Artist Michael Rakowitz Calls for MoMA PS1 to Literally Pause His Video to Protest a Board Member’s Ties to Arms and Prisons

by admin

Dec 2, 2019

artnet

Michael Rakowitz has requested
that one of his videos—included in the current MoMA PS1 exhibition,
“Theater of Operations: The Gulf Wars 1991-2011”—be paused,
literally, in protest over a museum funder with ties to what the
Chicago-based artist calls “toxic philanthropy.” The work in
question, Return (2004–ongoing), depicts the artist’s efforts to
import Iraqi dates to a Brooklyn store.

Rakowitz is joining a call by
activist group Art Space Sanctuary requesting that a MoMA board
member, Laurence Fink, the CEO of investment firm BlackRock, divest
from private prisons in the US. Art Space Sanctuary also alleges
that MoMA relies on Fidelity Investments to oversee its pension
fund, and that Fidelity likewise invests in private prison
companies.

Earlier this year, it emerged
that Rakowitz had declined to participate in the Whitney Biennial
over the presence on the Whitney Museum of American Art’s board of
vice chairman Warren Kanders. (Kanders is the owner of Safariland,
a company that supplies tear gas and other munitions that have been
used on asylum seekers at the U.S.’s southern border; on protesters
opposing an oil pipeline at Standing Rock; and on Palestinian
demonstrators.) After statements from museum staff, academics and
other art world professionals, as well as a request from eight
other artists that their work be withdrawn from the exhibition in
protest, Kanders resigned from the board.

The MoMA PS1 exhibition was
previously targeted by British artist Phil Collins, who withdrew his
work Baghdad Screen
Tests over Fink’s
presence on the board.

“It’s not the artist that needs
to go away,” said Rakowitz in a phone interview, distinguishing his
protest from Collins’s decision to simply remove his work from the
show. “It’s the relationship to these abusive forms of finance that
needs to disappear.” Rakowitz said that Black’s equity firm,
Apollo, owns private-security firm Constellis, previously named
Blackwater; military contractors from the firm killed 17 and
injured 20 in the Nisour Square Massacre in 2007, while escorting a
U.S. embassy convoy.

MoMA PS1 said, in a statement
to The Art
Newspaper: “From the
inception of this exhibition in 2017, we’ve been fully committed to
open communication with artists around the presentation of their
work and how to amplify the crucial topics this exhibition
explores. MoMA PS1 is committed to addressing timely issues, and
respects the rights of all artists to decide when and where to show
their work. With the presentation of ‘Theater of Operations,’ we
remain focused on the global effects of the Gulf wars in
Iraq—particularly in the context of the current political turmoil
there.”

“I can’t continue to
participate,” Rakowitz told Artnet News. “I’m looking to dismantle
these things, not launder the reputation of these people that sit
on these boards that become their tax havens.”

Rakowitz’s full statement to the
museum is as follows:

I’ve decided to press the pause
button on my video, RETURN, so that we can discuss some recent
events.

Activists have called on MoMA Board Member
Larry Fink, the CEO of BlackRock, to divest BlackRock (and its
subsidiaries) from the prison corporations GEO Group and Core
Civic, in which they are among the largest shareholders. Why?
Because (a) these companies, under contract from I.C.E., have been
responsible for approximately 70% of all immigration detentions,
(b) these companies are part of a racist, carceral system which has
made the U.S. the largest jailer in the world, and (c) BlackRock
also controls funds that have purchased billions of dollars of
shares in weapons manufacturers.

I broaden this activist call and
also ask that the Chairman of MoMA’s Board of Trustees, Leon Black,
divest his companies from Constellis Holdings. Constellis Holdings,
formerly called Blackwater, is infamous for its role in the Nisour
Square Massacre, during which Blackwater guards killed 17 Iraqi
civilians and injured 20 more.

The opposite of RETURN is
DEPART, which is derived from dispertire, which means to divide, to separate, to take
leave of each other, to go away.

And yet, I wish to remain
in Theater of
Operations and not
depart. What makes this exhibition exceptional is the bringing
together of artwork made during and in response to the ongoing Gulf
wars by artists around the world, with a particular focus on Iraqi
artists who made art in the midst of the continuous traumas of
siege, sanctions, and occupation. I am humbled to be presenting
alongside so many artists I admire from my mother’s ancestral home,
from which her family was forced to depart in the 1940s. To have
such crucial work presented here is momentous. Indeed, it is not
the artists who need to depart, it is museums’ dysfunctional and
abusive relationship to toxic philanthropy that should go
away.

I kindly request that Larry Fink
and Leon Black please divest from these companies so that I may
unpause my video and press play.

If this is not possible, then I
kindly ask that MoMA please divest from Larry Fink and Leon Black
as trustees so that I may unpause my video and press
play.

And if this proves impossible,
then I kindly ask that PS1 Contemporary Art Center please divest
from its relationship with MoMA, so that I may unpause my video and
press play.[1]

PS1 is a home for art
and I respect all that has been
done here by artists since the 1970s when it first opened.
I would hate to depart.

[1] On Sunday, November 3, along
with other participants in the exhibition, I met with MoMA PS1’s
Director and curatorial staff. We were informed that PS1 has a
separate Board of Directors than MoMA and that Larry Fink is not on
PS1’s Board and therefore contributes no money directly to PS1.
That may be. But this place is called MoMA PS1, Leon Black serves
on its Board in an ex-officio capacity, and PS1 is responsible for the
company it chooses to keep.