via Artnet News, Jan. 16, 2007 :
SAIGON OPEN CITY CENSORED IN VIETNAM
The two-year-long art exhibition "Saigon Open City," organized by Thai art superstar Rirkrit Tiravanija and Thai curator Gridthiya Gaweewong for Vietnam’s Ho Chi Mihn City [see Artnet News, Nov. 22, 2006], has run into serious problems with censorship by the ruling Vietnamese Communist Party.Billed as the first international art exhibition to take place in the country since 1962, the show was set to launch the first of its three parts -- ironically, looking at the theme of "Liberation" in Vietnamese and international art -- in late November. Yet despite apparent approval for the project by the Vietnamese government, which trumpeted the show on its website, the exhibition’s operating license from Vietnam's Ministry of Culture has never been received, forcing chronic delays for the event. "Liberation" was expected to run through Jan. 31, 2007 (symptomatically, the "News" section of the project's official website at www.saigonopencity.org features no postings, almost one-quarter of the way into the project's run).
In Vietnam, lack of an operating license effectively forbids any meaningful participation in public life. Thus, though two sections of the multi-part show have been installed at the HCMC Museum of Fine Arts and the Southern Women Museum, the rooms where they are installed are barred to the public by heavy gates. Furthermore, at least one of the works from the Southern Museum was taken away by authorities, though figures associated with the show such as artist Dinh Q. Le are said to be negotiating with the directors of the state museums over the merits of contended works.
Since the exhibition is not directly funded by the government -- its sponsors include the Ford Foundation, the American Center Foundation the British Council, the Goethe Institute, the Vietnam-Denmark Cultural Fund and the French Consulate General -- some works, including pieces by artist Po Po of Myanmar and Indonesia's Mella Jaarsma, are on view at the administrative offices of Saigon Open City -- though they are not allowed to have any sign outside the building advertising the show, as this would make it "public." Thus, though Western artists scheduled for the program have continued to take part -- most recently French artist Christelle Lheureux -- the general public in Saigon is cut off from any way of knowing about the events, except through word of mouth.
Those close to the affair say that the hold-ups seem to be less about an organized censorship effort, and more about the recalcitrance of individual bureaucrats. Still, political expression is tightly controlled in modern-day Vietnam -- including a strict bar on public dissent during American president George W. Bush's 2006 visit to the country, which coincided closely with the exhibition’s opening -- and some artworks by Western artists apparently feature criticism of U.S. foreign policy. In one particularly symbolic elision, a version of the famous banner by John Lennon and Yoko Ono declaring "War Is Over If You Want It," created in solidarity with the anti-Vietnam War movement, was set to be hung across the façade of the War Remnants Museum, but has yet to be installed.
On Jan. 13, 2007, reports had it that Gridthiya Gaweewong had possibly received the final list of works from the censorship committee, and was awaiting the imminent arrival of the list of approved films (which includes movies by Guy Debord and Martha Rosler) from the Hanoi office of the Ministry of Culture. It remains to be seen whether this is the real thing, or just another false hope in the project’s months-long series of delays. What is certain is that a show that was meant to be a watershed in newfound openness following Vietnam's entry into the World Trade Organization has now turned into yet another example of the censorship, both official and implicit, faced by artists there.
