LOG IN TO POSTER FOR TOMORROW
October 06
Update: Belfast exhibition
Poster for tomorrow will be in Belfast for 10/10/10, but not in the City Council premises. The exhibition will take place in form of a protest against the City Council decision of taking out 30 posters from the exhibition.
We were open to removing a couple of posters from the exhibition, but instead the council proposed to put 30 posters in a room with "controlled access" (in their own words) on the 1st floor of the City Hall building.
We were open to removing a couple of posters from the exhibition, but instead the council proposed to put 30 posters in a room with "controlled access" (in their own words) on the 1st floor of the City Hall building.
We don't consider this decision to be a fair one: although this isn't strictly censoring the posters, it feels like a politically correct decision to effectively cut the exhibition by a third and remove the said posters to a place where no one can see them (or at least see them with an added degree of difficulty). We haven't accepted this offer nor do we plan to do so.
We'd like to point out that Belfast is the only city in the world in which our exhibition encountered this sort of resistance, out of a list that includes much more problematic cities such as Tbilisi, Marrakech, Beirut and 5 cities in Iran including Tehran.
A list of the events we're organising for 10/10/10 is available on our website and on our Facebook page.
September 27
We will not be censored
Around four months ago our local organiser in Northern Ireland asked to Belfast City Council for permission to use the Belfast City Hall for a poster for tomorrow exhibition. In September the city council finally gave its approval after two deliberations, the first one dating back to June.
So when the final posters had been determined, we supplied the city council with a copy of the posters that were going to be exhibited, only to discover that the local councillors from the Democratic Unionist Party, the larger (and ruling) of the two main unionist political parties in Northern Ireland, were horrified by our pictures and didn't want at least 10 of the ones they considered the most shocking to be exhibited in their city hall.
The story was covered by the Irish News last Saturday. The article contains the thoughts of David Rodway, a DU Party councillor who sees himself as "a relatively open-minded person" who "can't understand why anyone would want to look at images of people being hanged", before calling poster for tomorrow a "communist committee".
The article was illustrated with one of the posters in question, made by Vladimir Sabillon, in which it is possible to see one of Goya's masterworks: "El tres de mayo 1808 en Madrid" inside a human silhouette surrounded by China's national colours. It's remarkable how a 200 years old painting of people being shot, as David Rodway might say, is still able to cause such debate.
There are other parts of the world where poster for tomorrow is not being welcome by governmental institutions. In Pakistan our local contact was arrested and released after three days for having tried to organise an exhibition in his home town. Also our local organisers in Malaysia and in Syria have been arrested on similar grounds.
As Hervé Matine told The Irish News: "we won't be censored by anyone". Many underground exhibitions are being organised at the moment in those countries where the death penalty is most controversial, China and Iran, and our supporters in Belfast are ready to place the posters in the streets if the city council will not allow us to hold the exhibition.