Silencing Creativity – Self-Censorship in the Arts

Amira El Ahl: Hello, and welcome back to Die Kulturmittler:innen - Deep dive experts on international cultural relations. My name is Amira El Ahl. It's a great pleasure to be with you again. Self-censorship is an often-overlooked side of artistic freedom and still is a complex challenge faced by many artists worldwide. Creators intentionally limit their expression, alter their work, or avoid controversial topics due to fear of backlash, political pressure, economic and social repercussions, or simply to get funding. As a violation of artistic freedom that occurs under the radar self-censorship is often difficult to spot and affects a person's right to exercise their cultural rights.

This raises significant questions about the limits of artistic freedom and how artists find balance between artistic freedom and societal norms, highlighting the tension between personal integrity and external expectations. With our guests today Sverre Pedersen we want to explore how self-censorship shapes the creative process, the pressures that drive it, and its broader impact on cultural expression.

Sverre Pedersen is the executive director at Freemuse, an independent non-governmental organization advocating for freedom of artistic expression and cultural diversity globally. He's also a documentary filmmaker and former board member of the Federation of European Screen Directors, as well as former president of the Norwegian Filmmakers Association.

Sverre Pedersen, we are very glad to have you with us today. Welcome to die Kulturmittler:innen. 

Sverre Pedersen: Thank you very much.

Amira El Ahl: Mr. Pedersen. How does self-censorship manifest itself in the context of cultural rights and artistic freedom? And what are the possible causes for self-censorship? 

Sverre Pedersen: First of all, you use this word 'under the radar', which is a very good description for this kind of violation of artistitc freedom because we have all the violations over the radar, which is much more easy to monitor and document.

While things going under the radar you don't know about, because that's an individual situation. And the reason for that, we see an enormous increase in self-censorship these days is of course the polarization, is because the threats, the harassment from internet trolls, from people that are gatekeepers for funding, or it could even be from governments and other authorities. So when you see an increase in authorian regimes you see, authoritarian movements, both fundamentalists and far right movements that are actually using their power to say yes or no, whether you will have funding or not.

You are imposing self-censorship on a lot of people. 

Amira El Ahl: So it's imposed and you feel like threatened already. So if you consider your encounters with affected artists from different backgrounds and organizations working on artistic freedoms, are there specific countries or social context or topics where self-censorship is particularly pronounced?

Whether like in authoritarian states or even democratic societies with these highly polarized discourses that you just mentioned? I mean, we are experiencing them. Nowadays, even more and more, I mean, they're increasing everywhere, right? 

Sverre Pedersen: Yeah. Everywhere. That's a point. And that's a sad situation that even in the fairly liberal democracies you see more and more. Of course, you always had in our societies, see and understand what are the gatekeepers looking for? And then they have tried to adopt to what they think or if they even have given some signals of what they're looking for. But nowadays, people are much more afraid of saying something that is not aligned with the mainstream political aligns. That definitely are making things even more difficult for artists. 

Amira El Ahl: And would you say that there are specific countries where it's especially bad? I mean, when we look at the Free Muse state of artistic Freedom 2024, I mean, you pointed out certain countries, but there are states, you know, countries in war, but would you say that for example, in the US it's becoming much more or it's more increasing the self-censorship when you look how also people are being deported now even if they have done nothing wrong, do you feel or do you see where things are increasing? 

Sverre Pedersen: Yeah, you see it unfortunately all over the world. In the US you have seen the growing tendency over the last 10 years. You have had book bands, you have had books removed from school libraries. You have had big parents' actions towards artistic content that are touching on intimacy about love between person of same sex. So that has kind of religious background.

But of course, with the new regime in Washington, you see an extreme strengthening of this way of both censoring indirectly saying that this and this is no good. That's the whole woke discussion in the US kind of saying that we shouldn't talk anymore about the slave history of United States. We shouldn't talk about Black Lives Matter. We shouldn't talk about everything that I put under the woke umbrella.

And you see the same tendencies in many other countries, not mainly coming from the authorities, but from political groups, religious groups and so on. In Spain, you have a blasphemy law. You have a law saying that you cannot criticize the king, you cannot criticize the church. So you have a lot of limitations and you see a lot of misuse of anti-terror legislations.

So many things are today used to limit the free speech. 

Amira El Ahl: It's crazy to see and to think that this is happening in Europe where you would say that, you know, we are living in democracies and very liberal democracies so far. But also, now you see it in the US where, certain words are not allowed to be used anymore as you just mentioned.

But what kind of consequence have these tendencies? What does it have for the arts and culture sector? But for societies as a whole. I mean, this changes everything. This changes the whole game. And when people are afraid to voice their opinion or say certain things, especially when you're an artist. 

Sverre Pedersen: Absolutely. As I see it, free art is a prerequisite for a free and open democracy. So on one level you have the consequences for each artist.

That you are limiting yourself. You are not actually creating the art you really love to create. But you try to make something that shouldn't be harming anybody, provoking antibody or that would be censored or treated in undecent way. So that is all the consequences for the artists. And more important in my view is that the audience are not getting the power of the arts.

The provocations, the hope for the future, the visions for a better world and so on. So, the art should have both sugar and salts. It should be giving hopes and dreams to the people, open new visions for how we could live together, what it'll see to be a human being, but also to provoke and criticize and targeting when we see unfair things happening in this society.

Amira El Ahl: I like, what you say: like it should be sugar and salt. And it should give people hope and dreams. But what, I mean, what do you fear will happen to societies where this is not possible anymore? Where people are, where artists are afraid to give everything, to provoke, to give this what you said, sugar and salt, you know, to kind of show life in all its facets.

What does it do? Two societies in the long run, what do you fear will happen? 

Sverre Pedersen: The situation today is that democracy and human rights are targeted all around the globe. When you had the kind of revolution in East Germany in 1989, the war was turned down. Shortly after in 91 the Soviet collapsed and we had 10, 12, 13 years period where democracy was growing and a lot of people thought that, no, we'll move into a future with no more that kind of authoritarian regimes dictatorships that we were actually moving into a more democratic and peaceful future. Then it was flattening out for the next seven, eight years and then started the decline again.

And in 2021 we were back at the same level of people living in democracies that we had in 1989 and after 21, the decline has been even faster going downwards. So the consequence, unfortunately, when you lose the opportunity to create freely than it has a direct consequence for the liberal democratic ideas and the ways we construct our societies.

So it's more than ever needed to free the space for the artists and for us that are advocating and defending artistic freedom. Our work is more important than ever since Second World War. 

Amira El Ahl: Absolutely. Freemuse, as you just mentioned, is an international organization that campaigns for the freedom of art and the rights of artists worldwide.

It works against censorship, repression, and discrimination in the art world, but you also document and analyse cases in which artists come under pressure to censor their work. How can Freemuse support artists who withhold or even change their art due to self-censorship because of fear of the repercussions.

And how do you help them defend themselves against political or social repressions that often leads to self-censorship? Is this even possible? 

Sverre Pedersen: Well, I'm a born optimist. So, I definitely think this is possible. The way it's number one is they have to learn to know their rights. We have several international covenants that are made to ensure artistic freedom.

But most artists and even politicians have no clue about these things. When a country is signings national covenants, that is meaning that they also have to change the national legislation and implement the premises in these international treaties. Many countries have done so, but very many are not following their own legislation.

So we have to firstly give a knowledge to the artists so they know their rights. We have to analyse national legislation and point out where they are in discrimination of the international treaties that the country has signed, and make this visible for the authorities in the country. But also bring that to the table of the United Nations.

We have this United Nation mechanism universal reports where each member states every fourth year have to tell the UN and the world what are we doing actually to promote human rights and artistic freedom. So the state has to do this, but the CSOs also have the opportunity to write and pinpoint what is the problem in this country and what is our recommendations to improve the situation.

So we have several mechanisms that we actually can use to put pressure on regimes. So if we manage both to give knowledge to the artist and we put pressure on authorities and of course not at least as important to create networks because I think a lot of the self-censorship also happens because the artist is so alone when he or she is sitting there and making the applications or creating or performing. So if they feel that we are part of a bigger body that are standing strong together. It'll be much easier to create and perform what you really like to do.

Amira El Ahl: Absolutely. You're always stronger in a group, right? Can you maybe give a concrete example of how you and Free Muse have raised awareness of self-censorship in the art world or where you have an example of a person or a state where you intervened and it was successful 

Sverre Pedersen: on self-censorship it's very difficult to prove because as long as the self-censorship is happening under the radar, nobody knows that this artist actually did. So what we are doing is to create workshops where artists and human rights defenders are meeting and making strategies, making programs, creating events, bringing this to the table of the artist associations to general assemblies, writing on their website or on their social media. So it is to raise awareness and make this as an ongoing part of the discourse in the art world. That is the most important to strengthen the artist themself. And see, I'm not alone. I'm not the only one that feel this pressure, and I'm not the only one that are censoring myself.

And when standing together with my colleagues and human rights defenders, I'm safer to go into that space. 

Amira El Ahl: And do you see where you say like that the discourse is so important. Do you have a feeling that this discourse amongst artists has increased, like this fear of, you know, do you have to reflect first? Do I actually self-censor myself? Sometimes? I guess you, it's a very unconscious move as well.

Do you feel that there is more talk about this amongst artists, that people are going into this discourse and trying to discuss how to avoid going into self-censorship? 

Sverre Pedersen: It's not enough talk about this in the art environments. And that's why we are increasing our work together with partners around the globe to bring this on the table, to invite the artist into our discourse and see how can we actually help and support them to stand strong for their artistic visions.

Amira El Ahl: That's really interesting that you say that because I assume that also this work is quite difficult because every country has its own challenges and every country deals differently with censorship and then self-censorship. If you go to the Arab world where very often censorship comes not from the state, but from like organizations that are dealing with censorship and where you go to Europe or to the States where you think you're free. But as a matter of fact, also the limits are, or the red lines are becoming more apparent. I guess you have to deal in every country differently, you know, with this kind of work. 

Sverre Pedersen: Absolutely. We have to deal differently.

But I will say that artists in the regions in the global so that are meeting much harder restrictions and pressure and punishment. They are much more brave than most artists in our part of the world because they are actually fighting for their lives. And you see more and more Iranian, Egyptian, Russian, and, and I can just continue with all these authorian regimes.

You see more and more artists that actually are standing up and using their arts to both create hope, but also to criticize and put focus on the repressions they're meeting in their society. 

Amira El Ahl: And this demand so much bravery to do that in countries like this where, you know, the, you might be killed for voicing your opinion and showing your art.

Mr. Pedersen, what can cultural institutions such as ifa, do in their own country or also in their work abroad, to promote artistic freedom and avoid self-censorship, especially in times of political upheaval that we are witnessing right now? 

Sverre Pedersen: Freemuse is hoping and working for also to bring in the art institutions on all levels, theatres, cinemas, producers, associations.

Into this common work to defend artistic freedom, to be part of the discourse, to create events to bring people together to talk about these important topics that actually is empowering the artists. So I'm extremely happy that ifa is doing the work they are doing, and I hope that we can stand together and create a strong alliance against censorship and self-censorship.

Amira El Ahl: Thank you so much Mr. Pedersen, for all these insights and for taking the time to speaking with us today. Thank you so much. 

Sverre Pedersen: Thank you.

Amira El Ahl: And I certainly hope that you enjoyed this deep dive episode of die Kulturmittler:innen and I will be very happy if you tuned in again next time. And if you want to find out more about Artistic Freedom in a globalized landscape, take a look at the show notes for this episode.

There you will find a link to the Freemuse website. And a link to a study documenting artistic freedom worldwide. The authors of this study, Sarah Wyatt and Ole Reitov were also guests on this podcast and talked about their findings. So you can check out that episode as well. And if you enjoyed listening to this episode, don't hesitate to share it with your friends.

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That's all from my side. I say thank you for listening. My name is Amira El Ahl. Till next time, bye-bye.