Briefing
Google erases Dennis Cooper's blog, while creatives show their support for incarcerated poet Dareen Tatour
Google erases Dennis Cooper's blog, while creatives show their support for incarcerated poet Dareen Tatour
- Google has deleted the blog of writer and artist Dennis Cooper, a space for experimental literature, photography and comment that he had been maintaining for 14 years. Stuart Comer, a curator at MoMA, said: ‘I think this is definitely censorship […] It’s just yet another means by which certain members of the government or certain internet conglomerates have decided to make it impossible for culture to be produced.’
- Following a year of uncertainty that has seen Lorenzo Benedetti fired as director and governmental funding withdrawn, Amsterdam’s de Appel arts centre has named Niels Van Tomme as its new director. (Dutch)
- The Human Rights Foundation (HRF) has stripped Russian artist and activist Pyotr Pavlensky of the Vaclav Havel International Prize for Creative Dissent that he was awarded in May. The decision was made after Pavlensky pledged to donate his USD$42,000 prize money to the Primorye Partisans, a guerrilla organization recognized as criminals by the Russian government.
- Samson Young has been selected to represent Hong Kong at the 2017 Venice Biennale, the Arts Development Council and the M+ Museum of Visual Culture announced yesterday. In October of this year, Young, a trained composer and practicing sound artist, will present a new work at Frieze London as part of Frieze Projects.
- Over 150 artists, writers, and other prominent cultural figures have signed a petition to the Israeli government demanding that charges against 33-year old Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour be dropped. Last year, Tatour was charged with incitement to violence after publishing work critical of Israel via social media. She is currently awaiting trial, having been placed under house arrest after spending three-months at three different prisons.
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