What is and what isn’t

From maltastar.com:

The Malta Council for Culture and the Arts decided to exclude a Maltese artists’ exhibition of 16 photographs which put together images of politicians, including ministers, and “representations of strangely erotic acts”, claiming that the artworks were “libelous”.

Thankfully, what the Council did was not described as “censorship” — which it is not. Censorship is a categorical ban states do (which, after all, is the only institution which can impose a categorical ban). Thus, Stitching was censored and it cannot, unless the decision is reversed, be staged anywhere in Malta. This exhibition can still be held in the curator’s garage while he waits for sixteen court summons to come in.

But the fact that no mention was made of the “c” word does not mean that it was not implied:

When contacted by maltastar.com, the artist, Raphael Vella, 42, said that foreign artists are comparing the situation of the arts in Malta with that of the Soviet Union and Germany before the war.

They could have compared us to France 2008 when French magazines felt they had to airbrush Sarkozy’s love handles in a real photograph not a photo montage as is in this case. Or Germany in 2002 when then-Chancellor Schröder sued a German news agency over allegations that he dyes his hair.

On matters of freedom of expression Malta gets more punishment that it’s due. The Stitching ban was unfortunate. While it reminded us that the Board of Film and Stage Classification has powers it shouldn’t have it gave the wrong impression that in recent years they have deprived Maltese audiences of much. Some of the criticism on the prohibition to insult religion, a legal provision applied earlier this year at the Nadur carnival, may have been justified. But let us not forget that, for the sake of not insulting Islam quite a few European governments have been mulling the idea.

Which leaves us with libel. Yes, Malta’s libel laws may be somewhat punitive (and they have been relaxed in recent years) but even there, I get the impression there’s much freedom of interpretation for the presiding Magistrate. What is certainly not unique is having libel laws.

Which brings us to this case in question. Is it grounds for libel? Here’s more:

The excluded artwork was to be part of a collective exhibition, “The Life Model,” curated by Patrick Fenech, which opened this week, as part of the Malta Arts Festival. Yet, the Council argued that the images are “potentially libellious” because some Maltese individuals in the images were still recognisable, despite the artist having “blurred them partially.”

Partially, understandably. Or how would viewers have realised that they were politicians “including ministers”?

But why politicians? Is it just because they happen to be the category of people we love to hate, a bit like Americans and their lawyers. There is a bit of explanation from the artist:

Dr Vella made it clear that the content of his work is not pornographic. “I am not interested in cheap pornography as an ‘art form’, but I am very much interested in the fact that politics has become a bit like pornography.”

“Cheap” pornography as opposed to what? Pity the description cuts off there. I would have been equally interested to hear how politics has become “a bit” like pornography. Hmm, sitting through budget speeches might be more interesting than I thought.

Update: It turns out that Raphael Vella, the artist in question, is more level-headed that one would have initially imagined. Here’s his reaction to the original maltastar.com article:

Maltese art is often excessively ‘heavy’ with metaphysical ideas about life and death, the ‘sacred’, and so on, and I felt that a piece that could invert the seriousness with which we still approach subjects like the nude in art by linking it, teasingly, to an even more taboo subject – politics – was necessary in this exhibition.

The curator of ‘The Life Model’ liked this perspective too, and I will venture to add that I think he appreciated it because he is an important Maltese contemporary artist with international experiences, with whom I have had the pleasure to work on other occasions.

This was also the attitude of the ‘foreign artist’ quoted in the article, who jokingly reminisced about the ex-Soviet Union. My reference to this artist’s opinion was not meant as a factual statement about Malta – artists and writers here do not end up in gulags, of course – but it was a way of saying that my work might have been taken too seriously.

There is one point which I note with sadness, however: it’s no longer a case of similarity between “cheap pornography” and politics as we we told in the first article. It’s merely a link between the seriousness — presumably undeserved — of artworks and politicians and their nudity.

But if that’s the case then the link could have been established with just about anyone, the nudity taboo being pretty strong in Malta.

Why politicians then? I get the impression it’s really a question of someone drawing in a moustache and an Elvis forelock on the photo of someone important and feeling happy he can get away with it. Or maybe even get away with plaudits like this (complete with a feeble attempt at sarcasm):

Dear Raphael, how dare you try and criticise the political class? Don’t you know that our lives depend on these kind and hard-working persons who dedicate their lives to us, to give us jobs, food, shelter, entertainment, I would say, even spice up the air we breathe to make it healthier (sometimes with their small cars, sometimes with the effects of their bigger Delimara decisions)? You definitely cannot be allowed to criticise the political class.

Criticise? Hint: the target, remember, is “seriousness”. How about mockery? Not that our politicians are above it but, then, should anyone?

Propologia

Yesterday we had Victor Ragonesi telling us to keep our hands off the “original” entrance of Valletta which nobody has a right to “desecrate”. Ragonesi was Borg-Olivier’s Private Secretary in the 1960s. Which begs the question: did his former political master have any right to desecrate the city entrance the way he did?

Today, Kenneth Zammit-Tabona writes on the Piano plans in Times:

Meanwhile, the government, with pennants flying and trumpets blowing, announced Renzo Piano’s blueprint for Valletta and, if their perennial apologists are anything to go by, are in a right royal miff because it was not received with the right amount of adulation. What on earth did they expect? After waiting for 67 years for something to happen on the opera house site, the government’s brief to Mr Piano was devoid of any thought, sensitivity and without reflection as to what the long-term consequences of this open-air theatre that we need like a hole in the head will mean with regard to Maltese culture or the lack of it.

I don’t know what government’s brief to Piano was and if it said “make the old Opera House into an open-air theatre”. If anything, Piano, it seems, dissuaded the government from constructing a parliament on the theatre’s site. And as I have pointed out elsewhere, Piano is not a starving architect waiting for some commission to come in. I’m sure he has enough artistic and professional dignity to tell the government to find someone else if he felt the “brief” he was given was below him.

But Zammit-Tabona seems to know something the rest of us don’t. He was one of the plans’ first critics:

Art and theatre critic Kenneth Zammit Tabona was not at all amused: “I have never felt so insulted in my life. This is another confirmation of the poor attitude this government has shown towards culture. We’re going to have a roofless theatre which can only be used when the weather permits. But they’re not going to be roofless in Parliament, are they?”

That, by the way, was soon after it was announced that it would be an open-air theatre but before the plans were unveiled. And notice the criticism was directed at the government: Zammit-Tabona, unlike the paTRioTs wIth a caPs loCK prOBlem who comment on the Times, is not so philisitine to accuse Piano of philistinism. Such charges work better with Austin Gatt so that’s were he directs it.

But then Zammit-Tabona goes on:

Last Tuesday, La Traviata, starring Renee Fleming and our own Joseph Calleja, was transmitted live from Covent Garden to an enthusiastic and numerous paying audience at Argotti Gardens. A son of Malta has really made it to the top echelons and will, any minute now, reach iconic status. A suggestion, which, I hope, the ministry will take up should this lovely event happen again, is that it should be shown free of charge in all the towns and villages in Malta that have a suitable open space.

It’s heartening to note that on this occasion — end of June — it was a case of “weather permits” in an “roofless” venue as was the Argotti Garden. And why does Zammit-Tabona suggest that the screening be held in “towns and villages in Malta that have a suitable open space”?

No fear of wind, rain and hail? Adrian Buckle, who had been one of the most vociferous opponents of having parliament built on the old opera house site, spoke in favour of an open air theatre because, bar the ludicrous venue at Ta’ Qali, there is no such thing in Malta. Both Buckle and Zammit-Tabona seem to be aware that the performing arts have stiff competition in the summer and both realise that an open venue is the answer.

But while Buckle’s reaction is the obvious reaction of someone who got something he could have wished for, Zammit-Tabona persists in criticising the plan and the government (not Piano). Why? Is it the cheap and easy way to sophistication?

Coda: Another point in Zammit-Tabona’s op-ed is worth addressing:

This [foreign governments' attempts to popularise opera] was an exercise that took up the trend set by Pavarotti, Carreras and Domingo when they performed together in that unforgettable Three Tenors Concert in Rome 19 years ago and which I had the unforgettable privilege of attending. In those days one could hear men attempting to sing Nessun Dorma in the shower as they lathered themselves: so much for the irrelevance and mustiness of opera Lou Bondì.

That’s a hypothesis. Here’s another: Pavarotti’s Nessun Dorma (one of the worst renditions of the piece, one should add) was the theme song used for the BBC’s coverage of the 1990 World Cup finals. Most people learnt of the piece (and its existence) thanks to that, not the Three Tenors concert. Which might explain why it was men attempting to sing it in the shower.

Was the BBC’s then attempt a laudable case of “popularising”? Yes. But as “propologia” is pig-Greek so is Puccini-before-a-football-match “pig-opera”.

Religious versus Secular

Ranier Fsadni was commenting on the new President’s decision to include mass in the official programme of his appointment and the subsequent reaction of the media which asked if the President’s decision was wise considering that he’s there to represent all Maltese.

I won’t go into this particular decision. What’s of greater interest to me is the conclusion to Fsadni’s article:

One is a narrowing religious vision to be increasingly found among Maltese Catholics: increasingly sectarian behaviour whose consequence is that, whenever somebody declares his or her Catholicism publicly, others wonder if it is a sectarian gesture rather than the address from which one reaches out to everyone.

The other is a narrow vision of what secularism is. Instead of keeping up with the thinking of leading secular philosophers, like Juergen Habermas, who believe that a 21st-century liberal society should have place for believers who use religious language to engage in the public sphere, regrettably too much of Maltese secular thinking tends to be stuck with nervous complexes like those of unreconstructed 1920s Turkish secularism.

However subtly, Fsadni is placing the blame for the state of affairs on the “secular thinkers”: they’re the ones who think that a public act of attending Mass is “sectarian” and they’re the one whose idea of secularism is some sort of re-hashed Kemalism.

Fsadni’s article come soon after a recent story I commented on about an American priest who, while obviously knowing zilch about Maltese constitutional affairs, was brought over to support the campaign to entrench the right to life from conception.

Let’s go over the facts again because they assume new importance in this context. A pro-life organisation which has regularly claimed that it is not a religious organisation (presumably, to reach out to pro-life non-believers) invites a priest from the developed country that’s been hardest racked by cultural wars to talk in favour of its campaign. Significantly, which metaphor does this priest find handy to describe what he came to speak in favour for? Raising fortifications. Can you imagine anything more sectarian than wall-building?

Or, to keep with the today’s theme, here Rev. Joe Borg in his online column in the Times:

What Christ says flies in the face of the current belief in self and instant gratification. Christ’s message is clearly that the person who wants to live only for himself and exploit all life’s possibilities for personal gain finds that life itself becomes boring and empty because it becomes senseless.

“Self and instant gratification”? I quote Rev. Borg, by the way, not becuase his views are atypical but precisely because he’s the most media-literate and one of the most articulate members of the Maltese clergy.  If I were to look around me I see people reducing whatever they consume be it as a way to cope with the recession, save for their retirement or their children, for the sake of the environment or the Third World … you name it. They might find it gratifying but it’s anything but “self” or “instant”. But caricaturing the “other” is another typical way of creating sectarian divides where none need to be.

We do not need a culture war. But some believers are all out to provoke one. Why they should want to is beyond me because these people always have their way: those who ridicule their faith get arrested, divorce is off the agenda and our law on assisted reproduction will have the Vatican’s nihil obstat written over it. There’s no risk that the prohibition on abortion be repealed? These people still want to provoke and gloat about the fact that they always have it their way so they want the matter entrenched.

Here’s my hunch: some people just love playing persecuted and martyrs, preferably without the blood and the gore. I understand and fully sympathise with people who make sacrifices: whether if it’s for their future, their children, their environment and even if it’s for symbolic and spiritual reasons as many believers will do today. What I don’t understand or find favour with is the people who take pleasure in voluntary self-sacrifice because it sets them apart from others and occasionally meting some of that to unwilling participants. Which, incidentally, has a name: sado-masochism.

Closure? Hardly

Looks after having been on the offensive for a long time the FAA is now having to fight a rearguard battle:

“It is surprising that certain people can’t come to terms with the fact that this case is now closed and prefer to indulge in disparaging remarks and nit-picking. FAA calls for an end to this assault on the public’s democratic and EU rights to participate in the decision-making process of our land and calls for the focus to be directed toward more positive initiatives,” the FAA said.

Case closed? The FAA wasn’t giving that impression and I’m not referring to the details of what FAA members are up to particularly when they’re tending to their business interests rather than campaigning. When the PM announced that the project would be withdrawn FAA was not satisfied:

In a statement, the FAA called for the resignation of the members of St John’s Co-Cathedral Foundation.

It said the project had been ‘concealed’ from the public for two years in what could be considered a serious breach of ethics in a project concerning a scheduled public monument.

Furthermore the foundation allowed this application to be processed and it obtained EU funding for the project in full knowledge that the government was carrying out re-paving of Merchants’ Street , costing hundreds of thousands of euro of public funds, which works would have been destroyed by the St John’s project.

The NGO also hit out at the foundation members for pressing on with the project in spite of being aware of many expert reports highlighting the grave risks of the project, including the MEPA Directorate declaration that “The project is a non-starter due to the fact that no mitigation measures can guarantee that the Cathedral’s foundations will not be affected”.

FAA said it expected the government to request the resignation of its representatives on the foundation as this was a matter of mismanagement of Malta’s prime heritage asset and also of public funds.

There are quite a few weasel words in there like “could” and “would” and claims of “mismanagement” over a project that never was. But those were sturdy foundation on which to place a demand that the foundation members resign. As far as I know they are still there — quite rightly — and the FAA is saying that case is closed?

Not to worry. The FAA may be an avowed “non-political” organisation but Labour is already claiming not only the pound of flesh it is owed but also the pint of blood. Credit rates may be low but there’s interest to be paid. Joseph Muscat has threatened to out two Ministers who disagreed with the project:

Two ministers had made serious accusations regarding the manner of how funds were going to be granted for the St John’s Co-Cathedral project during a high Nationalist Party meeting, Opposition Leader Joseph Muscat said.

Dr Muscat had previously referred to these persons as “holding a high institutional position” who had indicated that EU funds were allocated following “undue pressure and because some people knew the rules of the game well”.

Dr Muscat was speaking at a Labour Party activity at Villa Bighi, Kalkara yesterday.

While encouraging the two ministers to speak up, he said that the PN had already attempted to find out how such sensitive information made it to PL. Dr Muscat said he was ready to name these persons if they did not do so.

Which is, of course, hardly what the FAA would want government insiders not wanting to take a stand against government proposals even at meetings they think are confidential. No, closure it isn’t. It’s more like he who sows the wind reaps the storm.

Why not a headcount?

I had intended to publish this post some days ago but it turned out to be one of those that cannot be finalised in a single sitting. It was about the political consequences of the St John’s extension project.

I’m in no way qualified to comment on the technicalities of the project except to note that excavations under buildings of importance is not something unheard of elsewhere. Today in the Times it was a letter from architect Alex Torpiano to remind us of one such example (of what other would call a “quarry” or a “bunker”) under the Louvre.

Torpiano also makes some important remarks about the planning process, about the experts whom the FAA is so happy to quote but whose opinions were either conditional or preliminary (and, as Torpiano reminds us, their opinion, is legally, not final). I have one thing to add on the planning aspect of this story. If, as the FAA is telling us, EIAs are “flawed” by their very nature why should these in-depth studies (as opposed to opinions which arer still opinions however expert) be kept part of the planning process?

From the cultural aspect there’s the loss that these tapestries will either not be exhibited properly or in a place so far away from St John’s that their value is completely decontextualised. There are no “neighbouring palazzos” waiting for restoration (or expropriation as Wenzu Mintoff, true socialist that he is, suggested). And Kenneth Zammit-Tabona can put on all of De Bono’s six thinking hats — he might as well put on six pairs of the lateral thinker’s socks — because he will not get very far.

There are the by far more interesting (admittedly to me) political implications of this. The PM is supposed to have withdrawn the project because of the public controversy. That’s not implausible. The opposition to the project was strong for the “do nothing” scenario is always backed by inertia, the strongest force in the universe. But the PM came out of this looking like he feared that the Opposition’s motion would be carried.

I had already posted reasons why this might not happen. The Times reported three MPs who expressed reservations: Jesmond Mugliett, Jeffrey Pullicino-Orlando and Ninu Zammit. In the case of Zammit the information was second hand and referred largely disruptions excavation might cause to the surroundings. In the case of Mugliett it was because he failed “to understand how it (the project) managed to get so much funding when other projects could have been more deserving” — a case of dog-in-the-manger from someone who stills has to get round the idea that you serve in cabinet at the pleasure of the PM. The only one to have substantial objections was Pullicino-Orlando and, then again, he might not have voted in favour of the motion.

The way things turned out the PM has given in to undue influence from Parliament. Alfred Mifsud — not the most politically literate commenter around — claimed that this was a case of a “desirable but rare separation between the roles of the legislative and the executive”. Rather it was the case where the legislative intruded into the workings of the executive, a matter which in the constitutional arrangement exists largely on money matters (and then, on the efficient raising and spending of that money not on what it is spent).

The legislative’s major role is making laws not deliberating on particular instances where the laws it enacts are being applied as they should. And it should be kept in mind that anarchy is not the only state of affairs that’s contrary to the rule of law; so is arbitrariness.

Getting your history right

You now that when the people at MaltaToday venture into history they get things wrong:

The foundation managing the Co-Cathedral is itself an outdated creature born out of a funny compromise between the government and the Church over the unsolved dispute of who owns this majestic building. In our eyes, there is no question about it: the Knights were the effective government of the country when they built it, hence it is the government which should manage it, primarily as a museum of global heritage importance more than anything else.

Isn’t James Debono an historian? He should tell his colleagues that, during his brief stay in Malta, Napoleon, as the head of the effective government of the country, transferred the ownership of St John’s to the Maltese Church. If there is indeed “no question” it’s because the Maltese Church is the undisputed owner of the Co-Cathedral.

The party of progressives and moderates and liberals

I hope I’m forgiven if I come back with some delay to the checklist that was Muscat’s speech. Thinking about issues requires more time than shooting them from the him.

I was thinking of Muscat’s comment on the banning of Unifaun’s play Stitching. In the judicial protest the theatre company has presented in Court it claims that there’s nothing in the play which goes things the Maltese Criminal Code does not allow from incitement to hatred, to libel, to sedition, to religious offence or blasphemy. They’re right but then Maltese law also allows quite a lot of discretion to the Board of classification and censorship. Which might mean that the Board’s decision simply to ban the play in question because it’s “shocking” might have grounds in Maltese law as it currently stands.

Muscat has not not said anything about changing the law establishing the Board, busy as he was trashing Tonio Borg. Funny because that’s one policy committement that would be easy to make. So let’s imagine, in the absence of contrary evidence, that the current legal regime will continue to apply with Labour in government.

The appointment of the Board, it should be noted, is not the responsibility of the Minister responsible for culture but the Minister responsible for the police. Who’s most likely to fill that post with a Labour government? It would be the progressive, moderate, liberal Anglu Farrugia who was Labour’s face to Gift of Life’s campaign to entrench the prohibition of abortion in the Constitution.

Cheer up. It could be worse with Adrian Vassallo.