A student artwork at the Rhode Island School of Design that included a Sarah Palin-themed pornographic video has inspired a public discussion on issues of creative freedom and artistic ethics. Yesterday, 75 RISD community members attended a forum to discuss last week's unplugging of the video and its implications.
The work was part of an election-themed exhibition curated by a student committee. Painting major Allie Pisarro-Grant, who had originally proposed the exhibition, said she had hoped the show would spark lively conversation. But she had no idea that the work of fellow senior Ben Noam would incite a complex discussion in e-mails, blog posts and, ultimately, yesterday's forum.
"I think that I and the other people who were part of the selection committee figured that this was the work that would be talked about the most," Pisarro-Grant told The Herald Wednesday. "I certainly didn't expect anything to be censored."
But whether or not the work can properly be said to have been censored remains a matter of interpretation.
Painting Department Head Dennis Congdon said at the open forum that he feared the video could be seen from the street by unsuspecting passersby, potentially exposing the school to legal action. Congdon said he was also concerned that the presence of the hardcore porn video in such a public space could negatively influence the working environment. After speaking to Pisarro-Grant, and hoping to protect his students' and his faculty's hard-won control over the space, he unplugged the video component of the work.
The exhibition occupies the lobby gallery of Memorial Hall, a recently renovated RISD facility that houses the Painting Department offices as well as numerous studios. The show features around 20 works that, either directly or obliquely, address the 2008 election.
Noam's piece sits at the center of the lobby. A video monitor on a pedestal originally played the pornographic film "Who's Nailin' Paylin?" on loop. Boxes advertising blow-up Sarah Palin "running mates," some still carrying their price tags, were hanging from the pedestal. The blow-up dolls themselves were arranged around it, all wearing brown hair extensions and pink sunglasses - one was suspended from the ceiling, some stood, a couple lay on the floor.
Responding to concerns about treatment of the video, a RISD spokeswoman said Wednesday that the school is "not in the practice of censoring art."
"Obviously, as an art school, we believe that students are entitled to artistic freedom and expression within the law," Senior Press Officer Jaime Marland said.
The ensuing debate within the RISD community questioned the appropriateness of Congdon's actions as well as the judgment that Noam and Pisarro-Grant had shown in exhibiting a work that many considered artistically unworthy of the furor it caused.
"I'm kind of wishy-washy about the situation because I think we should be able to put up whatever we want," said sophomore Hannah Tarr, a liaison between the department and RISD's student government. "But I look at this piece and I don't like it at all."
"The piece wasn't very intelligent," said senior Hannah Black, also a department liaison. But, she added, "the faculty shouldn't have the right to censor a piece on the basis of its intelligence."
Others held that considerations of the piece's success or failure were irrelevant - what mattered was students' freedom to explore and make mistakes.
"I do not believe that it is the place of the faculty, or the student body, to decide whether a piece of work 'deserves' to be shown or seen, granted the work is not compromising the direct rights or safety of others," senior Maria Salas, a liaison to the painting department, wrote in a Nov. 6 e-mail to painting students and faculty.
But senior Aaron Perry-Zucker, a graphic design major, said on Wednesday that most students don't see censorship as the central issue.
"It's about what as artists our responsibilities are in terms of releasing things into the world," he said, adding that he thought the painting department's public discussion was an appropriate step.
The forum held Thursday was attended by RISD President John Maeda and General Counsel Steve McDonald, who presented the numerous legal issues involved, including potential infringement of copyright protections and exposure of minors to obscenity.
Noam, the artist, read a prepared statement describing the "guilt" he had felt about the work, and a discussion ensued on artists' responsibility - if any - to the public and on possible changes that the community could make as a whole.
Pisarro-Grant said on Wednesday that Noam's piece was one of only two that she and her curating committee of four artists (including Noam) accepted on the basis of a proposal, rather than a finished product. She said the group worked with Noam to help develop his idea.
Installation of the show began Monday, Nov. 3, and continued into Election Day, with Noam's piece the last to go up, late in the day, before the 6 p.m. opening.
Tarr said she heard some students speculating that the work had deliberately been installed after most of the faculty had left for the day, but Pisarro-Grant said that the Tuesday afternoon setup "happened for a couple of reasons, mostly because (Noam) wasn't going to get the materials in time." The video itself had only just become available on Nov. 4, at which point Noam paid for and downloaded a copy online. Burning the video to disc took most of the day, Pisarro-Grant said, and the late setup had "nothing to do with" any attempt to conceal the work from the professors.
Because of a graduate student critique scheduled for Tuesday night, however, no painting faculty attended the opening, and Congdon said at the discussion that he only saw Noam's work the next day.
"The piece by Ben could be seen outside," Congdon said in the discussion Thursday, and he found it "alarming" and "troubling" that people walking past the building could potentially be exposed to material they weren't prepared to see. Congdon said he spoke to Pisarro-Grant about his concerns, and they came to the decision that the monitor should be left off and could be turned on by visitors interested in watching the video or by classes critiquing the work.
The next day, though, Congdon arrived at Memorial Hall to find the video still playing, and removed the extension cord powering the monitor. He worried that Noam's piece might endanger the department's control over the lobby and another gallery in the building.
"We lobbied hard for those spaces," he told the group of students and faculty gathered under the Tap Room's high wooden rafters for yesterday's discussion. "We argued that they could be curricular," and an "integral" part of the painting program. He said he hoped the forum might lead towards a plan for managing the space.
Complicating the matter were two incidents of vandalism that took place after the video was shut off.
All but one of the blow-up dolls have been deflated or torn apart, Pisarro-Grant said. At the forum, one student admitted to having deflated two of them herself because she sensed the work had become something to interact with. In his statement, Noam said he had accepted all of these unintended changes to his piece.
"I do not want to set a precedent of changing my artwork," he said.
During the discussion, participants generally agreed that the problem boiled down to access - the work had been exhibited in a space for which it was inappropriate, and future curatorial agreement forms might be revised to outline responsible use of the space more explicitly.
Segregation of potentially offensive work behind screens or curtains with warning signs is common practice in art museums and galleries, and several speakers wondered why such measures had not been in place for the Nov. 4 show, and whether they might be feasible in the future.
Students also expressed interest in holding more frequent forums on their exhibited work, including panel discussions for each gallery show.
"This idea at the end, that every show should have a discussion about it, is a good one," said Alex Griffith, a RISD senior.
