they're able to reflect Society so beautifully now it seems to me that we're expecting not only people to be great artists we also want them to be impeccable human beings and I think that's an impossible situation because as we all know many of the greatest artists are also were also terrible people so how do we move forward where we expect artists to not only produce incredible works of art but also be impeccable morally it to me it's it just it's a situation that is doomed to failure uh thank you very much that's uh Francis Foster from trigonometry I didn't realize that you've got your own fan club in Francis right okay don't I I really liked um Winston's provocation at the start of it as uh I really really enjoyed that um I have disagreement with it um uh so I can see the point of having the provocation but my disagreement actually is about uh so to talk bills talk about the tyranny of the majority so it's um uh it's the tyranny of majority opinion and then that um basically suppressing yeah free thinking from a better for one of a better word and I think uh probably the one thing that we can rely upon uh as per Emma's uh campaign is that uh that these uh ideas and attitudes informed by critical theory aren't shared by the majority of people and that there is some room still for common sense to operate um what I'm what I'm worried about though and I think this is a point that Lionel Shriver made about you know being told that she needs to kind of stay in her Lane that she couldn't write you know um she couldn't write about someone else's lived experience she could only pull from her own lived experience is that results in the death of the imagination and so whilst I agree that art will continue it it might still be dead you know as it continues in the zombie form I think that's the that would be my real worry um totally agree about the Tate and Hogarth um a question really are we at the stage where only Rich artists can say what they actually like we've got an example of Ricky Gervais with his comments about the new women with beard and bollocks we've got Dave Chappelle who spoke up about the trans issue then we've got Graham line who I thought was rich but doesn't seem to be supporting feminists and he can't get his new play on about Father Ted let me get the other side we get someone like Stuart Lee who wants to remain working or doesn't care if he of cares that you get if he gets canceled he says and he just Toadies up to the woke with his pathetic contempt at virtue signaling attacking Ricky Gervais so we kind of that the so the question do you have to actually be rich to speak your mind as an artist now hi I'm teslie Mulhall uh British Year many artists I agree with you that I mean Council culture has been going on for a long time and I remember exhibiting with passion for Freedom the actual police and the gallery were trying to remove my artwork and miss you work but we thought and stood up for it and I think a lot of The Archers who where I come from and my background is this certain pressure um recently exhibited since in were not mentioned where no religion no call no politics and no nudity so there's a restriction and I think is few organizations who brave enough like passion for freedom and other institutions who actually can give the platform to artists who have their courage in a way to say what did how they reflect society and what their own personal experience and I think is very important that actually I urge a lot of artists I mean I got death threat and I it gave me the courage actually I will say that I assure you and and I agree with you yes we I my work became better and I had more confidence but the same time there's a lot of financial it's the pressure to actually um can you sell your work and you have the Battle of you gotta learn a living but at the same time you want to have that freedom true freedom and I think is very important if we don't stand up now for for artistic Freedom then we actually will be regretted for the rest of our lives later on uh thank you Alexander Adams artist and author of cultural artifism and abolish the Arts policy Arts Council doing very well um so obviously there are spectacular cancellations and there are quite black listings and I've experienced a quiet blacklisting which is one of the reasons which inspired me to write this pamphlet which is not going to win me any friends in museums and it's not going to get me any exhibitions um but I would say that if you're an artist or if you have a strong commitment to the truth or maybe even a strong faith that you understand that the time will come when um uh you may be asked to sacrifice your possessions or your career or even your life and when that time comes you have to accept it and just to say that um if if that point comes then just remember that a hero dies once but a coward dies every day [Applause] that was that was very moving but I hope we don't get to that but that's what it can sometimes feel like yeah yes thank you everyone um some of the examples were around public institutions like the Tate and some of this it feels stems from this very Philistine notion of sort of Target driven art from like new labor so that rather than art for its own sake you have to kind of educate people in a very narrow sense in a very sort of Victorian kind of way and your example about the nymphs there was an outcry about that so in some senses a lot of people other than a very narrow group don't like this kind of stuff they'll vote with their feet they won't pay for it but tape's often quite empty so I guess my question is it's not just a commercial Enterprise art obviously but is there hope in sort of not just the masses but general public not wanting to consume this rubbish and that if you take away some aspects of subsidy you'll kind of help to solve this thanks I'm going to pick up on francis's point and a few others in there I just want to begin by saying that passion for an amazing organization and they actually have the courage to put on display art that nobody else really probably would even have the courage to go and see so um I take my hats off to my hats off to you my hat off to you um so going back to what Francis um said I think that um and this is a point that Rosie touched on that part of the artistic Pursuit is honesty and truth and I think that cancel culture is more than just censorship it's also what um as our nafisi and this is not obviously an exact quote but she talks about how um people under totalitarian regimes are forced to live in the imagination of others that you are imagined by someone else and you have to conform to that and I think that cancel culture it comes from an ideological position that is fundamentally dishonest this is also a point that Tiffany just made as well um and I think that that that is the thing that is in the air that's the climber and I think it requires courage it requires people like Winston to actually make the choice to choose truth over lies and and Winston wrote a brilliant piece on this after getting canceled um in relation to the essay live not by Lies by salsa Nixon um so I think that at the very very core of this is the pursuit of Truth and I think all of those things tie into each other and it's a it's something that actually most of those questions just touched on um and I think that part of battling against it is honesty uh it's about pushing back against the dishonest um and false ideology that is resulting in people getting canceled thank you very much Winston okay I'm just going to storm through a few answers to a few of the things okay so uh just for the record a couple of people have said I've been canceled I quit of a free speech issues just for the record but so uh Francis and this gentleman in the front row I think there's a link between your two questions and that is about the philosophy behind the canceling which I think isn't a we I think it's specifically a progressive philosophy it's the philosophy of the goodie and the Baddie it neglects the idea the Christian idea of uh the the that we are all Fallen that we are all capable of good and evil as Nixon said the line between good and evil cuts through the center of every human heart and that is something that's completely forgotten and that is a problem uh then we had Graeme Linehan came up so Gremlin Linehan actually I spoke to him earlier this week and uh he said and this actually suits my opening argument uh was that he is never in his life had so much to write about now the problem with graham as a writer uh and and this is maybe specific to I he might have a this is my opinion by the way not his but uh within TV or or making film because when you start with a script it will have his name at the top so straight out the bat people are gonna be like no it's not worth the risk because that is a problem right uh JK Rowling uh baroness Fox you said that she uh wasn't canceled I actually think she was and has been canceled there are people who will not work with her because of her opinions there are people whose career was because of her completely owed to her who will distance themselves from her that is phenomenal of cancer culture uh it's not to say obviously she's going to be fired financially but at the end of the day she has got consequences I even know that there are Charities who will not take her money because of her um opinions uh then uh Rich artists that's a really really good point I think uh this gentleman brought up the rich artist thing uh you're absolutely right it's a privilege of the rich to be able to stand up to it there are a lot of artists on The breadline I I've got a very good friend who works at the BBC uh he's got a radio show and he said he he's comedian and he cannot say his opinions because he just about affords his rent right now and it's too big a risk he just can't afford to make the comedy he really wants to make because uh he'll lose it all so in that sense uh the cancer culture does affect the art that's being made uh then okay last thing last point which is I think uh uh uh uh just uh more back to how the opening panel came but we're there's a difference between Council culture killing the Arts and diversity and PC culture killing the Arts and and I think that's an important semantic difference uh uh and those are different phenomenon although cancer culture of course is linked to them but we can go into that if you want to okay thank you very much um Rosie anything you want to pick up um just to say yeah the livelihood stuff is is real and it's painful and it's really hard um and there's no two ways about that and I've suffered personally hugely financially enormously um in my profession um that there are a lot of Gatekeepers there are a lot of people that make the decisions so there's always like barriers between you the artist and the public that you want to reach and often it's these people in between that are running these institutions that are making these decisions some of them have a lot of fear um some of them have said to me I love your work there's absolutely no question it's absolutely brilliant I'd love to program you but I'm afraid of and these have been examples uh complaints from staff um unlike but your Chief exec you know you get paid a chief exec salary what what why should you be bothered about the opinions of somebody in accounts or the cafe what what's going on there isn't this an institution for the Arts it's it's they're too worried about protests they're too worried about complaints so there is a kind of there is a lack of General backbone from these people that are paid with for these institutions but then it also goes up higher we've actually got a culture of boards I had a very cowardly board um and and I don't think boards have been tested like this for many many years they've all been on some kind of strange training scheme and they don't really understand what they're there to do nor have really understood what an artist nobody's really thought about these things for quite a few years I think they've got lazy and also to say you know for me the point of having to resign from my own company was because it was existential um I've made work about the military the the body in and War the body and religion I've made to work about Britney Spears and CIA brainwashing for God's sake I see a cult when it comes along I study it I study cult Behavior I study the body and the mind and how it affects us if they were asking me to not believe that a woman's body is a woman's body then I could not continue so yeah [Applause] the lack of backbone is why cancer culture is so successful because nobody is able to speak up to it the adults in the room are not speaking up to it and one of the reasons is because they're isolated and fragmented and frightened but the other is that I think their core purpose the fundamental kind of principles of truth beauty knowledge are things that they are either ambivalent about hateful towards or unconfident in being able to defend and so that's why I think it's essential that we understand that that's a driving force in this and we try and understand and put the case for those fundamental principles we won't get out of it unless we do that we need to argue for the Standalone principle of the Arts um somebody made the point about pushback and there is a lot of pushback but as audiences there's only so much you can do because the terms have already been set and I think it's really important that one of the things that is being lost is actually culture of criticism that criticism in the Press obviously has been declining in space for some time but now it's just all partisan now it's all propaganda effectively and so I think it's incumbent upon us to be talking about the Arts one of the problems I think is that we become and because we can't avoid it because we're forced to take sides you're either for the culture or against the culture where you're on this side of that is that we end up not being able to talk about the Arts and that's why Rosie's Charter is so important because she's not going she's not wanting to do anti-wo choreography she's wanting to dance it's that simple and that I think fundamentally is the most powerful weapon right people listen to your music because it moves them because it means something to their lives people want to go to dance because it is a way of understanding The Human Condition and we cannot lose sight of that and that is something that we always have to be putting back on the agenda because that actually does some of the work for us okay thank you very much everyone okay so we're starting sorry we're starting off with this gentleman at the front sorry to have confused you and then we're going to the back so now if you all stay at the back yes there you go my question nicely continues what you were on some of the things you were saying because don't you think it's no it isn't Canto culture but a lack of understanding about what art actually is and the role of Art in human life what is killing the Arts if people but mostly artists don't know the difference between the Rembrandt or miscellaneous Michelangelo and some Modern trash and it isn't surprising that art becomes a propaganda machine for modern intellectuals and that the debate is about what the color of an actor's skin is instead of his acting skills yeah everybody give each time a filmmaker and I just wanted to say a few things basically I think all artists make incredible sacrifices if they're going to get anywhere and I agree with the point about how tough it is what sacrifices you make you really do it for nothing a lot of the time um and so it's especially in my industry it's incredibly expensive to make a film and I agree The Gatekeepers don't understand that art is to hold a mirror to society to be the court gesture gesture to say something you say something about the human condition that there isn't an understanding anymore of that and I I think that's because these ideas that I suppose I I see it as work culture but it's it's just filtering through to everything and I I worry that you know so in in my circles which I always felt comfortable in and no longer do um you know most I think genuine anyway most of the people do hold these you know it's not like oh you get it through you know I think summer Charlotte and some are you know grifters but some genuinely a lot I think it's hard to even know really really believe this and even if you get your Beach film out as as we did you know there's a feeling that the critics don't know what to say to you know you know to be on the right side because we had an ambiguous film which you thought was interesting and you feel it they don't know that if they're worried they'd rather kill you because it's an easy sort of shot um it and it's just so so you know the British moments you now have to it will support only Progressive work we also get funding from Poland they're you know extreme right so what do you do what do you do it's hard to even maneuver that so anyway I'm just okay thank you okay so person at the very person at the very back there so I'm sociologist and I've sort of been watching this um debate around cancel culture just because I I often get canceled for many different things but I feel that the term and the way that we talk about cancer culture is almost like an individualized thing so you know when the sort of Graham Norton is talking about you know you can't be canceled or JK Rowling can't be canceled but what I think I think this is about a cancer structure or a blacklist structure um and I think the Arts and Academia where I work are becoming incredibly risk-averse but more than that I think diversity or this idea of diversity has never been as narrow as it is today and any of us are um sort of work in these spaces you realize that there is no diversity at all they talk about diversity a lot but actually they want everyone who thinks the same so I don't know where we go from this um and someone just said laziness uh I don't think what is happening is laziness within these structures I think these are about structures that are knitting together tightly and they purposefully know what they're doing which is keeping people out and sort of having more that look like them in wonderful panel thank you okay um so I'm a sort of nerdy political scientist who likes to put numbers on things and I guess my question would not be is is cancer culture killing the Arts but how much is cancer culture killing the Arts so it's clearly the case you can still write music people do good music they do beautiful art they make jokes about little things in life so there still is some creativity happening what I'd like the panelists to give me is a number what is the percentage lost of creativity is it 50 is it 70 is it 30 just give me a number thanks okay this is um terrifying um but my point may have a lot of flaws but I'm just gonna go for it um well I was what I was gonna say is that uh I think that art can be much more left-wing nowadays it used to be for the rich and that's why in the past like during the Victorian era we'd see a lot of Rich art being produced by Rich artists um but I think that we've seen a wave of it being taken back by the poor and I think this could be killing the Arts because nowadays it's exhausting the ideologies of left wing and uh cancer culture is suppressing um right-wing ideas which is also making art unoriginal you might say because there's just a constant churn of left-wing art and we aren't seeing a diverse uh community of art being produced and so less people are seeing are because of this because they're seeing the same things over and over again hello I work in a drama conservatoire I don't teach propaganda and the I'm amazed that this panel can talk about censorship without mentioning this government we are a rotting in we are rotting from the inside it's got nothing to do with what is being described as cancer culture it's 20 years of marketization of higher education and 12 years of constant undefined underfunding and undermining of what we do talking about my degree drama as a low value I think that's a direct quote from an educational minister is Despicable because I do not teach people how to get jobs I teach them ways of thinking ways approaching ways of inquiry and one of the advantages the one advantage of new Labor's expansion of higher education is more voices in the student body and actually in the academic body it was nearly as diverse as it should be but it's more diverse that's obviously going to be reflected in our teaching because students that have different educational life experiences will interpret art differently a degree of subjectivity is inevitable and we want those voices and it's hard it's really hard to manage those voices it's not nearly as diverse or as polarized as people might think I think the point made earlier there about more poor people making art is the problem really that's the problem that more people poor people are making are and more rich people should make art I think that's an extraordinary thing to say and finally let's make this point I find it truly chilling that people in this room can cheer on the idea that we should abolish the Arts Council abolish the Arts Council is a good thing that is Despicable uh it's a view right um so listen thank you yeah um so this is where I have my uh tell us about punk rock Granddad moment um I you know I was a teenager in 1977 and I think it's very interesting that there were uh someone mentioned the yba's exhibition in 97 there is a direct connection between punk in 77 the ybas in 97 and and I'd like to be positive about the future for the Arts and I think we should abolish the Arts Council and I think I also think that if we had any responsibility we would seize the collection of the Tate and take it into some sort of national ownership because the current curators are not fit to have custody of that collection however I think if there's going to be a future it it maybe has to come from a punk movement so where uh this is one for the panel where are the new punks because we're not going to find them in central Saint Martins and goldsmiths um so I would just like to make the point that John Stuart Mill wrote the subjection of women to start off the first wave of feminism and I think that art whether written or painting is important and influential and I think that artists should stop succumbing to the fear that they will be canceled and I think even if there is some Financial consequences to that I think that art should be recognized as something influential and so people should stop succumbing to the fear of being canceled because I think that stops true opinion coming through I just wanted to say a brief word about our experience of the Arts Council we applied for a 10 000 pound Grant to make a brief film celebrating the Platinum Jubilee of the queen it was to be talking about the history of gay men between the coronation and the Platinum Jubilee very nice we got awarded the grant it was announced on Twitter and within 12 hours that Grant was canceled now in terms of my views on the Arts Council all I can say is that in principle I think uh you know as Churchill said what's the point of having a war if you're not going to support the Arts I don't know the best way to support the Arts but I do know because we've had the great Good Fortune of having whistleblowers from within the Arts Council who've reported to us that the Arts Council has a blacklist of organizations who they will not fund because they disagree with gender identity Orthodoxy and other lunatic ideas so just very briefly I wanted to share our experience but to say art is at the heart of our move for freedom for all LGBT LGBT people and the restoration of our culture I know people in the Arts Council who say it's like World War III in there right quietly and that's the problem there's institutional civil Wars going on so there are people who are senior in the Arts Council who would have wanted to have and gave you the grant just to use that as an example it won't be the only one and then there are other people who say you can't do that and then everyone's frightened of canceling each other so it doesn't really it rather than that there's an argument about State funding of the Arts and the Arts Council being politicized but I think a more profound problem is that institutions are tearing each other apart over political decision making to do with art that is leading to cancellation in consequence whether we like it or not so isn't that prior problem something that we need to at least everybody whether you're Pro or against the Arts Council should be concerned with I can't remember now oh yeah yeah yes if the panel were going to create an exhibition that sounds highly controversial like Myra hindley portrait with child handprints would they give it a trigger warning and if they did what would it say um I I wanted to talk about my experience I did um I did a um an undergrad in theater at the University of Chichester and so we were it is of course basically designed to encourage new creative devices theaters that the new theater creators um and obviously they will never admit this but we all know we knew on the course that we'd be marked on a politic and we all know the exact we all knew the exact lines of politics that we had to be marked on had to actually make theater to portray um and what it actually did was um really devised there was a few people that got driven actually really a little bit too far right and and that there are about three people and everyone else just was just off the rails um there was just no space for Freedom no no space for a genuine creative Nuance or tension or Intrigue and it just to see that um was was horrific to seize my my friends get pushed and pushed it just built so much bitterness and resentment in them that they actually ended up getting more far far far far right um and and it was a really damaging divisive thing and they actually um my friend Ben got absolutely hounded by on on social media just for saying he wasn't going to vote labor by the entire department including the lecturers um on our course and it was this he didn't want to leave the house for a week he didn't want to go to UNI because he knew the the lecturers were leading it and um and and he would he was just completely hounded out of the space wasn't invited to any parties anything nothing he just was you know what I'm saying but um but all of the people from my course are the people going into the Arts Council and they get to choose who's funded so um it's all of those people that are going into the Arts Council who are already indoctrinated and this system is destroying young creative minds okay thank you just uh standard there's that young lady there stand up Stripes yeah you I'm slightly too intimidated to directly counter anybody here but uh I think something we need to point out is that there is a clear distinguishment between canceling someone because once they said something a couple people disagreed with which unfortunately is happening a lot here but there's also a clear distinguishment between counseling someone because they are directly promoting hate speech they are being derogatory towards a type of people and it's really horrible so to any extent this is a question for the panel 20 extent can cancel culture be a good thing if we stop giving people a hate platform that they have been given for their Fame to talk about the problems that they hate um uh I would like to ask how and to what extent the increase of right-wing populism across the world affects cancer culture and director to the panel well I am an artist a visual artist it's not my duty as an artist to tell you what to think so there's no left and right wing as far as I'm concerned it's rubbish secondly there is a kind of a um the whole scenario of this cancel culture is fanatical and hysteria and it's been driven by people further up the chain it's not been driven by people at the bottom thank you so basically the question is why you know why aren't they being questioned you know and aren't you know because they're the right only way to to come back to them is to to question them and actually uh you know might put them under pressure thank you very much indeed panel I'm going to take you in reverse order so while you're just considering I just I I want to point out that um R is neither left wing or right wing um full stop really um good art well otherwise not art I mean it's something it's propaganda um I I'm just saying and it doesn't matter whether it's produced but I mean I don't care what uh Wagner thought he was I was going to do when I listened to his music but um you know I don't care what his politics were because I have a very different attitude to politics than Wagner's but he made some of the most Sublime brilliant music ever and therefore I listen to it and the same with novelists who might well be trying to influence me to think a certain way but if they're fantastic novelists I understand something different then this the second thing I just want to say is at the heart of this it seems to me is this crisis of imagination that was referred to very early on with the sighting of Lionel Shriver which is that I think that cancel culture is sort of a metaphor for something deeper that's going on which is what I'm glad we've kind of looked at here which is an atmosphere of self-censorship where many artists feel they can't cross over a red line but nobody knows what the red line is because it depends who's what the red pen as it were and you're kind of like looking over your shoulder all the time and I think that that is inevitably going to create a less Rich imaginative artistic out comes and despite everything art will be impoverished as a consequence and those of us who are not artists but want to engage with it we'll have less to engage with and the great profound works of art that we need in every generation will be fewer and few and far between in this climate so I I however the person who raised the question sorry about saying well shouldn't we cancel hate I think it's absolutely the question of the day that we should all explore I actually would have an argument about what hate speech is what it constitutes hate but it's perfectly reasonable to say if somebody's got obnoxious if they get if they basically come out and say something absolutely obnoxious that you might go God I don't want what right let's at least those of us who think that we're all very clear on the Free Speech then concede that there are probably things that we wouldn't like to go and see or hear or whatever and at least understand that it's slightly more nuanced or at least it's difficult and that that question was well made and and I understand that I might not agree with the way it was going but it's actually the majority viewpoints in society and one we have to engage with okay Tiffany your final thoughts please um there's a gentleman there who asked about the Tories and you're absolutely right prevent in particular has had a number has a consequences of um canceling a number of uh shows quite interesting theater Productions um the Tories additionally before Lou labor came in uh had instrumentalized the Arts and turned and asked them that they turn turn a profit or become much more commercial pressure and accountability is one thing but this is and there was a kind of real introduction of instrumentalism uh not that they uh had to sing a particular message but they have to perform in an un artistic way so that was deleterious and iniquitous and all the rest of it and um if you don't like the Arts counseling we need to I think reform it and also not rely on it um would I issue a trigger warning I think trigger warnings have become a shorthand really of not talking about the difficult emotions and feelings and questions that are often producers in a way they shut it down and I don't think they can contain it so I don't think they're actually effective in what they do a recent example is I went to the Francis Bacon at the ra which I did find really disturbing but then it it's a disturb he's a disturbing guy um and I'm not saying so therefore suck it up but the trigger warning doesn't cover that and I think when weird things sort of has happened is that at the same time as there's been a vacating of judgment and I don't just mean is he a good or bad artist but what's he dealing with how does it make you feel in a way trigger wanting to plant that so strangely enough they don't help us deal with some of the very real difficulties that art can help us uh confront if not solve um there's a question from I think Eric Kaufman about figures good old stats guy in the audience I mean obviously any go to any discussion on the Arts over the last 50 years and people will be lamenting it right there's no it's not as good as it used to be in all the rest of it I think a number of things do contribute to good quality work it's not just that there's a kind of uh dampening effect from cancer culture I think in a way because we don't have a public culture and because it's more difficult to be on our own with our private thoughts in a way the sort of seeds that create both artwork but also how we talk about it how we talk about it does actually help us understand the work and we've become less able at doing that I do think some good work does does um come out I actually think Sally Rooney's normal people will stand the test of time but also be of its time and I think it'll both reveal a particular moment and a kind of universal kind of search for what the meaning of love and the impact of people are on each other um one more thing Judy Barnes has written this wonderful book called the noise of time where he looks at the experience of the composer Shostakovich and he sits every night Shostakovich waiting to be taken away he's waiting to be taken away in some ways far more serious than what we face and therefore I think you know if it's just a kovich can do it then we can Rosie please do this thank you [Applause] um I think I think I I would agree that I don't feel that it's a it's a to do with the issues around left or right I think that it's become very extreme on the extreme left and the extreme right and for me it's a kind of question to do with um Freedom versus compelled speech or compelled thinking um and the role of the artist is is probably like you said earlier to be the outsider to be the outsider on this and to sort of Mock and and and challenge it be the gesture but also be you know the the the the Doomsday the Cassandra as well as well um I think it's a real key question like what's the role of art have we really forgotten what the Arts are there to do and we don't really know what the answer is to that you can study the best art in the world and you know it when you feel it but we can't really put either a value on it a percentage on it or even a definition on it um I have a bit of a problem with trigger warnings so I've worked with soldiers who have had bullets in their heads and that's a real somebody has made a decision to pull that trigger and that has blown their brains up and they're in like long-term Rehabilitation for Life ideas are not bullets in heads thoughts are not violence and I think the research shows that that trigger warnings increase your trauma by looking at by looking at the trigger warning though those things that are made in art that disturb us that challenges us that's what makes us human and we need to keep thinking about how do we find empathy and Humanity together rather than scaring ourselves away from even challenging these thoughts I'll just pick up on the uh Gatekeepers there's a question about film industry and Gatekeepers and I think this is a specific to the film industry but I think there's an equivalent in the music industry so for me I can still make music and I'm still making music that's not a problem I can get into the studio I can write my songs I can even do that at home the problem I'll have is when it comes to the institutions they're like less like like let's say a record label for me they're less likely to want to put risk big money on let's say me because I'm potentially divisive for my opinions and that can be applied again in the film industry the institutions The Gatekeepers which is a very select small group of people at the top are either going to be ideologically captured or even if they're sympathetic like to the the all the the uh anti-archy the not the the opposing views to the progressives they're not going to want to take the fine the risk either financially or perhaps socially for people who have the wrong opinions so to speak so then what's the solution to that well and this is comes to this gentleman's point about the punks the punks will be the people who build the new institutions the new record labels the new uh film production companies they are the comedians who are taking to YouTube like Francis Foster at the back starting his own show you have Louis CK just does it all on his own website um Rosie K starting her own company and so it's to building new institutions and um that is how you fight it I think I'll leave it with that yeah [Applause] I have to say as a woman of a certain age I quite like the idea of punks coming back because I was a punk this is the punk new Punk movement led by me reliving my youth Emma I will be um as brief as possible I think that from everything that everyone has said including my fellow panelists that it's quite clear that we're caught in a trap and I want to come back on the points made by these two ladies near the front um I think firstly I want to defend the point that was made I don't think anybody suggested that poor people shouldn't make art I think that's a misrepresentation of what was said um but you did make a very important and interesting point and I think that that is the the situation that we are currently in is resulting in mediocre art because that is the only art that can get anywhere um and that that I think is the Trap that we're in I think like I said in my opening remarks I think it's a it's a kind of psychological trap as the lady said at the front here um about her experiences at University um and that is exactly what the common sense Society is for so two of our values are Liberty and beauty and I think the Crux of this is is that ultimately you can't produce good art you can't achieve true beauty unless you have the freedom to do so and that is the problem that we're now facing so Winston mentioned um creating new institutions and I think it is a very Punk thing to do I think that in many ways the common sense Society in that respect is quite Punk um we are producing and creating a platform for people to come together to provide the space for these things to become possible like I said in my opening remarks to try and keep the candle burning of these things that allow people to flourish and to help others in producing and creating the platforms to do that and so as as my closing remark I would ask everybody if you're interested in the common sense Common Sense Society please do sign up to our mailing list outside on the iPad um George and will be standing out there to take anyone's emails come and get a bag a lapel pin and keep in touch with what we're doing in the coming months and years um because that that is our mission to promote the values of Liberty prosperity and beauty and I truly do think that the combination of those things they they're mutually supportive you have to have all three of them in order to have any of them and I think that that fundamentally is the way out of the Trap that we're in foreign [Music]

Channel: worldwrite

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Length: 76min 28sec (4588 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 03 2023