from the NCAC Newsletter:
Organizers of the Orchard Street Shul Cultural Heritage Artists Project requested that artist Richard Kamler modify his installation at The John Slade Ely House for Contemporary Art in New Haven. Organizers expressed concern that an element of the work, interwoven pages from the Koran and the Torah, may offend viewers.
from the NCAC Annual Report (image is on the cover)
Cover: Right Around the Corner by Richard Kamler
The work consists of a table with a paper tablecloth of interwoven pages from the Torah and the Qur’an.
Richard Kamler's proposal:
- Tearing up the Bible and the Qu'ran and weaving/meshing them back together
- 1" wide strips of sacred text
- 2 Jews and 2 Muslims sitting at the Tablecloth
- a bowl with Hebrew and Arabic voices
- later addition: cover the tablecloth with plexiglass, and provide an electric etching tool for viewers to mark the protected tablecloth with electronic markings
- later addition: bowl with closed Bible and Qu'ran
- later addition: specified that the 2 Jews and 2 Muslims should be community leaders of the Orchard Street Shul and the Masjid Al-Islam
The artist would not consider separating the components.
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We all knew that the insurance companies would not allow the public to use power tools unsupervised, and so the question of asking the public to etch into the protected work got little discussion.
The mixed voices was a beautiful element, welcomed by all, and therefore barely discussed.
The bowl with the closed Bible and Qur'an was accepted, as long it was respectful.
As for the other components, they proved to be mutually exclusive.
Locating Community Members willing to participate was Richard Kamler's job, as artist, and we read his ambiguous proposal with the understanding that he had begun this process.
We eventually realized that he may not have found Community Members willing to sanction the installation by sitting at the cut sacred texts and engaging the close examination of the texts that Richard Kamler set as the purpose of the Installation/Performance. This became especially clear when the NCAC, after taking up the the cause, told CHAP that to avoid "censorship" we could find two Jewish and two Muslim community members willing to sit at a Tablecloth that violated the long-held traditions of their communities.
To help the artist, to get this work shown, we tried to find community members who were willing to do so, but to make this work about the Orchard Street Shul and the Masjid Al-Islam, we needed to find Community members of these communities. We reported back that one Community Leader would do so, but not sitting at a tablecloth which violated the long-held religious practice of the Communities in question. Others reported that they needed evidence that there was no religious violation, but in fact there no evidence to give them. Others said that it was a clear violation, based on the information that the artist provided.
Working with a November 30 deadline, a final independent meeting actually took place with one community member who said that he would consider participating in an alternative location, but there was no time to communicate this, as the Press Release had already gone to the press (but not to us) 10 days before the agreed upon date.
In October, prior to the intervention of the NCAC, the work was accepted with closed, uncut Bible and Qu'ran, asking the artist to supply the names of the Community Members who had agreed to participate and to clarify that the discussion was about this Community -- which was the focused and purposeful topic of the Exhibition.
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Compare what the NCAC told its Supporters to what it told the Public in a Press Release:
The omission of the proposed participation of Community Leaders from traditionally observant Orthodox Jewish and Muslim religious organizations is worth noting. Anyone with common knowledge of the religious practices of these Communities could fill in the blanks in this story with that information.
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Compare what the NCAC told its Supporters to what it told the Public in a Press Release:
The omission of the proposed participation of Community Leaders from traditionally observant Orthodox Jewish and Muslim religious organizations is worth noting. Anyone with common knowledge of the religious practices of these Communities could fill in the blanks in this story with that information.
