I'm a subscriber to a discussion list run by JISCMAIL, of a special interest group of 800 or so individuals who have an interest in live art and performance art. Normally it posts events, conferences, workshops, performances etc by live art practitioners, academics, promoters and curators. It's a great way of publicising your work, a supportive community. Mostly things run quite innocently - performances involving nudity, sometimes blood-letting, body art and we hardly bat an eyelid. But then comes Mark McGowan the enfant terrible of the performance art world. For over 5 years or so, Mark has riled this community of "open-minded" live art peeps - his stunts and actions that has ranged from eating Swans and Corgis (the property of Her Majesty the Queen), to drowning kittens, to throwing litter in The Thames to marching in support of Jade Goody. You name it, Mark's performances have pissed some members of our community off in one form or another. Flurries of postings calling him a self-publicising charlaton, a horrible and cruel man (eating swans, and drowning kittens), a vandal (keying cars) - he's been the butt of abuse and ok, not quite hate mail, but accused of not being a very nice man and a bit of a crap artist.

However, recently McGowan's been the object of the most emotional hate mail I've ever known because of a performance stunt that has politically gone too far for our liberal-leftie sentiments. Here's his performance proposition:

TEN THOUSAND PROSTRATIONS TO DAVID CAMERON

"In an extraordinary art event, artist Mark McGowan is to prostrate himself an incredible 10,000 times in front of a large photographic image of Conservative leader David Cameron on (election day) May 6th 2010 opposite number 10 Downing Street on Whitehall.
McGowan says, "Ten thousand times is a lot and i am not underestimating the challenge of this massive prostration, so i am already in training and preparation, doing sets of 100 at a time. The prostrations can be seen as a sign of reverance to a noble man, David Cameron, the man who can lead this country out of the problems we are in. It should take me about 2 and a half days to complete, i will start at 10am on Thursday 6th May and finish on Saturday 8th May, by which time this country will see a new leader. Gordon Brown, the Labour party and champagne socialism is over."

And here's an example of a response to this proposition by the Marxist art critic/theorist/writer Dave Beech: 'Mark, I have supported you in the past and I have defended you when critics, curators and artists have told me that you and your work are worthless. I now have to admit that I was wrong and they were right. This moronic attention-seeking campaign to support Cameron is the worst thing you've done since defending racist bullying on Big Brother. Irony cannot save you. This pathetic cynical display is a measure of the kind of artist you are - spineless, unprincipled and crass. I call on all curators, critics, artists and funders to boycott you and your work. And I pledge to stand against you at every opportunity. You, Cameron and all your conservative friends can rot in hell! "

Lively stuff, and actually quite exciting to see such spirited and angry retalliation. Then another player enters the arena called Otto the Dog, a vile pitbull who tries to outdo McGowan's act, by posting crass and juvenile abuse calling everyone lesbian, nigger bitches, etc. Quite naturally we ignore these imbecile postings, but probably realising that a virtual performance is happening in the debate around free speech, the right to express our views, thoughts etc. Meanwhile, Mark's almost religious affirmations for David Cameron verges on the absurd, but actually because his use of language is so rooted in reality, it can appear real. Does Mark really want us all to vote Conservative? Is he really a big fan of Mr Cameron - has he completely lost his sense?

Postings ablaze around this subject, with the occasional intervention of verbal filth by Otto the Dog. Eventually in steps Big Brother. We are warned that we will be expelled from the house for being naughty children:

"Regarding the recent political discussions on the LIVEART group, we would
like to point out that such postings are not acceptable within a JISCMail
group and all of these have been removed. Similarly, abusive or obscene
items / language are completely unacceptable.

Please, see our Acceptable Use Policy at
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/policyandsecurity/acceptableuse.html
which should be adhered to at all times,

and Guidelines to Etiquette at

http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/policyandsecurity/etiquette.html

We will remove any further political or abusive postings, and those sending
such items may have their posting-rights removed, or be removed from
JISCMail completely.
Please report any further such postings to us so that the appropriate action
may be taken.

Regards

JISCMail Helpline
www.jiscmail.ac.uk"

This leads to some postings from myself and other artists objecting to threats of banning and censoring people from the live art e-listing, defending free expression and Mark McGowan's textual and actual performance, even if we'd rather drink a cocktail of excrement than vote for Cameron. A day later, Mark McGowan informs me that he's been barred from the list, receiving the following message in response to a posting: "You are not authorized to post to the LIVEART list"

I'm incensed, and post this news out to the list that Mark's been censored and banned from the list and that I will post messages on his behalf, be his messenger so to speak. The list gets blitzed with 50 messages in a day from artists and academics defending Mark's right to express his political views and, actually there could be a huge degree of Chris Morris type satire and irony going on here. After much angry plotting to defend Mark - set up a petiition, name and shame the moderator, fine-comb the JISCmail etiquette policy, threaten a mass walk out from the list, report the moderator to Index on Censorship - Mark is re-instated. A small victory for free speech and time to have a glass of wine, it being Friday night and all.

So, 4-5 days goes by, all quiet on the liveart@JISCmail list, until I receive an email from the artist Gail Burton informing me that her posting didn't go out to the list pending moderation. She wanted to know if this was the norm. This was news to me so I sent out a test email to the list and indeed I received an email stating that all postings were being moderated. Neither mine nor Gails emails were posted to the list. Gail made an intelligent reflective comment about the discussions, which was censored. It read: "I've been following the Mark McGowan/jiscmail controversy for days now, and it's been the most compelling and disturbing reading time I've spent on the list - qualifies for a 'live art event' itself. To want to ban or censor his work seems arrogant to me, (besides the obvious issue of censorship being wrong) - it presupposes that one actually understands his work anyway, or that it has a fixed meaning. Mark's work on this list, and on facebook, has raised a lot of questions about artists and politics, and our own understanding of others' work - with some quite shocking possible conclusions. Is it so unspeakable that an artist might be a Tory? And what about the tori-ness of Labour anyway? Is there a tacit understanding that all artists share the same politics, and therefore it's never discussed? Just a few questions that are now going round my head. And like Calum, I kept thinking "what if he said 'Vote Labour' or 'Vote BNP' or vote anything in particular?"...would certainly chime with the futility I feel at my options tomorrow..."

Gail and I asked the moderator why our postings were being checked and not being sent out. We received the following message:

Dear Gail and Manick
I am finding this difficult. I do not agree with censorship of the list,
however, it is extremely important that list users abide by the acceptable
use policy of JISCmail. There have been several complaints about the
language of recent postings (which was extreme in one particular case). I
do not wish to get drawn into discussions about the political postings, and
do understand that they may be seen as relevant to the list, however, given
the complaints received about certain messages it was deemed appropriate to
moderate the messages for a short while until things 'calmed down'.
Personally, this has introduced an extra element into my already heavy
workload, and I hope that the need to moderate messages will cease as soon
as possible, however, I am reluctant to approve any postings which may
further fuel the fire and cause more complaints. Many people have now
signed off the LIVEART list, whether this is a result of the inappropriate
postings, or the 'censorship' I am not sure, I suspect though that it is
the postings. Please see the message below sent round by JISCMAIL earlier
this week, before the decision to moderate was implemented:

We had received complaints from several subscribers of the LIVEART group
concerning the language of some postings. Upon investigation, it was
found that these messages were in breach of our acceptable use policy
on abusive or obscene items / language:
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/policyandsecurity/acceptableuse.html. The
acceptable use policy states that:

JISCMail users may contact us about any breach of our acceptable use
policy, and we will take any of the following actions if it is thought
appropriate:
    * Contact their listowner
    * Remove them from list membership
    * Contact their hosting site, institution, or service provider
    * Restrict email from certain sites or addresses
    * Remove inappropriate messages from the JISCMail archives
    * Make a public announcement to those affected
    * list owners are also entitled to take action against any list
member who engages in unreasonable behaviour.

As this group is publicly viewable by anyone, these messages had to
be removed and the subscriber was tempoarily suspended. The archives
are now private (only viewable the group subscribers) so we have
re-instated the member in question.

Regarding the polical postings, during this time we are under
obligation to ensure that public resources are not used for party
political resources and that we are not to undertake any activity which
could call into quesiton our political impartiality. The postings that
were made to the group were not the usual business of this publiclywere
publically available to anyone. We have resolved this issue by making the
group private to subscribers only.
Regards
JISCMail Helpline
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk

I appreciate that this is probably not the response you would like, but
feel unable to help further.
Best wishes

I replied by asking the moderator whether she had to do this as part of her job, can't she object to doing this? But censorship is censorship and in light of the lack of space for ordinary people to express and discuss politics, the live art community cannot adopt the tactics of the mainstream media which effectively silenced and excluded the public from spontaneous political debate. I am angry because it is members of our very own community of liberal and open-minded artists, promoters and academics in a field which normally proudly wears the badge of controversy on its chest, that is behind this censorship. I naturally thought that we would be staunch defenders of freedom of expression, thought and art. In fact, I'm convinced that the majority of the 800 or so subscribers to the list are defenders of free expression. No doubt, there have been anonymous complaints, but to curb our postings because we might fuel the fire of heated and impassioned debate - and yes some idiotic and silly offensive language - is the most draconian and authoritarian act one can possibly think of.

What it implies is that we must be treated like children because a tiny handful of people can't handle foul and insulting language. I must state that Mark McGowan has not once insulted anyone with extreme language. I don't like insulting language either but rather than giving it attention I chose to ignore it - rather like a child screaming for attention in the most ridiculous manner possible. Perhaps we should have called him/her a tosser and to grow up, but for some people to complain to the "authorities" and then to have serious, and sometimes surreal, debate curtailed and censored is a bigger offence in my spectrum of freedom and liberty. Whether there is someone above the identified moderator who is imposing these restrictions or not, the fact that we don't know who where these complaints are coming from nor who the actual authority is, makes the whole affair sad, sinister and Orwellian.

There are a group of artists who are not letting this rest and we will protest and gather support. I also feel that JiscMAIL needs to be publicly shamed, and have managed to get Index on Censorship on board to investigate.

As for Mark McGowan - we must defend his art and his right to express his thoughts - c'mon its a performance and whatever the intention, it's stirred passion and heated exchanges - it's great! Mark supported our campaign against the home office's visa restrictions against non-EU artist and co-curated a moving programme of performances with myself and Josie Appleton. There's another side to him which is not evident in his performance work. He kept himself in the background at our Cabaret without Borders event, showing a moving first person text video account of a foreign student who was deported from the UK, to a live accompaniment of Rhiannon Armstrong's violin. It was a compassionate, poetic and quiet piece. His performance work reminds me of Gustav Metzger - in order to generate action and anger, you need to fight fire with fire and occasionally explode our cozy world. But McGowan does this with satire, employing an amateur arts and home movies tactic, with no marketing team, commercial or public funding behind him, but his own postings. The art critic, and Manifesto Club supporter, JJ Charlesworth writes about Mark's work far more articulately than I ever can: http://www.jjcharlesworth.com/

Our thoughts on art and politics have been censored. I thought I was in an email community of individuals who could take heat, controversy and foul language. What has happened to live art and performance art? This is something we cannot allow to happen.

Relevant links:

http://www.markmcgowan.org/
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=594865528&ref=ts
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/