***  Haus der Kulturen der Welt: Forum1 Archive  ***
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
   [Date]: Tue, 19 Oct 1999 19:32:50 -0500
   [From]: Juan Jose Diaz Infante  <jdiazinfante@altamiracave.com>
     [To]: Cultural Exchange via Internet <forum1@hkw.kbx.de>
[Subject]: Re: [forum1] Re: Democracy

Ami

The effort of Newt Gingrich and Guiliani are the maximum example of 
censorship there can be. It is a censorship to all the arts.  Newt's
movement started out of an exhibit of Mapplethorpe which he could not
understand, this show was sponsored in part by the endowment of the arts.
His censorship will affect not only that particular exhibit, it will affect
PBS for example. If we were to create a metaphor . It would be the
equivalent of my stopping the funds of the democratic party if I were to
censor back Gingrich's action. It is a problem not only of lack of
understanding of art, but a lack of understanding of what a structure of
thought is.  Gingrich went to create general conclusion from a particular
premise, he would have flunked high school.

In a certain way the artist thinks that is so obvious the need of art that
does not establishes the most elementary rational.

My point was regarding the situation in Chile is not a local situation of an evil regime. But a global crisis that has little to do with democracies or dictatorships. It has to do with total indifference to the quality factor in an arts exhibit or in anything.

We are so full of incoherent information that we are unable to recognize
when someone is using what Saint Augustine used to call a barbarism. In the
IV century there were no newspapers to endorse a barbarism.

Juan