Artists Threaten To Boycott The Biennale Over Links To Detention Centres

Close to a third of the artists participating in Sydney’s 19th Biennale have expressed solidarity with calls to boycott the prestigious event, over its ties with detention centre subcontractor Transfield, a month before the festival kicks off. The group, which included Turner Prize winner Martin Boyce and Monash University’s Head of Fine Art Callum Morton, have published an open letter to the event’s board of directors, urging the event to reconsider its current sponsorship arrangement with Transfield.

Transfield is responsible for providing operational and maintenance support at the Australian government detention centre on Nauru. As of the start of February, they have also taken on the Salvation Army’s detainee welfare role at both Nauru and Manus Island, entailing the provision of educational and recreational services to detainees. Despite the fact that the Salvos were clearly on top of the situation in Manus, the Australian government believe that they could do better by delegating responsibility for the psychological and emotional welfare of a vulnerable, at-risk group by placing them under the care of a construction firm. What could possibly go wrong? Riots? Deaths? Allegations of Papua New Guinean police and civilians breaching security and attacking detainees? Don’t be ridiculous.

transfield and the sydney biennale from Beyond Borders on Vimeo.

The signatories of the open letter are vehemently opposed to Australia’s policy of mandatory detention for asylum seekers, describing it as an “ethically indefensible” breach of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights – which Australia has signed, naturally. They have cited the fact that Transfield make obscene amounts of money out of the mandatory detention centres as the reason for their action, and invited the board to “acknowledge the voice of its audience and the artist community that is calling on the institution to act powerfully and immediately for justice by cutting its ties with Transfield”. Transfield’s involvement with the Nauru Regional Processing Centre earned the company $302 million in the financial year 2013–14.

Kon Karapanagiotidis, Chief Executive of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, was scathing on the subject of Transfield’s expanded role. Speaking to SBS News, Karapanagiotidis said, “They have no qualifications or experience in welfare, so to place a construction company on Manus Island and Nauru with thousands of refugees…is a recipe for disaster.”

While the artists have requested that “the Biennale withdraw from the current sponsorship arrangements with Transfield and seek to develop new ones”, they do so knowing full well that such a withdrawal is highly unlikely. Transfield’s ties to the Biennale go a little deeper than that of an average corporate sponsor: Transfield Holdings actually founded the event back in 1973, while Luca Belgiorno Netti, chairman of the Biennale, is also a board member for Transfield Foundation, which is jointly controlled by Transfield Holdings and Transfield services.

“We are taking this very seriously, said Gabrielle de Vietri, a spokesperson for the group of artists. “Some artists are reconsidering their participation, and others organising different forms of protest from within. A significant group of Australian and international artists have agreed that an open letter to the board is a constructive step forward. Still other artists have proposed to join with the Biennale team in an effort to develop alternative modes of fundraising.”

With the Biennale scheduled to open on March 21, the artists’ action places the event organisers in a very difficult situation: in the unlikely event that they side with the artists (and in the case of Netti, against themselves), they lose funding. If Transfield prevail, the event faces the prospect of a public backlash (public dissent is already growing, with a Facebook page called Boycott The 19th Sydney Biennale gathering likes), and the possibly the impossible task of replacing 28 out of approximately 90 artists, a month out from its opening.

It’s a shit sandwich, in other words, but one that shines a much-needed light on the murky processes by which cultural capital is co-opted by the amoral world of capital-capital.

The artists have requested a response by the week’s end, and the board is expected to meet on Thursday. Read their full letter below.

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An open letter to the Board of Directors, Biennale of Sydney

19 February 2014

 

To the Board of Directors of the Biennale of Sydney,

We are a group of artists Gabrielle de Vietri, Bianca Hester, Charlie Sofo, Nathan Gray, Deborah Kelly, Matt Hinkley, Benjamin Armstrong, Libia Castro, Ólafur Ólafsson, Sasha Huber, Sonia Leber, David Chesworth, Daniel McKewen, Angelica Mesiti, Ahmet Öğüt, Meriç Algün Ringborg, Joseph Griffiths, Sol Archer, Tamas Kaszas, Krisztina Erdei, Nathan Coley, Corin Sworn, Ross Manning, Martin Boyce, Callum Morton, Emily Roysdon, Søren Thilo Funder, Mikhail Karikis – all participants in the 19th Biennale of Sydney.

We are writing to you about our concerns with the Biennale’s sponsorship arrangement with Transfield.

We would like to begin with an affirmation and recognition of the Biennale staff, other sponsors and donors, and our fellow artists. We maintain the utmost respect for Juliana Engberg’s artistic vision and acknowledge the support and energy that the Biennale staff have put into the creation of our projects and this exhibition. We acknowledge that this issue places the Biennale team in a difficult situation.

However, we want to emphasise that this issue has presented us with an opportunity to become aware of, and to acknowledge, responsibility for our own participation in a chain of connections that links to human suffering; in this case, that is caused by Australia’s policy of mandatory detention.

We trust that you understand the implications of Transfield’s recent move to secure new contracts to take over garrison and welfare services in Australia’s offshore immigration detention centres on Manus Island and in Nauru. We have attached for your information, a document that outlines our understanding of the links between the Biennale, Transfield and Australia’s asylum seeker policy.

We appeal to you to work alongside us to send a message to Transfield, and in turn the Australian Government and the public: that we will not accept the mandatory detention of asylum seekers, because it is ethically indefensible and in breach of human rights; and that, as a network of artists, arts workers and a leading cultural organisation, we do not want to be associated with these practices.

Our current circumstances are complex: public institutions are increasingly reliant on private finance, and less on public funding, and this can create ongoing difficulties. We are aware of these complexities and do not believe that there is one easy answer to the larger situation. However, in this particular case, we regard our role in the Biennale, under the current sponsorship arrangements, as adding value to the Transfield brand. Participation is an active endorsement, providing cultural capital for Transfield.

In light of all this, we ask the Board: what will you do? We urge you to act in the interests of asylum seekers. As part of this we request the Biennale withdraw from the current sponsorship arrangements with Transfield and seek to develop new ones. This will set an important precedent for Australian and international arts institutions, compelling them to exercise a greater degree of ethical awareness and transparency regarding their funding sources. We are asking you, respectfully, to respond with urgency.

Our interests as artists don’t merely concern our individual moral positions. We are concerned too with the ways cultural institutions deal with urgent social responsibilities. We expect the Biennale to acknowledge the voice of its audience and the artist community that is calling on the institution to act powerfully and immediately for justice by cutting its ties with Transfield.

We believe that artists and artworkers can—and should—create an environment that empowers individuals and groups to act on conscience, opening up other pathways to develop more sustainable, and in turn sustaining, forms of cultural production.

We want to extend this discussion to a range of people and organisations, in order to bring to light the various forces shaping our current situation, and to work towards imagining other possibilities into being. In our current political circumstances we believe this to be one of the most crucial challenges that we are compelled to engage with, and we invite you into this process of engagement.

We look forward to hearing your response and given the urgency of this issue, hope that we can receive it by the end of this week.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Gabrielle de Vietri, Bianca Hester, Charlie Sofo, Nathan Gray, Deborah Kelly, Matt Hinkley, Benjamin Armstrong, Libia Castro, Ólafur Ólafsson, Sasha Huber, Sonia Leber, David Chesworth, Daniel McKewen, Angelica Mesiti, Ahmet Öğüt, Meriç Algün Ringborg, Joseph Griffiths, Sol Archer, Tamas Kaszas, Krisztina Erdei, Nathan Coley, Corin Sworn, Ross Manning, Martin Boyce, Callum Morton, Emily Roysdon, Søren Thilo Funder, Mikhail Karikis

NOTES
1. Please note that in this document we use the name Transfield to refer to three branches of the Transfield brand: Transfield Holdings, Services and Foundation. Please refer to our information sheet for our understanding of how these are linked.

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Feature image: Bianca Hester, Only from the perspective of a viewer situated upon the surface of the earth does day and night occur, 2012, (detail).