Today i would like to share my thoughts on art. So what is art? I like to define art as any form of ones expression. Even someone walking on the street is art am i right?
So there has been a lot of debate going on art and the freedom that we are given in Singapore to express ourselves in the form of it as a medium. The story of "sticker lady" is a famous incident where a lady pasted stickers on traffic like control boxes and spray painted words on public roads around the country. It brought smiles to many people's faces. Or at least it did on mine. But what she got in the end was a court case where she was charged with mischief.
So the question arises- is the scrutiny of art here too strict?
I personally disagree to this statement. I believe strongly that the government has a duty of care to ensure the sustainability of its art form for its people and therefore they censor and limit the freedom given to its people. Here is a in script of a speech i once heard that elaborates more on this point.
"There are people in the society who are unable to understand and interpret some intence forms or art and as a result, have some implications on their lives and society. What the government is trying to do is protect these people who do not have a mature and rational mind to understand and interpret some form in intense art and extreme arts and this is done by censorship, and if these susceptible people are not protected, it can lead to detrimental consequesnces such as normalization. Normalization, to put it simply, is a process where certain people adopt certain traits about themsleves. For example, if there is a picture shown to you that dipicts a afghan child golding some sort of weponry, would we able to to understand and interpret this picture in an approprite manner? I don't think so. He might get the wrong imppression from the true meaning of the art form and he does not have a mature and rational thinking as yet, if he were to be a teen for example. Similarly, this applies to all other art forms which are difficult to interpret and would lead to similar behaviours to these vulnerable viewers.This in no way depriving the person from arts as they are not able to apreciate it in the first place so there is no point in potraying these art."
Can you understand what the main point of the speech is? And if you can, do you agree to it? Leave your comments below. What do you feel on the censorship of art?
Signing off,
Just another Singaporean
I agree art is a means to express oneself and different people may express themselves in different ways. The delicate balance is allowing people to express themselves in a way that does not compromise public property and intrude on common space. One person's art could be viewed by others as graffiti or by law as vandalism.
ReplyDelete-- Rajesh Gadodia
art is about conversation and dialogue. sometimes, the very act of censorship creates more conversation for an artwork than the art itself. that is what makes art interesting. it is not always about the final reaction but the process of creation.
ReplyDeleteLOL YASH I KNOW WHY YOU CHOSE THIS TOPIC. Anyway I feel that if our society has a more mature mindset in the sense that they are able to understand these forms of art, censorship would not even be an issue. It is unfortunate that the majority of our society lacks the ability to formulate good thoughts and ideas about an issue, instead of just bandwagon-ing on an idea. Perhaps we can try and inculcate the notion of "thinking, and doing your research and getting enough information before judging and hence, before speaking" into our generation starting with our school.
ReplyDelete-A for Awesome