We decided to begin with the most essential component: the original proposal from the artist, the one submitted for review. This was sent to the NCAC by email on April 14, with a short note. It was sent again, on July 19, with the message below. It was sent a third time in September, as a simple forward.
We await a reply.
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The time has come for the NCAC to remove the inaccurate description from the NCAC website. . .
The discrepancies between the description of what Richard Kamler posted to our "google networking site" and what appears even now on your website are clear. Anyone reading that proposal would conclude that "actual books were cut", and that "religious taboos were violated."
The real tragedy here is that the NCAC could have helped to resolve this case. This case could have served as the impetus to clarify important conceptual issues, to open the discussion of what it really means to work with communities which have laws, traditions and precepts which are different from mainstream society.
With the understanding that the work in fact could not speak to this Community because of the religious "taboos," we thought, until we read the NCAC press release, that we were discussing the following questions:
-What obligation do we have to respect cultural groups with laws and traditions different from our own when we enter into a partnership or dialogue with them?
-What are the free speech rights of groups to construct artists' projects with specific parameters?
The NCAC press release and blog, however, do not address philosophical issues. The wording serves to suppress the real issues by focusing on unverified facts, thereby recontextualizing the entire discussion.
Since December we have been asking how you could have had such incorrect and incomplete information about our exhibition. Clearly there were gaps in communication. It is quite possible that your source was someone who had information that was not provided to us. It is quite possible that this source assumed that the artist gave us this information. It is also quite possible that your source misunderstood how the artist came to us, or who we were, or what the exhibition was about. Furthermore, it is possible that your source may have been misinformed about our motives and experience, including the fact that we were all artist-participants and all unpaid.
For more information, you might refer to our website.
Our corrections to the NCAC blog are here:
Notes on the NCAC Press Release,
http://orchardstreetshul-artistsproject.org/NCAC-blog_facts.pdf
point by point disrepencies, in pdf format
