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More Obscenities

8/19/2010

10 Comments

 
On August 11th I recieved a very bizarre warning from facebook, written in spanish for some reason:  

Hello,

Has cargado una foto que incumple nuestras Condiciones de uso, por lo que ha sido eliminada. En Facebook no están permitidas las fotos que atacan a un individuo o un colectivo, o bien que muestran desnudos, consumo de drogas, violenci a o cualquier otro elemento que incumple nuestras Condiciones de uso. El objetivo de estas políticas es garantizar que Facebook sea un entorno seguro y de confianza para todos los usuarios, incluidos los muchos menores de edad que lo usan.

Si tienes preguntas, visita la siguiente página de preguntas frecuentes: http://www.facebook.com/help/?topic=wphotos

The Facebook Team

It seems once again I have been targeted for censorship by Facebook.  This time it wasn't breastfeeding artwork though, it was a series of nudes I did for my BFA graduating show in 2001.
The Facebook Team
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This one was called "Ophelia," and it was a part of a series I called "Liebestod," (literally love-death,) on love and loss.  The subject was a friend of mine who had lost a baby due to prematurity.  The portrait was about grief, loss and longing.  It referenced Sir John Everett Millais' painting of Ophelia, 1852.

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Initially I was hesitant about posting these paintings, because I had had some previous problems with Facebook censorship.  I had three breastfeeding mother and child portraits removed from Facebook a total of five times, and a warning sent to me.  Read more on that here.  I didn't feel it was a good time to rock the boat.  However after three months with no difficulty I thought I may as well post my grad show artwork.  They are some of my best work, and I hate the idea of hiding them just because they might offend a minority of people.

I wasn't that surprised when I got my notification and the art was removed.  I thought: "After all these are full nudes, not breastfeeding mothers, and I suppose they could be misinterpreted."  However these nude paintings were still artwork, not pornography, and I think that distinction is important to maintain. 

What I find disturbing about facebook's censorship in general is that they have a lot of power over our lives. I know they are a privately owned site, but it frightens me that they have become the new social medium- on par with the town square or Zocalo, and they are anonymously both aware and in charge of the information we can share. You can't discuss any photo removal with them, they refuse to discuss it. Art that might be fine in any gallery is removed for example, and many people don't even QUESTION it's removal. I find that disturbing too. I am also concerned about the anonymous method of reporting photos. The person who reports a photo takes absolutely no responsibility or consequences for their actions.  I think this results in a kind of "dumbing- down" of our culture in general.
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This one is called "Loosing Lily 2," and it's also about losing a baby after childbirth.  It was also removed on August 11th.

The dumbing down process involves removing any material deemed "offensive," a rather obscure definition which seems to mean anything that doesn't fit facebook's standards of mainstream, bland culture.  Material such as women breastfeeding, women giving birth, and gay sexuality are removed, because they do not follow the heterosexual/male culture which we're accustomed to seeing.  Big bosoms in bikinis= fine, woman giving birth = offensive seems to be the formula.  What bothers me about this formula is that we have become so accustomed to seeing everything through this hetero-male lens that we are pretty ready to accept these censorships as "just the way things are," really without questioning their motives.

Artist Leif Harmsen says so eloquantly: "Facebook is worse than useless to you because facebook.com is Facebook's website, not yours. It is not 'your' profile, it is Facebook's profile about you. Those are not your friends, they are at best a Facebook sanitized version of your friends. It took centuries of political evolution to reduce this kind of manipulative abuse from the state - why go backwards to a medieval social structure with you at the bottom? You wouldn't holiday in North Korea, so why would you spend time on Facebook?!"  
(Read my full interview with him here.)

My work was deleted without any idea of the background or meaning behind the work.  My voice was silenced simply because it didn't fit a mainstream of what is acceptable.  Perhaps Leif does have a point- Facebook is a powerful social engine, shallow and vaccuous to the extreme, yet it has a great deal of control over our lives and what information we receive.  Perhaps it's time to take back some of that control. 

On August 16th I received another notice from facebook.  They had removed a portrait I had done of my nude baby boy in the bathtub... obscene?  REALLY??  You decide.
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10 Comments
Toni link
8/19/2010 08:02:12 am

Beautiful, powerful work as usual. Don't know why they removed the painting of your son... nothing is showing even though he is nude. What medium do you work in?

Reply
Leif Harmsen link
8/19/2010 09:53:24 am

Quite the contrary, far too much is showing in the portrait of Hansen's son for Facebook. It's not about nudity - that's just an excuse, a proxy, like saying wars are about religion when they're actually over control of resources and people. Censorship is about manipulating political opinion by manufacturing obscenity where none was before. By censoring an image of a nude baby, FB re-establishes the nude individual, even a little baby, as something that is obscene and themselves as the authority to decide these things, not you. That means that without FB's approval you are obscene. Where the entire woman is censored by a burka, the entire woman is denigrated, deemed obscene by the censors, and rendered powerless while the censors command power. FB is about power and control.. theirs, not yours.

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Cynthia
8/19/2010 12:16:33 pm

I put you on my facebook a few months ago and have been following your status quite a bit, I love your artwork! I think the language that they send thier warnings in is Portugese as it seems to be a bastarized Spanish. All I can say to you is KEEP POSTING.

Reply
Dylan
8/19/2010 02:26:35 pm

I can't wait to be a pretentious grad student who's persecuted for defying socio-cultural norms!

Sigh... I wish I could be special enough to have my voice silenced. </3

Reply
Kate Hansen link
8/19/2010 04:54:10 pm

Toni-
Thank you! The graduation show peices you saw were oil on masonite panels. The drawing of the baby was done with coloured conte crayon. I appreciate your kind words.

Leif- very astute.

Cynthia- thank you for the support!

Dylan- I don't know where you got the idea that I'm a grad student. I have a BFA from the University of Regina, Saskatchewan, and I'm a stay at home mother of two kids. We stuggle on my husband's income as a carpenter and my home daycare. If I'm lucky I have enough time and energy left in the evening to put towards my art. Care to take back your comment that I'm pretentious, and by implication, spoiled?



Reply
linda link
8/20/2010 12:46:31 am

been following along with all the Facebook garbage they've been putting you through... your portrait of your son is lovely... keep up the good work... your art will survive longer than facebook... they are digging a very deep hole with their 'holy than thou' attitude...

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schmutzie link
8/20/2010 03:51:38 am

This weblog is being featured on Five Star Friday -
http://www.schmutzie.com/fivestarfriday/2010/8/20/five-star-fridays-116th-edition-is-brought-to-you-by-michael.html

Reply
Irish Gumbo link
8/22/2010 12:02:52 pm

I followed the link to here, from Schmutzie's Five Star Friday, and I'm glad I did.

I checked out your artwork (which is lovely, btw), and then I thought back to the little ad that keeps cropping up in my FB sidebar...the one that says "Playboy" fan page...and I have to say that the FB standards of 'obscenity' and pornography are hypocritical and ludicrous. Leif's observations are spot on.

The mind boggles at the mental gyrations the FB policy makers must put themselves through to justify such asinine and disturbing attempts at censorship. Talk about a distorted view of the world!

More power to you, Kate. I wish you many blessings, and continued success with your Madonna and Child project. For what its worth, I think its a great idea!

Peace,
IG

Reply
Kate Hansen link
8/26/2010 04:34:42 pm

Irish- Thank you so much for your support and kind words! I just checked out some of your writing, and I'm really impressed. I look forward to reading more of you in the future! All the best,
Kate

Reply
Michelle Buckman
9/10/2010 12:52:41 am

I don't know who Leif is, but I love his wording.

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    A blog on art, roller derby and life.

    Kate Hansen

    I'm an artist and mother of two  in Courtenay, BC.  I've completed a project called the "Madonna and Child Project," and I'm now working on a series of roller derby inspired drawings. In my spare time I play roller derby with the Brick House Betties.  

    Kate Hansen

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