reaction of teamCAESUUR: open letter to the city council of Vlissingen

The reaction of teamCAESUUR

Subject | open letter to the city council of Vlissingen Middelburg, Thursday, October 25, 2018

Dear members of the city council Vlissingen,

On Saturday, October 20, ruimteCAESUUR organized the art campaign ‘Flying kites with CAESUUR’ on the beach in Vlissingen. The frame of reference for this action was the controversy surrounding the release of kites in the Gaza Strip. On the one hand kite flying is a leisure activity that is regularly used for peaceful protest actions (for example in 2010, when breaking the world record kiting). On the other hand, pilots are used to fly combustible materials and small explosives to Israeli territory and cause damage to them. Although no human victims have occurred so far, livestock has been killed and considerable land and nature have been destroyed by these actions. The state of Israel responded to this with unsparing violence. Sharpshooters shoot down civilians, the majority of them unarmed: children, journalists, aid workers, in fact everyone who comes within the distance of the fence that gates Gaza. Although Western media often produce an image of more or less balanced mutual violence, the methods and effects of violence between Israelis and Palestinians are completely disproportionate: according to Amnesty International's latest report on Gaza*, which is based on international research. Al Mezan Center for Human Rights recognized, more than 150 Palestinians have been killed during the demonstrations since the start of the peaceful protests. At least 10,000 others have been injured. Among them are 1,849 children, 424 women, 115 paramedical care workers and 115 journalists. Among all these injured, 5,814 people were struck by sharp ammunition of snipers. According to the Israeli media, one soldier was slightly wounded by shrapnel grenades and one soldier was killed near the gate by a Palestinian sniper.

Dissatisfaction about this inequality, which usually remains underexposed in the media, was the starting point for the pilot action for initiator Hans Overvliet. By taking the controversial and ambiguous form of kites used in Palestine as the basis, the project aims to bring about a discussion about the complex mix of power, representation, violence and play, aspects that are unmistakably linked to these kites. The fact that this is perceived as controversial by a number of people is understandable, because it undermines the simplistic view, established in some circles, that Palestinian kites are now an unequivocal source of evil. In this way, challenging a debate by potentially controversial action is, however, something very different than simply glorifying terrorism, as some comments on the project have suggested.

Twenty artists around the world were invited to design a kite in this context. The task was not to make a kite about the conflict in the Gaza Strip (although this was a possibility and some did so), but to take the situation of unequal power and violence that exist in this specific conflict as a reason to reflect on power and violence in places or in situations that are important to them. The result is therefore a very diverse collection of kites. The basic shape of the pilots and the starting point of the project have a connection with the conflict in Israel / Palestine,

of unequal power and violence that exist in this specific conflict as a reason to reflect on power and violence in places or in situations that are important to them. The result is therefore a very diverse collection of kites. The basic shape of the pilots and the starting point of the project have a connection with the conflict in Israel / Palestine, but in terms of content, the pilots involve a wide range of subjects and places on different continents.

The project has led to a large number of indignant reactions. Many of these reactions are based on a combination of erroneous information, and unwillingness to actually work in the project, instead of relying on rumors and biased, fleeting impressions: swastika crosses were placed on kites, violence and Nazism glorified to become.

These inventions rely mainly on the following three works in the project. The first is a picture of Belgian artist Jan Verhaeghe with an eagle holding the copyright sign. Verhaeghe himself explains about this work: My eagle logo indeed refers to the most murderous period in our recent history, from history tout court. Only the motif used differs from the ancient symbol claimed by that regime. My eagle, which was also used by other former and current rulers, looks to the left. The position that I also occupy within the political spectrum. The eagle turns its head away from the right, from the extreme right that once again raises its head too high in the north of my country. A clear rejection of the regime that encumbered this, and also other symbols, almost irreparably. Since the end of the nineties of the last century I have been trying to purify defiled symbols, an unequal struggle, I know in the meantime. That makes me a conceptual follower of the great master Marcel Broodthaers who in another way bit his teeth on the eagle motif and in turn the history of this symbol much deeper examined through his 'Department of Aigles' [ See f.i. www.http://moussemagazine.it/taac5-a/ ]. So I call to look further than what can be seen at first sight: do I see what I see? Do not let yourself be blinded by images without thinking further and above all trying to find and find the nuance in every possible situation. And to come to dialogue.

The second work concerns a British-made rocket - a Rapier Missile - printed on a kite, designed by project initiator Hans Overvliet. This is a rocket, offered on a website for digital models **. The used model can be downloaded for use in modeling and animation software to create games and videos, and 3D printing. Much of Overvliet's work is about making analogies of what happens on the internet. An important theme is 'distant suffering', the question of how violence and injustice that takes place far away from us is perceived through media technologies and how we deal with our experiences of empathy and the limited possibilities to act in response to these mediatized conflicts. To both express his solidarity and in order to identify himself with the victims, the missile is aimed at the one holding the rope of the kite, i.e. the artist . . . .

The alleged explosion on the third kite is a painting of a vagina / vulva by the Pakistani artist Mehreen Hashmi. This work is part of a larger group of works in which she deals with the consequences and processing of sexual violence.

In addition to relying on incorrect and / or incomplete information, many negative reactions suggest that any criticism of the state of Israel's border and occupation policy is automatically an expression of anti-Semitism, without further substantiating this alleged connection. Criticism of the politics of the state of Israel that is motivated by anti-Semitic is indeed common, and it is therefore important and understandable that criticism at the address of this state is closely analyzed in this sense. The suggestion that all critical actions against the state of Israel would by definition be anti-Semitic is, however, simply incorrect, just as criticism of - for example - the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is not by definition an expression of Islamophobia. Our criticism of the actions of the state of Israel towards the Palestinian population is strictly concerned with the disproportionality of means of violence and the exercise of force and territorial politics against the occupied territories. We reject any form of action based on anti-Jewish sentiments or prejudices, and reject the equation of the state apparatus of Israel with Judaism as religion and / or a certain group of ethnicities. We also emphasize, perhaps superfluously, our project explicitly distances itself from anti-Semitic sentiments of Hamas or any other movement. The project is also not aimed at denying the existence of the state of Israel.

Pim Kraan and the fraction of Perspective On Vlissingen use the two abovementioned forms of misrepresentation to carry out a project against our project and the alderman of culture. Without actually looking at the project themselves, they distribute incomplete and erroneous information about the content, and accuse those involved of anti-Semitism without giving substantial arguments, based on the misconception that any criticism of the state of Israel or solidarity with Palestinians by definition would be antiSemitic. The group's actions testify to short-sightedness and populist opportunism, with extremely weak arguments. All this in the context of an intolerance to cultural expressions that go beyond the everyday, and seemingly contrary to an authoritarian concept of morality determined by this group itself.

The POV faction complains about the damage that our project would cause for the city of Vlissingen. The irony is that if there is already image damage, this is for a substantial part caused by the POV itself. The group could have chosen to approach the artists involved (one of them is a member of the POV!) In order to form a clear picture of the project and then to include its reservations in a nuanced and strongly argued statement as the basis for a (public) debate in which matters such as freedom of expression, the place of art in society and dealing with potentially controversial expressions are weighed. Instead, the group has chosen to initiate an aggressive media campaign without any reflection in order to render the project in as bad a way as possible, to damage the alderman of culture as much as possible, and in this way malicious and false reports about the project a small group of fanatics on the internet are distributed to legitimize. In other words: if there is something that causes damage to the municipality of Vlissingen in this matter, then it is mainly the political opportunism of the POV fraction.

teamCAESUUR | Hans Overliet, Willy van Houtum, Giel Louws and Dani Ploeger

*seen 24/10/’18 https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2018/10/gaza-greatmarchof-return/ ** https://www.stlfinder.com/collections/