The Bush's Dog Case - Criminal Collage : Melbourne Indymedia

The Bush's Dog Case
Criminal Collage

By MICHAEL DICKINSON
E-mail: mdickinson@kablonet.com.tr

Website: yabanji.tripod.com/
(note: 'Yabanji' is a Turkish word which means 'Stranger/Foreigner/Outsider'. Me. The collages are made in the old-fashioned way, with paper, scissors and gum.)

I was at court on Monday.
I had to go with a lawyer and hand a letter of confession to a judge.
As a result I am to be charged with insulting the dignity of the Prime Minister of Turkey, and face a possible jail sentence of three years.

Let me explain what happened.

In March this year the Turkish Peace and Justice Coalition (Baris ve Adalet Koalisyon--BAK) were given council permission to put up a 'Peace Tent' on the waterfront at Kadikoy (a district of Istanbul where I live).
It displayed anti war pictures, posters and banners.
There were stands with information and a stage at one end for speeches and concerts.

I took along some of my own antiwar collages (mostly featuring Bush and Blair) to ask if they could be included.
It was the first day and BAK was still busy getting everything together, but one guy knew me from exhibitions I've done in the past, and gave me carte blanche.
I put my pictures (about 10 altogether) up on the inner flap at the entrance.
They stayed there for the next few days, attracting the interest of visitors.
I didn't spend much time at the fair myself.

Two days before the Peace Fair was due to end I decided to add a new collage--one of Turkish Prime Minister Turgut Erdogan with the body of a dog, winning first prize in a show, having a Stars n'Stripes rosette attached to his collar by George W Bush.
The tent was busy at the time I went. No-one noticed as I stuck it up and left.

When I returned next afternoon I found all my pictures gone.
Questioning some stewards I learned that the previous evening a couple of civil police inspecting the tent had taken exception to my picture of Prime Minister Erdogan as a dog and called the uniformed police.

This story which appeared in several of last week's Turkish newspapers explains the situation:

The "Bush's Dog" court case

"The case against Global Peace and Justice Coalition (BAK) member Erkan Kara for "insulting the dignity of the Prime Minister" has opened.
If found guilty he faces a penalty of from 1 to 3 years in prison.

Kara was arrested after a poster showing Prime Minister Erdogan as Bush's dog' was stuck up inside the tent erected on March 11 for BAK's Peace Fair in central Kadikoy to protest the occupation of Iraq by USA.

A criminal charge of 'insulting the dignity of the Prime Minister of Turkey' is being taken against a member of the Peace Group (BAK) for displaying this collage picture of Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan which I put up in their Peace tent in Istanbul in March. I've owned up to the 'crime'. 3 years max if found guilty. Find out more at http://www.stuckism.com/

According to Sesonline, civil police inspecting the place noticed the poster and arrested those on duty in the tent, Erkan Kara, Gulen Sahin, Mehmet Demir, Filiz Ulget and Burak Delier.
The poster was also taken.

After statements made to the public prosecutor, charges were dropped against the accused Demir, Sahin, Ulget and Delier, but it was determined that Erkan Kara being responsible for the tent, a charge of insulting the Prime Minister should be brought against him.

Refusing to accept his responsibility, Kara said: "A lot of people were coming and going in the tent. I didn't see who put the picture up."
The case opens next week at Kadikoy Magistrates Court."

When I learned about the situation I agreed to write a letter claiming sole responsibility for the offending picture.
I went with BAK's lawyer to the court building this week and presented thde letter officially to the judge, asking for the charge to be dropped against the hapless Kara.

Now however, it is me who will have to face the charge.
The date for my appearance in court has yet to be announced.
It may take months.

Article 301 of the Turkish constitution makes it an offence to insult the "Turkish identity" or state institutions, including the armed forces.
This is a restriction of freedom of speech that does not exist the countries of the EU, and if Turkey really wants to become a member of that organization it would be advisable for them to remove it.

I don't want to go to prison.

Michael Dickinson is an English teacher working in Istanbul, Turkey.
Dickinson did the cover art for two of CounterPunch's books, Dime's Worth of Difference and Serpents in the Garden, as well as Jeffrey St. Clair's Grand Theft Pentagon.
He can be contacted at http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/

Blair asked to help artist facing jail

TONY BLAIR has been asked to intervene in the case of Michael
Dickinson, a British artist who faces up to three years in jail in
Turkey for exhibiting a collage of Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime
minister, as a dog being given a rosette by President George W Bush.
Dickinson has been charged with “insulting the prime minister’s
dignity”

a good site about cases of people being charged in Turkey with this sort of thing -
ANTENNA-TR.ORG

"I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the death, your right to say it. (Voltaire 1694 – 1778) ..."
http://www.antenna-tr.org/index.asp?lgg=en

Talking of the real story behind Easter, I finally got that darned play on at a theatre here in Istanbul last month with an international amateur cast. If I do get imprisoned for this (?), I would like my supporters to hold public readings of the script in support. It's easily accessed - http://www.counterpunch.org/dickinson04072006.html

At present I'm still waiting to hear the date when I will be called to court. The story has sparked interest. Tony Blair's appeal for my pardon was featured on the front page of a popular Turkish daily yesterday, and last night an interview with me was shown on a Turkish tv station. Today I was interviewed and filmed by an international tv news agency, along with pictures from my latest collage exhibition at a local cafe.

You can see the picture (and others) and read the story at the Stuckism site - http://www.stuckism.com/ Charles Thomson, the founder, has been very supportive in the troubles I've had since I joined the Stuckists.

THis week saw the official opening of accession negotiations between the EU and Turkey. There are 35 sessions planned and the negotiations are expected to take 10 years!

Obviously, MikDik's persecution runs contrary to current EU law under Article 10 (Freedom of Expression) but may prove popular for the Turkish PM in a secular society because many muslims would find the depiction of Erdogan as a dog offensive-particularly if he is a muslim or related to muslims himself. Therefore, persecution of MikDik could help the PM win popular support. However, it is unlikely to help him in the EU negotiations and that is perhaps where protests could be focussed.

Stuckism in Australia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Captain Anthrax Vs Doctor Death in the arena of Tiki's by Regan Tamanui, the first Stuckist in Australia
Stuckism was started in London in 1999. There have been manifestations of Stuckism in Australia, since 2000, when Melbourne artist Regan Tamanui, started the first international branch of the movement. There are currently three Australian groups, who have held shows—sometimes concurrently with UK activities—received coverage in the Australian press and on TV, and also been represented in UK shows. The Stuckists take a strong pro-painting and anti-conceptual art stance, and were co-founded by Charles Thomson and Billy Childish.
Contents

1 Australian groups

2 Media coverage

3 UK origin

4 Precedents

5 See also

6 Reference

7 External links

Australian groups
In October 2000, Regan Tamanui founded the Melbourne Stuckists,[1] the fourth Stuckist group to be started and the first one outside the UK (there are now 127 groups in 32 countries). On October 27, he staged the Real Turner Prize Show at the Dead End Gallery in his home, concurrent with three shows with the same title in England (London, Falmouth and Dartington), and one in Germany, in protest against the Tate Gallery's Turner Prize.
Besides Tamanui, the other initial members were Justin Grub, Ben Blanchette, Malcome Mmackie and Dave Freeman Rose. A subsequent line-up was Basil Kouvelis, Justin Grubb, Ben Frost, Nigel Stein, Daniel Gorzadek, Stephen Sperling and Dennis Roper. Stein, an RMIT art student, was prompted to join the group after Karen Ward was given the inaugural $105,000 Helen Lempriere Award for her minimal sculpture The Hut, derided by him as a "Wendy House". Tamanui said, "There are some people who shit in a tin. Is that really art?"
In May 2001 Tamanui, Stein, Grubb and Kouvelis were represented with 24 international groups in the London show Vote Stuckist, so named because Thomson was standing as a candidate in the United Kingdom general election, 2001, as a Stuckist candidate against the then-Culture Secretary, Chris Smith.
In November the Melbourne Stuckists staged a show Houdini to Hofmann at the Chiara Goya Gallery, which included some UK Stuckist work for the first time.
Kaye Blum made a short documentary on the group, Art Gets Unstuck. The film is structured around the artists reading lines from the Stuckists Manifesto written by Thomson and Childish. It was first shown at the Jaffas Down the Aisle film festival in Melbourne in October 2001, then in 2002 at the International Film Festival of Fine Art in Hungary and the Asolo Arts Film Festival in Italy, where it was nominated for best student short.
In 2001, Graham Wilson, born and bred in Gunnedah, New South Wales, founded the second Australian group (and the first Stuckist sculpture group), the Newcastle Stuckist Stonecarvers.
In December 2001, The Stuckist demonstration outside the Turner Prize at Tate Britain, London, was broadcast on Australian national TV news.
In 2002, Godfrey Blow started the Perth Stuckists (Western Australia). In July, along with Melbourne Stuckists he was shown at The First Stuckist International, which opened in the Stuckism Gallery, Shoreditch, London.

Over the ocean by Godfrey Blow
In October 2002, Tamanui opened the Stuckism International Centre (Australia) with an ongoing exhibition of work, as well as the first international Stuckist show in Australia, Stuck Down South, at the FAD Gallery. This included founding Stuckists, Charles Thomson, Ella Guru and Sexton Ming. (Like the London gallery it has now ceased operating.)
In September 2004, Blow represented the Australian artists in the movement's first major show in a national museum, The Stuckists Punk Victorian at the Walker Art Gallery during the Liverpool Biennial.
[edit]

Media coverage
The Australian presence was first noted in an article on the Stuckists in the UK Observer Sunday newspaper in May 2000. [2]
The participation of the Australian Stuckists in the London Vote Stuckist show occasioned a double page spread by Gabriella Coslovich in the leading Melbourne paper The Age. [3] It revealed a similar range of reactions to the ones the UK group had received in Britain. Melbourne painter David Larwill said, "It's the best thing I've heard in ages." Max Delaney, director of public gallery 200 Gertrude Street, accused the group of "revisionism" and "publicity and marketing". Su Baker, head of the School of Art, Victorian College of the Arts, wrote it off as "a cheap shot" (the same accusation which Sir Nicholas Serota had levelled at Thomson in London. [4] In July Stein repeated the same debate on "Coast to Coast", Channel 2 (ABC TV).
In February 2003, Tracey Emin was interviewed in The Sydney Morning Herald while in Australia:
Of the chief YBA critics, the Stuckists, Emin cannot even speak.
"I don't like it at all," she spat. "I don't really want to talk about it. If your wife was stalked and hounded through the media by someone she'd had a relationship with when she was 18, would you like it? That's what happened to me. I don't find it funny, I find it a bit sick, and I find it very cruel, and I just wish people would get on with their own lives and let me get on with mine." [5]
In August 2003, Kouvelis and Thomson were interviewed on ABC Radio National Australia by Francis Leach.[6][7] In June 2004 Childish (who left the group in 2002) was interviewed on ABC Radio National Australia [8].
In October 2004 an article, "Breaking New Ground", appeared in the Hills Gazette, Kalamunda, Western Australia, outlining Blow's involvement in the Stuckist movement and representation at the "Stuckist Punk Victorian" exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. [9]}}
In April 2005 The Age ran a reprise of Stuckism and observed:

"Stuckists have been dismissed by many as 'rebels without a cause', but their influence is, well, sticking ... The Stuckists have not beaten Saatchi, but he may be joining them." [10]

In July 2005, State of the Arts Australian art magazine gave a survey on the UK and Australian Stuckists, and found:
Newcastle stone-carver Graham Wilson says he became a Stuckist because he was tired of being ignored by the main arbiters of taste and wanted to embrace the insult that he was not a real sculptor as did Childish when Emin declared he was "stuck".
In December 2005, the Stuckists demonstrated about the Tate Gallery's purchase of their trustee Chris Ofili's work, The Upper Room, wearing monkey and elephant masks, outside the Turner Prize at Tate Britain in London. A syndicated report covered the demonstration in The Sydney Morning Herald [11], The Age, Yahoo Australia, ABC News Online, SBS, Seven and The Australian. In June 2006 Blow supported the campaign with message board posts. [12]
[edit]

UK origin
Main article: stuckism
The Stuckists were founded in the United Kingdom by Charles Thomson and Billy Childish with ten other artists in 1999 to oppose conceptual art and champion painting as the radical medium of self-discovery. The name was derived by Thomson from an insult by Tracey Emin to her ex-boyfriend Childish that he was "stuck", which he had recorded in a poem. The Stuckists have since become an accepted part of the UK art scene and are studied in the educational system, but still remain largely ostracised by the art establishment for their stringent criticisms of it, particularly of the Britart, the Saatchi Gallery and the Turner Prize. They have also launched the period of Remodernism—"A renewal of spirituality and meaning in art, culture and society".
[edit]

Precedents
The outlook of the Australian Stuckists has a precedent in the Antipodeans Group, seven figurative artists (six of them Melbourne-based) who issued a manifesto against the then-dominant mode of Abstract Expressionism. This was launched in a show of the artists in Melbourne in August 1959. They stated that figurative art "communicates because it has the capacity to refer to experiences that the artist shares with his audience", and that "the image, the recognisable shape, the meaningful symbol, is the basic unit of [the artist's] language."
Like the Stuckists they were accused of conservatism and reaction, and also had London links, being championed by Kenneth Clark, whose influence gained them inclusion in a significant London show in 1961, Recent Australian Paintings, at the Whitechapel Gallery.