I make art installation objects with small embedded
computers. I wanted to make an upright monitor piece! I love the way
all the upright monitor display systems are based on horizontal
operating systems - so when they break - which they do - you get
system messages at right-angles to the picture. Well my piece, it
turns out, is no different.
I found myself looking for
information on the existence of countries that still outlaw gay
sexuality. I came across ilga.org
a fascinating and thoroughly researched web-site. On the site I found
the document State
Sponsored Homophobia by Daniel Ottosson. I have had to interpret
the information in the document - sometimes the legal phrasing does
not make it clear exactly what sexual act is being described and
therefore punished. There are confusions in many legal utterances
about rape and under-age sexual activities. In some cases the
proposed sentences are vague and confusingly wide-ranging.
I
have added reported punishments carried out unofficially. Some of
these are disgusting - I have to remind people that is art, not an
automated legal advice display device. I have quoted some colourful
phrases “Anus Locking” and “Haffi dead”, found in press
reports about anti-gay murders .
“Anus Locking” How
Islamist gangs use internet to track, torture and kill Iraqi
gays
“Haffi dead” The
Most Homophobic Place on Earth?
I first started
researching the piece in September 2010 - though it was finished in
Febuary 2011, and has had radical changes since, both in structure
and contents. It is now a series, each year it has been re-made and
kept current – sometimes with new technology, officially, with an
upgrade number.
The first version at Kinetica had sound! There
was a subtle long-cycled sonic element to Departures (1.00). An
airport stytle chime can be heard every two minutes, sounding out
mashed-up fragments of “I Am What I Am” from La Cage aux
Folles. According to Wikipedia, the song was composed in 1983 by
Jerry Herman, an openly gay man.
Links to important campaigning groups :-
The
Peter Tatchel Foundation & Movement
for Justice ...