Last week, “Technologia,” a light installation by Moroccan artist Mounir Fatmi shown at a contemporary art festival in Toulouse, was the victim, first, of a near-riot, as Muslim youth took to the streets to protest the work, and, then, of censorship, when the city decided to remove it from the festival. Now, in a preemptive move, Paris’s Arab World Institute has decided to censor a different work by the artist.
“Technologia,” which projects images of Koran verses inside spoked circles inspired by Marcel Duchamp’s “Rotoreliefs” and Chaplin’s “Modern Times,” was shown without incident when the Printemps de Septembre contemporary art festival opened in Toulouse. The work was projected onto Toulouse’s city hall and the surface of the Pont-Neuf bridge. According to Le Figaro, a computer error caused the piece to suddenly launch Tuesday evening of last week. Over the weekend, mediators were present to explain the work to the public and prevent pedestrians from walking on it, but, with no mediators present, people began stepping on the images. A group of young Muslims became irate, and a young woman was slapped in the face when she walked over the Arabic letters. (There are conflicting reports as to whether or not she realized what she was stepping on.)
Police appeared and an imam quieted the crowd, according to Libération. But the next day, representatives of the Muslim community met with local authorities behind closed doors. The outcome was that the piece will not be shown during the rest of the festival. “It’s really too bad to have given up on the programming of this piece,” festival director Régis Duran told Le Figaro. “The mayor’s office was afraid of more tension.” Under pressure, the artist accepted to withdraw his work. “I never would have thought that this could happen,” Fatmi told Libération. “This installation, which an homage to my Arab and Muslim heritage, and which has been bought and shown by the contemporary art museum in Doha, Qatar, had never caused any problems until now.”
In an odd twist, Paris’s Arab World Institute, which had already planned on showing “Technologia” as part of the show “Twenty-five Years of Arab Creativity” opening next week, will still present the work as scheduled, but has decided to censor a different work by Fatmi. There’s nothing so scandalous about the six-hour video installation “Sleep,” which simply depicts a man sleeping (pictured). The man, however, is author Salman Rushdie, who was famously the target of a fatwa issued by Ayatollah Khomeini back in 1989 for his novel “The Satanic Verses.” Fatmi created the video using photos of the author, and it was inspired by Andy Warhol’s six-hour video of poet John Giorno asleep. According to Le Figaro, Fatmi feels that the fearful mood at the Arab World Institute is due to ongoing fallout from the film “The Innocence of Muslims.” “What really bothers me,” the artist told the newspaper, “is that this is happening in France, not in the Maghreb or Saudi Arabia.”
— Kate Deimling
