A few months ago, in January, I was invited to talk about street art in Oslo with a tv-crew from Germany. They were making a story about being a tourist in Norway, and wanted to include our neighborhood on Grünerløkka, and the art that we’ve had a hand in producing.
Text Matriarkatet Photo @grimasefoto and Nima Taheri
When I arrived for the interview, I was wearing my keffiyeh, as usual, and after the polite introductions, they were speaking among themselves in German. And even if I don’t know German, I understood what it was about.
I was prepared for it to become an issue, and I had thought through what I would say should the situation arise. But what I wasn’t prepared for, was how ashamed they were asking me to hide my keffiyeh when I was on camera. My in advance prepared demands about having this request in writing from the television company, in order to get them to formally state that they were censoring my freedom of expression suddenly felt petty, because in front of me stood three people who looked like I’d already told them off in the worst way possible. It was clear to me that they understood exactly what they were doing, but they were doing it anyway. So I took it off, because I felt that I would be able to speak truthfully about the importance of freedom of expression in a way that would escape their censorship, and everything else I wanted to express, they wouldn’t be able to hear anyway. In hindsight I’m still not sure if it was the right thing to do, but there and then, this was my decision. It broke the ice in a way that I didn’t expect, and I think they felt even worse about asking me to do this (and rightfully so) because I sympathized with them. I told them how I truly believe that the only way to get out of the cycle of dehumanization, is to add as much humanity as possible to the other in every encounter we have, and that it was a shame that the German audience in their experience wouldn’t show me the same level of respect.
They told me about how the fear of being labeled anti-semite was impacting every part of public discourse, and how even just sharing normal parts of life on social media – like hiking in the mountains – could be perceived as problematic patriotism supportive of the ideology behind National Socialism. They told me about not being able to wear their keffiyehs, having to hide their support of Palestine, and the fear of losing their livelihood if they didn’t. They told me point blank that there were no freedom of press in Germany. They had with them a German-Norwegian guide and translator, and since they didn’t know him, they explained to me they were worried about saying any of these things in front of him, and would only talk to me about it when he was out of earshot. I have friends in Germany, so I knew that things were bad, but my friends also belong to the same community as me, and I know that we perhaps face the issue of censorship sooner than more established parts of society due to our political and ideological beliefs. So I was surprised to realize that this thought-policing had gone mainstream and was felt across all fields of German society, even in this very light segment of television reporting from another country about where to go to see good street art.
After we were done filming, one of the crew members and I were speaking alone while I was signing all sorts of photo-release forms and permissions for using my interview, and they again apologized profusely about asking me to hide my keffiyeh. I told them about a conversation I recently had with one of my Russian friends, who goes through their phone every time they go back to delete photos that contains rainbows or anything else that can be perceived as pro-LGBTQ+, and I made a comparison between what was happening here, since the reporters would not cross the border back into Germany with footage of me wearing a pro-Palestinian symbol. He didn’t like that, and said it wasn’t comparable at all, and that Germany was nothing like Russia.
I would be curious to know what he would respond to that now.
The fear of loosing one’s livelihood and standard of living is of course a real fear, and a real threat to freedom of expression. Which is one of the main reasons for fighting against capitalism. These reporters were kind and decent people, I have no doubt about that. If I had a family, kids, a big mortgage to pay, I would feel less free to speak and act than I am now. It makes me very sad to know this.
A few weeks ago, the art collective Subvertising Norway that I’m part of, was contacted by a Norwegian-Israeli woman who asked our help to get her message out. She and many in her community experienced that their voices were constantly being silenced, and they wanted to claim space through an ad-takeover, using the words from a very well-known Norwegian anti-fascism poem written in 1936 to express solidarity with Palestine and Gaza. The poem by author Arnulf Øverland reads as a foreboding of the terrors that are about to come, that would kill 6 million Jews, and the lines of the poem cited on the poster are known to just about everyone in this country. It’s our “never again”.
You must not sleep again tonight
You must not go to your business and pleasure,
Thinking of losses and gains and leisure.
You must not blame it on cattle and land,
Saying it’s all I can spare, understand?
You must not sit in your good cosy home,
Pitying poor people who are bound to roam.
You must not allow as some people do
the injustice that is not levelled at you!
With my last breath I cry till I fall:
You are not allowed to forget this at all.
Do not forgive them, they know what they’re doing.
They kindle the flames of hatred and ruin.
Their lust is in killing, in torment and fear.
They want to see the world disappear.
They wish to drown us in human blood too!
Don’t you believe it? You know it’s true.
You know that schoolchildren are marching through cities,
Happy as soldiers, singing their ditties,
Fired by their mothers’ betrayal for more.
Defending their country they will go to war.
You know of the villainous treasons that leads
To heroes and faith and noble deeds.
You know that there’s nothing a child respects more
Than heroes and banners and trumpets and gore.
(translation by Geir Uthaug)
Near my office, is a Jewish Cemetery. The whole park used to be a cemetery until the 1920’s, when local officials decided that for public health reasons it weren’t advisable to have a cemetery in such a densely populated area, and they wanted to create more green recreation areas in the inner city. They decided a 40 year moratorium to preserve the sanctity of the graves before they turned the whole area into a park. But one section of the cemetery is to be preserved in perpetuity, the Jewish cemetery. The largest Jewish population of Oslo lived in this part of the city pre World War II, and is therefore the neighborhood with the most Stolpersteine, or stumbling stones, part of the art project by German artist Gunter Demning, created as a memorial of the people killed in the holocaust. On each stone is the name and date of the persons birth who lived there, as well as the date of their death, with the name of the concentration camp where they were killed. For me, they are a daily reminder of how the Norwegian society took part in the deportation of our own citizens to be killed in nazi death camp, and our failure to protect them. They tell me every day to take dehumanization of anyone seriously, because the consequences of silencing people’s voices, can be an actual genocide.
I was told by people behind this action that people in the Jewish and Israeli communities, felt silenced, and their voices not represented in the media or the public discourse. And because of the crimes committed against their kin during holocaust, they feel they are morally obligated to stand up against the genocide currently unfolding at the hands of their own government. But it comes at a cost. Some of them are scared they will not again be allowed entry to Israel, they tell about interrogations and being subjected to illegal searches, people have already received threats to their person after publicly showing support of the Palestinian and Muslim community, they are ostracized, and face being shunned by their own family for speaking out against what is happening. And yet, they stand up for their Palestinian brothers and sisters, because never again means never again for anyone. So of course I will help them. Who would I be if I didn’t? Who would I be if I just do as the German reporters, and passively go along with the silencing of people’s voices and freedom of expression?
A few months before that, in November, I took part in another action, in collaboration with Unmute Gaza:
a Creative Movement where we invite artists to create artworks from the pictures made by these amazing journalists (in Gaza), adding the MUTE symbol, and we encourage the public to paste them in their city. Just a small gesture to say WE DO NOT AGREE, WE ARE NOT COMPLICIT, WE ARE NOT LOOKING AWAY.
We printed out the posters in big format and did a ad-takeover in broad daylight on a busy Saturday morning on one of the most populated areas in Oslo, and we also did a press-call, ending up with the absurd situation of having three photo-journalists tailing us during the action, documenting everything we were doing. My friend and I are both open about our involvement, working as we both do full-time with street art, with the goal of challenging who has power and access to create meaning in public space. I was even interviewed on camera (wearing my keffiyeh) by the national broadcaster NRK, who sent a reporter and a camera-man to cover the action, to be aired on the evening news. I gave my mum a heads up, saying I might get in trouble for this, but my parents both know where I stand, and support me.
Later that night a segment showing the posters installed was aired on the news, but it ended stating: the activists behind this action are anonymous.
My first thought was that I had probably done a bad job on camera, and that it was somehow my fault that the action didn’t receive more context. I don’t know if it’s a woman-thing, but I think it might be. But if I was so bad at talking on camera, why did the reporter ask me if I would be interested in talking more on camera about my other work that we spoke about off camera? I asked myself, is this about my ego getting hurt? The action wasn’t about me, so it shouldn’t matter, and saying something would make it about me, when the point was to create awareness about Gaza. The second thought was that they were maybe “protecting” me, since women like me are very likely to receive threats if we are too outspoken in the media, and I was in fact very publicly admitting to breaking rules that might get me in legal trouble. But I was willing to do that, and the potential condescension of taking that decision away from me – as if I didn’t understand the possible consequences – didn’t feel very good either. In any case, the effect was that I felt too small to ask.
I am fully prepared to fight for what I believe in, as is both my right and my duty. I am in a very particular position to do so. I don’t own any debt except my student loan and taxes, I rent my apartment, I only have me to take care of, no kids that might face comments about their crazy mum, I don’t even have a dating life to ruin, I just work and create stuff to try and help myself and other people feel like they matter, that their voices matter, and that there’s room for everyone here. I work independently, together with my friend who is the same person who taught me how to do this kind of work in the first place. We might loose some work over it, but we also decline work that are in conflict with our beliefs; work that would pay better, but that we believe would be contrary to our goals. I am a woman with a purpose greater than my own life, and I will not be silenced (especially not by lesser men, which is why I am particularly grateful for the men in my life that in fact enables me to be even louder).
Freedom of expression means that you have the right to express yourself in a manner that at the same time protects everyone’s right to do the same. Freedom of expression is not a carte blanche, and you do not get to wield this principle in an attempt to silence other people under the guise of your “right” to express yourself any way you want. You don’t get to say everything you want to say to everyone, everywhere you want, any time you want. You are not a baby, the world does not revolve around you and your feelings, you are grown person who should have developed some empathy and the ability to put yourself in the shoes of another person by now. And if you say or do stuff to in an attempt to dehumanize other people, you have forfeited the protection that the principle of freedom of expression grants you, through your own actions. Your “free speech” means nothing if you are trying to take it away from others; the right word for that is oppression.
I think one of the things that drives me absolutely crazy about the current state of my part of the world, is that it is seemingly run by people who don’t – or won’t – understand basic human rights, that we are all born fundamentally free and equal, regardless of where and when we enter time. And I refuse to be governed by people like that. I will not accept their authority, understanding that authority can only ever be given, never taken; and that the right word for the latter is not democracy, but a regime.
Another world is possible.
But we have to create it.
