August 5, 2024
Artists

Artists protest at London’s Barbican Centre over suppression of opposition to Israeli genocide


On Saturday, hundreds of protesters occupied the Barbican Centre in London to oppose censorship of critics of Israeli mass murder in Gaza. They raised banners with slogans, such as “Stop the cultural genocide.”

The episode is part of an ongoing conflict between the Barbican, the largest performing arts center in Europe, and opponents of the horrifying genocide, which has already resulted in at least 100,000 Gazans dead, wounded or missing.

March 16 protest at the Barbican in London

Various artists have withdrawn their work from the Barbican following the cancellation in February of a lecture series after center officials learned that one of the talks, to be given by well-known Indian writer Pankaj Mishra, was entitled “The Shoah After Gaza.”

The London Review of Books (LRB) was the sponsor of the series. A description of Mishra’s talk on the LRB website read:

A powerful western narrative holds the Shoah to be the incomparable crime of the modern era. But we find our moral and political consciousness profoundly altered when Israel, a country founded as a haven for the victims of genocidal racism, is itself charged with genocide.

What is the fate of universal values after Israel’s collapse into violent nationalism?

The Barbican released an evasive statement February 14, which claimed that the center was advertised by the LRB as the venue for the lecture series prematurely, while “discussions were ongoing, and before an agreement to hold the events had been finalised. That meant that we lost the opportunity to properly consider how to hold the events with care, or to do the preparation they would need.” According to Artnet, the “LRB denies this version of events, stating that the lecture had been canceled ‘at a late stage.’”

Mishra told the Guardian that he was “not surprised,” but that “it’s still shocking,” He continued, “The whole point of culture and the arts is to embrace diversity, different viewpoints and protect imaginative freedom.



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