Plurality in the arts

Participants in the debate included Anda Rottenberg, the director of the Zachęta Gallery, Rafał Ziemkiewicz, a publicist for the newspaper Gazeta Polska, and Piotr Tomaszuk of the Wierszalin Theater in Białystok. Roman Pawłowski of the Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper acted as moderator.

Rafał Ziemkiewicz argued that the media use the word censorship irresponsibly, labeling each and every limit imposed on artists with the term. Ziemkiewicz said he was not in favor of state censorship, but does believe there is a place for censorship by way of public mores: "Should people be able to publish pictures of a man who was ripped to shreds by dogs, as one of our tabloids did recently or pictures which propagate pedophilia?"

Anna Rottenberg for her part, argued that specifying what is and what is not permissible would be dangerous because any specific code could be easily manipulated beyond its intended parameters. She also noted that the essence of art is going beyond the bounds of what is permissible. "The artist is one who changes the paradigm of the permissible at any cost. He is then followed by the general culture in time; the general culture never has the courage to pay the price that the artist must pay for changing the way people think."

Ziemkiewicz argued that the government ought not to fund experimental theater, but rather conventional and classical arts that are broadly accepted by the tax-paying public. Mirosław Chojecki, the founder of the underground artistic group Nova responded to this argument that the public at large enjoys excessive alcohol consumption: "Are we supposed to expand government funding of alcohol consumption because it is accepted by the tax-paying public at large?".

PSR