Why artists should not fear child protection reforms

Davido says:

03:05pm | 29/01/10

Wow… still looks like the demarcation line will be as clear as mud.

I disagree that ‘Our challenge is to use this opportunity to better define the law so that the rights of artistic expression are better protected.’

I really dont give a fig for the rights or artists or their right to expression.

The question that should be answered is why would any artist would want to produce this type of work.

Zeta says:

03:33pm | 29/01/10

A lot things frighten me. I wouldn’t say I’m skittish, but more perpetually terrified. I could bore The Punch with a list of things that terrified me today. Images of strange, floating spheres the size of planets in orbit around our sun since cropped by NASA. The fact that traditional children’s nursery rhyme ‘Rockabye Baby’ describes a child’s crib being placed in a tree and blown to the ground by the wind. Research that suggests that crows can hold a grudge. All things things are frightening.

But it’s a slow, creeping fear to realise that at the highest levels of Government, the people we expect to protect us from sexual predators can’t make the distinction between art and child pornography.

That it’s taken high level meetings with the Australia Council, the AG’s Department, and whatever other public teet suckers who wanted a say in proceedings highlights that bureaucracy is failing to actually protect Australia’s children.

I’ve had the misfortune of being exposed to child pornographers. As a user of the Tor Network, it’s a disgusting side affecting of protecting your online privacy that the same service is used by organised crime to promote their websites. I’ve also spoken to law enforcement officers, at an operational and policy level about the subject, and their descriptions are definitive. You can’t mistake it. If you need to ask the question, the answer is clearly no.

British philosopher and aesthetic Richard Wollheim said “Art is the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions.” Pornography is the explicit arangement of sexual elements for the sole purpose of creating or illiciting sexual arousal. Now that distinction is vague. Because the elements of art can contain sexual arangements that appeal to the senses or emotions.

But child pornography is different again altogether. Child pornography is evidence, be it photographic or otherwise, of a criminal act. By possessing child pornography, you’re possessing evidence of a crime. You’re participating in the crime by not revealing it. That must be the distinction the law makes, to do otherwise makes crimes out of thoughts and fantasy.

Anyone who has been exposed to that evidence of child sexual abuse cannot then look upon the work of Bill Henson, or the equally provactive semi nude children of Gottfried Helnwein, or Garo Aida and tar them with the same brush. It’s simply inconceivable.

The onus must be on Law Enforcement, not Artists to make this distinction based on what they know to be genuine child abuse imagery, not consensual nude artwork.

All this pandering, all this money wasted, the time spent in meetings, the flights to shuttle your privlidged selves across the country for this bollocks, that’s the real outrage. A small sector of the community that thinks any exposure of skin is a sin. That’s what this is about. There are criminals that need catching and thier methods are getting increasingly sophisticated. While the Australia Council sipped Chai Lattes and contemplated the significance of all this, predominantly Eastern European criminal gangs were in the process of procuring, grooming, and sexually assaulting children and uploading the imagery to file sharing networks so the images could be purchased for large sums by predominantly rich, white, American, British and Australian men, who then trade them for other images with other pedophiles.

At no point in that process does anyone contemplate the aesthetic merit of Jacques Bourboulon.

These reforms don’t protect children at all. They make you feel better about doing nothing.

Brisbanite says:

03:49pm | 29/01/10

I think I can answer this question “The question that should be answered is why would any artist would want to produce this type of work.’

As the father of a four year old boy - I can tell you he loves running around the house naked.  It is a joyous freedom of the young and my wife and I just let him go.  It saves on laundry from getting paint and food on his clothes.

I am strongly challenged by artworks like those that caused controversy from Bill Henson.  However I can understand some artists wanting to catch that lively behaviour from a child.

Marion Simpson says:

07:22am | 30/01/10

Sadly times have changed and in somethings definatly not for the better. I read on the news last week about a man who was aprehended for taking photos on the beach of a naked 5 year old playing. Fortunatly the childs dad had the sense to report him and many other childrens naked pics were found. Not everyone is like you and me, obviously some just don’t see beauty in children they see something more perverse. I don’t know what the answer is, when it comes to art. The whole things is mind boggling for me. While I would not pay to see naked children , if they were apart of a tasteful display I would not object as long as it was not lewd. My first thoughts are “protect our little Aussies” the best way we can.

Gerard Oosterman says:

04:58pm | 30/01/10

Australia would be about the only country where people argue that nudity is alright over 18 but not below that age.

What is it about Anglo countries that they fear so much about bodies of any age or any shape.

Bill Henson would never have been harassed by police or the media except here.

Yet, those that vehemently oppose nudity of children have no hesitation in sexualizing kids on the beach by dressing 5 year old girls with little bra swim gear.

Again, only here does one also see pre-teens proudly strutting about with supporting parents, wearing high heeled shoes, desperate to make the girls look older rather than allowing them to be children..

It’s all vey puzzling.

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