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Victoria Broackes is Director of the 2021 London Design Biennale. Previously she worked for the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A): as Senior Curator for the Department of Theatre & Performance, and as Head of the London Design Festival (2009–18). At the V&A she co-curated the exhibition ‘David Bowie is’ (2013) and curated the exhibition ‘Pink Floyd: Their Mortal Remains’ (2017). She is an Alumni member of the Court of the Royal College of Art and an Assistant of the Goldsmiths’ Company.   CJLPA : You have a large ‘Design in an Age of Crisis’ gallery, which showcases responses to a global call for submissions issued with Chatham House. How did you decide on this theme? And can you give us some examples of design helping minimise or prevent crises?   Victoria Broackes : Yes! This is a special exhibition and it came as a direct result of the pandemic. Actually, the London Design Biennale was supposed to take place in September 2020. But when we went into lockdown we became aware of the amazing stories of creativity that were happening behind closed doors, with snorkelling masks being turned into ventilators, and ways of opening doors without touching them, things like that. It seemed, therefore, in line with our mission for this great exhibition to do something different. Fig 1. From the ‘Design in an Age of Crisis’ gallery. Credit: Ed Reeve 2021. We were talking to Chatham House about how it would be interesting to bring together the design profession and people of the sort they talk to more—academics, policy makers, governments, and so on. We came up with four themes: work, society, environment, and health. We created briefs to go out to the world with and see what came back. In fact, we were absolutely inundated with responses, which was exciting, but it changed the direction of the initiative. Initially, I had thought, ‘Let’s see what these ideas are’. But when they came back from all corners of the world—we had one from Togo—it suggested a story that very much chimed with our thinking: that design thinking is something which everybody can get involved in and contribute to. So the special exhibition is really a celebration of people thinking about things, and getting involved, and putting their ideas forward.   In terms of design minimising or preventing crises: there are loads of examples to see in the exhibition itself. As an example historical starting point, though, you could consider Joseph Bazalgette’s sewers, which addressed the cholera problem of the time through good design and are still in use to this day. Another example is the wind-up radio that was designed during the AIDS crisis, literally to drop out of helicopters in remote areas of Africa where no news was getting through because there was no power in the villages. The wind-up radio meant you could bring news to places that had no power.   CJLPA : Your Artistic Director Es Devlin has chosen ‘Resonance’ as this Biennale’s theme. Does this tie in with your focus on solving global issues?   VB : It very much does. The theme was set before the pandemic, and of course we all feel that many things have changed and become spotlighted during the pandemic or as a result of it. ‘Resonance’ has been really interesting. I think when Es put it forward as a theme, her focus was on how gestures and actions and designs are not single things, but reverberate outwards and around the world, and also through time. When one thinks of throwing things away, or one just puts them somewhere else—those kinds of issue, or the effect of a butterfly flapping its wings on the other side of the world.   That kind of resonance has come through very powerfully at this time. Our global awareness has been acutely heightened by the basic fact that, if you read the news at all, you are forced to look outwards and become aware of other countries, just as a result of the pandemic, even if you hadn’t been before. That’s a key, interesting thing to have come out of it. We’ve been viscerally reminded that we are one world. You could say ‘We’re not all safe until everyone’s safe’ until you were blue in the face, but now we know it’s true.   CJLPA : Cambridge University’s Centre for Natural Material Innovation has an installation at the Biennale. Could you tell us about this, and about how you perceive the importance of scientific innovation to design?   VB : We’re really thrilled that Cambridge is part of this year’s Biennale. It is certainly a major part of it, partly because we have fewer international pavilions than we would normally have, for obvious reasons, but also because we have a lot of amazing innovation on our doorstep. We have a number of art schools and universities taking part in the area. The Cambridge installation presents a method of folding wood, and encourages us to think about wood not only as a sustainable material but also as a building material with great strength and practicality. They will be showing that on quite a scale—you can walk through and around the installation—and I think it will be a wonderful showcase for it.   A lot of the international pavilions relate to environment and sustainability. The addition of the Cambridge entry is super. One of the things that this international Biennale does is allow people to experience things that they might read about or see on TV. But there’s nothing like an exhibition, because of the physicality. You can move and touch and feel and imprint on your brain what you’ve seen and sensed. Certainly, I find that some of those things stay with you for years and years, in a way that just reading about them in the news or a book does not.   CJLPA : I was going to ask you about that. This question is particularly relevant given COVID, of course. How important do you consider it to see objects in person, as opposed to digitally?   VB : I consider it really important, and not just because I run a Biennale! Actually, I think we’ve seen unbelievably amazing things digitally over the last year. We’ve also seen things that have been a little disappointing. I think the jury is out. We will not know for a bit which ones stick, or which ones we never want to hear of or see again.   In terms of distanced meetings, a big American lawyer I spoke to a few weeks ago said: ‘Gone are the days when I travelled 24 hours to attend a meeting. I am never doing that again!’ And you just think, ‘Well, of course! Why would  we have all done that?’ I should think he was doing it all the time, and that’s just bonkers. When it comes to art and culture, and this kind of conceptual design and installation, I think there’s no substitute for seeing things, and for seeing things with other people. In terms of what it is to be human, I think we need that.   It may be beyond the scope of this interview, but I’m really interested in where the digital is attached  to the physical, rather than in place  of the physical. I was at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) for many years, and have done quite a lot of exhibitions where there has been a digital element. I feel that the digital is brilliant at enhancing  the physical. But sometimes, for this kind of thing, if it’s   just it on its own, it doesn’t have the same impact, even for people who only see the digital version. The fact that the physical version exists is important.   CJLPA : On the topic of design more broadly: how serious a prospect do you think it is that, to some extent, design and similar processes will be automated in the near future?   VB : That’s really interesting. Considering the automation of parts of the design process: I suppose parts of the process of making things have been automated for centuries. There may be further to go with elements of that. But overall, I’d say that design, and design training, and creative thinking training, are areas that are less likely to be affected by automated processes. And that’s one of the reasons it is so important that we carry on doing them in our schools and universities, because they can’t be automated. Fig 2. POAD (Pavilion of the African Diaspora). Credit: Ed Reeve 2021. CJLPA : So as with exhibitions, do you have in mind a system where humans are aided by and working with, but not replaced by, AI?   VB : Yes, I do. I’m no expert on that aspect, but I think it’s really interesting. We know you can get a computer to compose like Chopin. Perhaps you can get a computer to design like Gropius. But computers haven’t got there yet, and one would not assume that that would hit the spot, just as the next Chopin waltz by a computer might not hit the spot either. So it’s fascinating. I’m all for creative training, and creative thinking, on how important it is to address all the things that we need to address now in the world, but also on the future of work.   CJLPA : Staying on digital, but on a less frightening note… Does the Biennale feature digital as well as physical design? Or at least part-digital design?   VB : Yes, it does, in a number of ways.   Firstly, we have some fully digital pavilions. Six of our international pavilions have gone digital because they couldn’t get here, or had great challenges to production or travel. That’s a first for us. I would pay tribute to them, for how tough it has been to organise an international event this year. That is testament to how important people consider it to be here in person.   Secondly, our whole public programme, which previously would have been viewable in person, is going to be broadcast and streamed digitally, much of it recorded on site. The interesting thing about that is that we used to be concerned about whether 30,000 people were coming to Somerset House or 40,000, but the fact is that, whether it’s 30,000 or 40,000, there’s a much bigger audience out there that we’ve become aware of, particularly over the past year. However many thousand people come, we’re never going to have all the people who are interested in this conversation. The digital allows us to properly be international, and to have this conversation with a much broader base.   Thirdly, a lot of our physical pavilions are in part digital, with digital components as parts of their displays.   CJLPA : The Biennale is very international. 33 countries, territories, and cities have pavilions, and ‘Design in an Age of Crisis’ has 500 projects from over 50 countries. Are there global trends in styles and preoccupations that you can see at the Biennale, or do these vary significantly between designers and countries?   VB : There are global trends. It sounds glib, but it’s true that this year climate change, social inequality, migration, and so on, which were already big subjects, have become bigger. They have become focal points for all nations to think about. But there are countries and designers and nations that are focussed on those in terms of the bigger picture, but also use national examples to tell much broader stories. Fig 3. La Rentrada (Venezuela pavilion). Credit: Ed Reeve 2021. For example, Venezuela’s pavilion this year is focussed on recycling avocado stones into interesting products. On the face of it, it’s quite a simple project. You think, ‘Oh, I didn’t know you could do that with avocado stones.’ But actually, behind that is a fascinating story of Venezuela’s dependence on fossil fuels, and how catastrophic that’s been for the country’s GDP and people. The avocado stone is a metaphor for how using something more core to the place, and more useful, could have brought about a very different outcome. The designer is not proposing that you make things out of avocado stones, just saying that you could, and that you certainly shouldn’t have put all your eggs in the fossil fuel basket. So that turns a local story into something we can all connect with.   We also have this again and again in ‘Design in an Age of Crisis’. Somebody will be talking in their alleyway or the social housing that they’re living in in Asia, but you can read about it and see that it could also be in the outskirts of Birmingham, or anywhere. So there are specific examples that are local but may have national or even global usefulness.   CJLPA : You have curated several notable exhibitions about musicians, like ‘David Bowie is’ at the V&A. What made you move to design, and how has your past experience shaped your work on the Biennale?   VB : Music was a great passion, but I actually started at the V&A as a design person. It was luck that I found myself in the theatre and performance collections, where there was a great music collection that hadn’t really been used. It had been assembled by brilliant curators who’d seen how musicians used design to present themselves visually—design and fashion and graphics, these kinds of thing. It had been collected since the 1960s, but it had only been shown in a design context, so it was an opportunity, it seemed to me, to connect something that I was really interested in with something that everybody was really interested in. Design, though, seemed a more closed world. That was a fantastic coming together of interests and the brilliant work of other people. It was a great honour and opportunity to do three big exhibitions at the V&A. It wasn’t easy. It’s quite a competitive process there, and music seemed to be a good focus for those years. But the V&A covers so many subjects, and people move on.   I think the thing that ties these together is that I am quite passionate about opening up areas of culture to more people. What I mean by that is that I actually think more people are interested than realise they are. You need to make it easy to get a foot in the door. I also feel that design can sometimes be a bit up itself. A lot of people feel that it’s a bit highfalutin and maybe not their thing. With something like ‘Design in an Age of Crisis’, I like the idea that, if you’re communicating well through design, you’re not looking at the design, you’re feeling the feeling, or getting use out of the thing if it works. The thing becomes what it does. So I hope that people will come to this Biennale, and that there will be something interesting for everybody, all the family. It’s important stuff that relates to us all. It’s not just about design aficionados and imposing creative brains.   CJLPA : I’m interested in your belief that people find design highfalutin. You can live a life without ever seeing a painting, but you can’t avoid design. Does that not make design easier to engage with?   VB : I think it absolutely does. It’s not as noxious. Art history is ‘keep out’. People might think that a design biennale is going to be about beautiful chairs that cost a fortune. But I’m not interested in that. This type of design is something different. It takes philosophy and ideas, things that people care about, and puts them into a physical space. It’s not entertainment exactly, but I want people to come and have a great time. If design’s working, it doesn’t have to be hard work. It may not always be jolly and happy, but I hope the Biennale will be a great experience, and that everyone will come and see that.   CJLPA : What is London’s role in the history of design? You gave Bazalgette’s sewers as a good example. What is distinctive about London’s design scene today?   VB : I’d also mention the Great Exhibition out of which the V&A came, the first great world exhibition. It launched a series of world expos, world’s fairs, and so on, many in Paris, where people went to see the latest innovations but also travel the world. London has a great history in that sense, but also, in the present, it is a fantastic place for designers and creative people to live, train, and work. It’s a very precious thing that I don’t think we should take for granted. We are very lucky to have that. But I do think that if we do the right things we can hang on to it.   I was talking to a designer from New York this morning. She said, ‘London is the centre of the world for design.’ I’m not saying that’s absolutely true, but we certainly have a place at the very top table. We need to deserve that, and to keep working hard to make London a great place for creative people.   CJLPA : Do you think that, if we do, we can pull through the two shocks of Brexit and COVID-19?   VB : I certainly hope so! Otherwise we’re in desperate trouble, because it’s something we’re really good at, and there aren’t so many things that we’re really good at now. We need to make the most of those things. Joseph Court, the interviewer, is an Archaeology graduate from Trinity College, Cambridge, who placed first each year and specialised in the ancient Near East. He is interested in the very new as well as the very old: tech law and policy, Wikipedia editing, and film.

As described by The Arts Desk , Dr Laura Bowler is 'a triple threat composer-performer-provocatrice'. She is the vocalist in Ensemble Lydenskab, and as a composer she has been commissioned by orchestras and ensembles across the globe. She is a Tutor in Composition at the Royal Northern College of Music and Lecturer in Composition at Guildhall School of Music and Drama.   I interviewed Dr Laura Bowler on the evolving relationship between music and politics through the captivating, yet sometimes overlooked sphere of contemporary experimental music.   Bowler really is one of kind. Described by the Arts Desk as a ‘triple threat composer-performer-provocatrice’,[1] she is a renowned composer, vocalist and artistic director, specialising in theatre, multidisciplinary work and opera. Her works have been performed by some of the world’s leading ensembles, including the BBC Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra and the Manchester Camerata. Bowler is also a Tutor in Composition at the Royal Northern College of Music, where she invites her students to also explore the unique fusion between music and theatre in the realm of contemporary experimental music. However, it is Bowler’s utilisation of pressing political topics as central themes for her music—including climate change, social media and political ‘slacktivism’—which were the prime sources of intrigue in this illuminating dialogue. Indeed, by incorporating brash and provocative theatrical techniques, Bowler urges her audiences to subsequently reflect on the issues she presents to them. In our discussion, I invited Bowler to consider the mechanics by which compositional praxis and the production and consumption of new music can act as political intervention. By placing special emphasis on her two most notable works, Antarctica and FFF  (Freeze, Flight, Fight), Bowler addresses the complex dialectic between content and form, unpicking the functions that compositional intervention and dissemination can offer political objectives. Especially in the realm of contemporary experimental music, where her target audience may seem narrow, Bowler also considers the limits and challenges faced when mobilising musical material for social change.   Before unpacking her music, I was intrigued to hear about Bowler’s rather unique educational background. Born in Staffordshire, Bowler first studied Saxophone at the Royal Northern College of Music as an undergraduate, before switching to Composition after a term because of stage fright. This is ironic, of course, since she performs in all her musical projects. However, it was not until her master’s studies at the Royal Academy of Music in London that theatre started to play a central role in her work. After coming across the provocative Theatre of Cruelty  manifesto by the French dramatist Antonin Artaud, she made the text the focal point in her master’s thesis: ‘It made such an impact on me because of Artaud’s desire to search for the real  and the raw  in performers’. Experiences outside of music college at the   time further fuelled her passion for the theatrical, including a trip to the National Theatre in Warsaw to watch a production of Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis  . Language barrier notwithstanding (the play was translated into Polish), it was the physicality of the performance that moved Bowler above all else. Indeed, she ‘could not believe the level of sacrifice of these performers, and what they were giving and sharing’.   ‘How can I find this  in the western Classical music tradition?’ It was this question, Bowler asserts, which became the focal point of her doctoral work. Finding any solutions to this puzzle proved challenging. Despite Bowler’s passion for theatre, she had not received any formal training in theatre or drama. To overcome this barrier, she embarked on a theatre master’s degree at the Royal Academy of the Dramatic Arts (RADA), a move which, for Bowler, was fundamental to where her work is now.   The wonderful thing about the course [at RADA] was that not only did you get incredible training on how to facilitate rehearsals and facilitate a room and a psychology of a room, but you also got physical theatre training from the Theatre Ensemble Course there. I studied Grotowski theatre—very much linked to my work on Artaud at conservatoire—and focused on physicality and the ‘raw’ in performance and pushing my body to the extreme.   This passion for physicality is not only transferred to her work but also in her composition teaching. At the Royal Northern College of Music, Bowler leads a ‘Physicality and Performance’ course. By introducing her students to ‘Jerzy Grotowski theatre’ (which aims for complete integration of the actor’s mental and physical senses to reveal the core substance of a character) and the ‘Stanislavski Technique’ (a system comprising various techniques designed to allow actors to create and embody believable characters), Bowler is constantly questioning her students (an ‘interrogation’ method, she jokes) to find their true ‘rawness’.   This approach is perhaps similar to how theatre directors work today: Constantly questioning their actors, their motivations within the character, so that they then can reflect back on that, and find what it is they are ‘doing’ but not quite ‘doing accurately ’.   It was after her ‘fundamental’ studies in the Dramatic Arts that Bowler’s urge to write political works came about. She realised that abstract music on its own terms was not a strong enough vehicle to fully communicate the true human experience of the world; a composition could, therefore, be ‘directed’ if it wants to be. However, it was actually during her final years of her undergraduate degree when she first gained an interest in moulding her works around sociopolitical issues and, more importantly, in using her unique compositional idiom to convey a fully human experience. Bowler wrote a work on her experience of anorexia as part of a collaboration with the BBC playwright Lavinia Murray. Bowler toured this very human work round schools in her hometown in Staffordshire where, before performing the piece, she would also talk to students about her experiences of anorexia. This was especially provocative at the time, because she was still ill. This compositional ethos—that of writing music based on personal experiences which, subsequently, invites her audiences to reflect on their own actions—pervades her writing today.   I was very much doing it because this was my experience of the world, and that was what I was using to create this work. This certainly became the starting point for this need to communicate about the human experience in a more direct way than what was possible with ‘abstract music’.   This forms the crux of one of her most significant works, Antarctica , an immersive multimedia work for orchestra and   vocalist which was co-commissioned by the Manchester Camerata and BBC Radio 3. As suggested by the title, it is the pressing issue of climate change which takes pride of place in this piece. Before writing, Bowler realised that, like most people in privileged populations, her view of climate change was too obscure, preventing her from creating a truly personal, provocative work. So, in order to overcome this limitation, she embarked upon a voyage to Antarctica. While sailing, she recorded videos and took audio samples which, upon writing the work, were manipulated and juxtaposed to create an evocative ‘soundscape’ work. By essentially bringing back her experience of this environment that so few people get to experience first-hand, Bowler’s immersive experience persuades her audiences to reflect on this beautiful, fragile landscape, ‘so that it remains that way’. This is especially the case with the work’s ‘dark turn’.   The flipside of the work is the politics surrounding climate change and the manipulation of governments, the presentation and rejection of climate laws, and the use of text from the media and politicians. That complete juxtaposition with this beauty and landscape was important. The point of it all was to allow audiences to wallow in that beauty, only to be hit by the grotesqueness of the reality and our ignorance.   What do audiences themselves think? For Bowler, discussions with her listeners—or more accurately, ‘spectators’—are crucial for understanding whether the messages conveyed were powerful enough that they then felt the need to take action. These engagements have clearly stuck with Bowler, and she seems surprised by the things she has been told or asked. For example, after Antarctica , an elderly couple approached her, since they had also visited Antarctica, but on a cruise ship.   They were saying that ‘we did not see any rubbish when we were there, and we didn’t see any of the things that you described’. I then told them that the areas a cruise ship ventures in are obviously maintained for tourism, thus explaining the differences of our own experiences. Yet, because their experience of Antarctica was so pure and untainted, they almost could not accept what I had presented to them. It ruined their memory of it, which was very interesting.   The question Bowler seems to be asked most often is this: what new solutions is she presenting in her works? This question is certainly relevant here, especially since we are exploring this work through the lens of political action. Certainly, the theatrical elements embedded in her work imbibe connotations of protest. However, Bowler simply sees her unique musical idiom—her responsiveness to the ‘indirectness’ she perceives in pure abstract music—as a vessel to encourage audiences to simply reflect on the issues at hand and take action.   I don’t have the solutions. I’m not a scientist. Audiences experiencing this piece should then go home and think a little bit more about it. It takes them one step further on their path to acknowledging climate change and doing their individual bit towards it. That is what I see my role as here.   Bowler is excited to be addressing climate change again in a work provocatively titled temperatures aren’t what they used to be , which she is currently writing for the London Sinfonietta as part of a collaboration with play-writer Cordelia Lynn, theatre director Katie Mitchell, and documentary filmmaker Grant Gee. In stark contrast to Antarctica , the work centres on the issues of climate denial and climate psychology, inspired by responses she received on the subject by people completing a questionnaire.   It is a very individual experience. It does not really concern science or facts, but it’s about the process of going ‘OK, climate change is a thing, what does that mean? What can I maybe do as an individual?’ It is quite broad with regards to the spectrum of responses I got. Some people are activists, others do not do anything, and some recycle but drive an SUV. As you can see, this is a hugely complex topic, which is what I want to explore here.   Alongside her interest in global warming, Bowler’s works also address the problems associated with political ‘slacktivism’. This is an informal term which the Oxford Dictionary defines as ‘the practice of supporting a political or social cause by means such as social media or online petitions, characterised as involving very little effort or commitment’.[2] Some of her frustrations are addressed by her most physical work, FFF  (Freeze, Flight and Fight) for ensemble and vocalist, co-commissioned by BBC Radio 3 and the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival.   I came to write this piece because, like everyone else, I was on social media and sharing various things that were making me angry, and I was getting very involved in very heated conversations online, which were generally not very helpful for either party. I realised the physical  impact it was having on me, that although the existence of social media is one step removed from reality, it was affecting me so much on a really physical level.   What has this got to do with ‘Freeze, Flight, Fight’, a phrase which describes our instinctive and physiological response to danger? Well, while thinking about the physical effect on social media, she came across an article concerning the relationship between ‘Freeze, Flight, and Fight’ and politics, in relation to how one behaves in relation to political news. Bowler was intrigued and decided to write a work which conveyed this paralysing physical response to social media.   Like most of her works, moulding these very physical ideas into music comes with many challenges. One big obstacle to overcome is the fact that Bowler herself performs all of her music. Indeed, she sings through her pieces before writing them, which substantially aids the compositional process. I asked Bowler a question many have asked her before, namely whether she would ever give her pieces to someone else to perform. She replied with a firm ‘no’. Perhaps, Bowler states, she would consider it at some point, but would want to be present in the rehearsal process. It is clear how attached she is to her music, given that the messages reflected emanate from her own experiences. Audiences, therefore, are moved by such authentic, visceral projections of these messages, and are perhaps inclined to reflect on what they have just witnessed.   What about the players she works with? While watching FFF , I was immediately struck by how physical the orchestra was. Not only did the complexity of the instrumental texture lead to extremely gestural playing, but the players themselves were required to act at times and make various vocalisations. This is all very demanding, but Bowler’s training in Theatre Directing is a crucial asset here as she goes through all the actions in detail to ease the players’s tension. Of course, while her ensemble enthusiastically seeks to grasp and perform her ideas, Bowler is willing to compromise because, at the end of the day, musicians perform better if they are comfortable. Furthermore, Bowler’s role as a performer here also helps because her passionate demeanour in performance is very much absorbed and echoed by the players. A sense of comradeship evolves here, which also fuels the powerful messages of this work.   FFF is formed of three movements named ‘Freeze’, ‘Flight’, and ‘Fight’, with chaos and disorder emerging right from the work’s outset. The first movement commences with Bowler announcing, ‘In the beginning’, words from the opening of Genesis: words which, contrary to Bowler’s musical texture here, reflect stillness, serenity and, more importantly, order. The connotations of immobility and self-protection associated with the ‘Freeze’ are vividly captured in this movement.   The conflict between music and text is exactly to do with the passiveness with the experience of social media. It addresses how ‘pervasive’ social media is becoming in society and how it is slowly but surely affecting our behaviour. The movement shows how incredibly violent social media is, even if we do not know that it is. All of these juxtapositions of how it behaves is what I am trying to capture in some way in that first section.   The second movement ‘Flight’ sees Bowler appropriately embody the role of an air stewardess. Anger is momentarily sidelined, as she is seen signing sheets of paper, scrunching them up and throwing them across the stage. This all represents the act of signing online petitions, which Bowler considers to be emblematic of political ‘slacktivism’.   The movement functions as a commentary on our privilege to not only want the internet, but to want the internet to go ‘Yes, I can sign it, and then I’ll share it as a good deed, because I’m a good person’. But, how many people would sign it had they not been exposed to it on social media in the first place? I am certainly guilty of this, but it is important to reflect on that, and notice this process as ‘slacktivism’.   The chaos then resumes for the final movement ‘Fight’, where Bowler puts on an ‘emoticon’ head mask, repeatedly shouting the words ‘You capitalist! You socialist’. This represents a call to arms demanding that, instead of sitting there, scrolling and doing nothing, we take action. This is perhaps the most intense we see Bowler, shouting and pushing her voice to breaking point. However, Bowler then shuts down and a pre-recorded video of herself appears playing for the remainder of the piece. At this point, the players are spraying themselves with detergent and Bowler is passing round disinfectant wipes to the audience, though this has nothing to do with the current pandemic. While this is all happening, the virtual Bowler tells the audience that they ‘all need to get into a great big bath of disinfectant and we need to disinfect ourselves’. Bowler explains: ‘This moment here the idea of “cleaning” ourselves before we go out and take part in the “true and honest” fight, and not the “slacktivist”, easy one’.   While these works engage provocatively with global issues, challenges arise when presevnting them in the elitist world of contemporary experimental music, let alone Western classical music. Bowler is always aware that her music attracts a very niche type of audience and, as a result, thinks a lot about what is presented in her works and how. This is certainly an arduous task, since one can never predict what her audience is going to think or whether her ideas have come across in the way she intended. However, what is vital for Bowler is that, when one makes political works, regardless of what artistic medium one is working in, the formatting which is presented has to be fundamental to the context in which it is performed in. She unpacks this a little further:   With FFF , for example, the work was specifically designed for that form of the contemporary music festival. It wouldn’t work the same it if was presented at Bridgewater Hall for the Manchester Camerata, because the people who go would not experience the piece with the same kind of context of works that they know, and it would mean very different things, and they may be drawn the ‘peculiarity’ of the work rather than what’s in  the work.   However, despite the apparent solidity of her craft, Bowler poignantly reveals that she is constantly learning, seeking new ways to communicate the issues she is so passionate about, to ensure her audiences feel that same ardour to take swift action and to reflect on their own actions. It was inspiring to hear Bowler’s thoughts on music’s multifaceted power to express pressing political issues. Filippo Turkheimer, the interviewer, is a postgraduate Music student at New College, Oxford, where he holds a Senior Scholarship. He previously read Music at New College, sang in the college’s prestigious chapel choir, and was president of the music society. [1] Rayfield Allied, ‘Laura Bowler’ < http://www.rayfieldallied.com/artists/laura-bowler > accessed 30 March 2021. [2] ‘Slacktivism, N’. ( Oxford English Dictionary Online ) < https://ezproxy-prd.bodleian.ox.ac.uk:2446/view/Entry/51394141?redirectedFrom=slacktivism#eid > accessed 30 March 2021.

Art historians and psychologists alike have long been fascinated by the tentative relationship between art and mental illness. A number of well known artists have grappled with severe mental health issues, which has led others to question whether there is a link between psychopathology and creativity.[1] The emergence of Expressionism, a movement characterised by an externalisation of the artist’s inner psyche, in the late nineteenth century seemed to crystallise this concept of a ‘mad genius’.[2] It was decided that those who suffer from psychological illnesses are inherently more creative than those who do not. Whilst commonly accepted as fact rather than theory, relatively few studies have evaluated this relationship.[3] The most cited studies to this effect were conducted by Nancy Coover Andreasen[4] and Kay Redfield Jamison[5] in the late 1980s. Both identified significant overlap between creativity and mental illness in their participants, and therefore imputed causality. However, Judith Schlesinger’s extensive review confirms that both studies lack the sample size and scientific rigour necessary to prove a causal link.[6] Despite this, Schlesinger acknowledges that a large number of creative people have suffered from mental illnesses, citing Albert Rothenberg’s three-decade investigation into the ‘Creative Process’.[7] In such cases, the mental illness of an artist can be seen to have a considerable influence on their art. We will examine the work of Tracey Emin (1963-) and Edvard Munch (1863-1944) in this light to better understand the symbiotic relationship between art and mental health.   Despite being separated by a century, Emin and Munch are united by their contributions to Expressionism. This relationship was recently laid bare in the ‘The Loneliness of the Soul’ exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts. Both artists demonstrate a ‘shared commitment’ to revealing unfiltered emotion in every piece.[8] To do so, many of their works draw on their own experiences of mental suffering. Emin has spoken openly about her experience with alcoholism, depression, anorexia, and insomnia.[9] In 1998, she had a major depressive episode that would later inspire one of her most famous installations. By contrast, Munch’s account of his mental health issues uses less explicit diagnoses. However, extensive analysis of Munch’s diary entries indicates that his ‘nervous crisis’ and subsequent hospitalisation in 1908, was brought on by anxiety, alcoholism, and agoraphobia. Munch was intensely agoraphobic, particularly in situations where he saw no means of escape.[10] He is also thought to have suffered from Bipolar Affective Disorder, evidenced by his turbulent mood swings, paranoid delusions, and intermittent hallucinations.[11] Ultimately, both artists’ mental health issues can be attributed in part to their childhood trauma. At a young age, Munch lost both his mother and sister to tuberculosis. He was only 15 when his sister begged him to save her from a slow death by fever.[12] Similarly, Emin was 13 when she was raped,[13] and only 19 when she underwent a deeply traumatic abortion.[14]   The artwork of Munch and Emin often reflects these traumatic experiences of mental suffering, and thus highlights the significant influence psychopathology can have on creative output. In Munch’s case, perhaps the best example of this is The Scream (1893, fig 1).[15] This painting is not simply viewed, but experienced. The distorted contours of a bleeding sky drag the viewer into a place of unease, so that they too feel as though they’re spiralling out of control. In this way, the piece communicates Munch’s own experience of a ‘psychotic break’, detailed in his diary:   I was walking along the road with two of my friends. Then the sun set. The sky suddenly turned into blood, and I felt something akin to a touch of melancholy. I stood still, leaned against the railing, dead tired. Above the blue black fjord and city hung clouds of dripping, rippling blood. My friends went on and again I stood, frightened with an open wound in my breast. A great scream pierced through nature.[16]   Fig 1. The Scream (Edvard Munch 1893, oil, tempera, and pastel, 91 x 73.5cm) Nasjonalmuseet. Wikimedia Commons. . In his attempt to embody such an anxiety-provoking hallucination, Munch used expressive, frenzied brushwork and scribbles of oil pastels. Furthermore, he emphasised the heightened sensitivity to his surroundings through the stark contrast between the muted central figure and the vivid, oversaturated primary colours of the sunset. The painting thereby indicates Munch’s mental turmoil during the late nineteenth century.   Contrary to popular belief, Munch’s diary entry suggests that it is not the figure screaming, but nature itself. This personification of the environment is best illustrated through Munch’s bold lithograph print of the same scene (fig 2). The absence of colour spotlights the swirling lines of the background, thought to represent ‘the waves of sound he heard in nature’.[17] The unsteady quality of the lines also gives us the impression nature’s scream is vibrating through the print. Turning to the central figure, we can see its amorphous body is bent over, as if recoiling from the surroundings. And yet, this shape echoes the oscillating lines of the background, which in turn suggest the figure is ‘inextricably bound to his environment’.[18] Munch stresses this through his use of a vertiginous perspective. Our attention is directed to the bridge, which seems to stretch out indefinitely and offers no route to safety.[19] Furthermore, the homologous depiction of the figure and its surroundings seems to encapsulate Munch’s fear of dissolving into the sky.[20] In this respect, we would agree with Anne McElroy Bowen that the painting was predominantly influenced by Munch’s own agoraphobia.[21] However, the viewer does not need to share in Munch’s specific anxieties to engage with the piece. Instead, they can identify their own concerns in the figure. In this way, Munch demonstrates how an artist’s personal experiences of mental illness can be distilled into a universal symbol of inner turmoil. Fig 2. The Scream (Edvard Munch 1895, lithoprint, 44 x 25cm ). Munchmuseet. Maurizio Pesce, Wikimedia Commons. . Tracey Emin’s autobiographical My Bed  (1998, fig 3) exemplifies how an artist’s own suffering can be transformed into a captivating piece of conceptual art. Despite facing significant controversy when first exhibited for the 1999 Turner Prize, the readymade quickly became one of the most iconic works of contemporary art. The installation preserves the entirety of Emin’s dishevelled bed after her four-day long depressive episode that same year.[22] The depiction of her surroundings is candid, littered with empty vodka bottles, used condoms, tissues, dirty clothes, and an overflow of cigarette butts. Devoid of context, this collection of objects could be misconstrued as a vulgar shock tactic. However, as Jonathan Jones explains, the contents were not ‘contrived to shock but really were what surrounded her bed. She was putting a personal crisis on display, as manifested by her most immediate and intimate physical surroundings’.[23] Each object was made meaningful through its interaction with Emin’s depression. In this way, My Bed  is an exemplary readymade: it simply redefines ‘found objects’ with intrinsic value to the artist and presents them as art. Because of the conceptual nature of this style, we would argue that understanding Emin’s experience is valuable for appreciating her bed as art. Like The Scream , what is most compelling about the unguarded exhibition of My Bed  is its ability to connect the viewer to the universality of suffering. Fig 3. My Bed (Tracey Emin 1998, mattress, linens, pillows, and objects, 79 x 211 x 234cm) at Tate Britain. Karen Bryan, Europe a la Carte (). . However, the compelling nature of suffering as a subject matter can often distract the viewer from the contextual influences that contribute to a piece’s ingenuity. In his historical analysis of ‘Art and Mental Illness’, Anthony White identifies a tendency in literature to overemphasise the ‘internal worlds’ of artists, and consequently isolate their work from ‘the wider artistic, historical and cultural context in which it was produced’.[24] It is paramount that our analyses of The Scream and My Bed  consider the contexts within which the artists worked. Munch was not living and working in a vacuum, and a range of influences are present in his artwork. For example, aspects of The Scream  that are thought to be symptomatic of his fragile mental state, such as the pulsating perpetual motion of his brushwork, or the bird’s eye viewpoint, build on the Impressionist tendencies of the time.[25] Similarly, My Bed  is in keeping with both the introspection of Expressionism and the conceptual innovation of the Young British Artists. Emin and her contemporaries were challenging the notion of ‘fine art’ through their shocking use of alternative media.[26] Emin’s My Bed  uses this novel approach to breathe new life into the twentieth-century Expressionism that first inspired her. Therefore, Emin and Munch are not simply disturbed geniuses, but creators who responded to and influenced contemporary movements in art.   Additionally, the relationship between mental illness and art is made more complex when we consider how an artist’s creative output might enable their recovery. Both Emin and Munch, albeit to different extents, used their art as a therapeutic mechanism for processing their childhood trauma.[27] Emin in particular, has been incredibly vocal about the ‘purgative and healing’ power of making art.[28] Throughout her career, she has returned to scenes of her sexual assault to let the adolescent girl within her scream.[29] Perhaps the most poignant example of this can be seen in her monoprint Beautiful Child  (2009). The simple print consists of a young naked   girl, representative of Emin at the time of her assault, and a bodiless penis. The expansive white background seems to emphasise the isolation of her childhood self. However, what is most striking about the piece is the rough castration of her attacker. It seems that the physical act of pressing paper onto the ink surface and sketching let Emin take back control over her experience. In this way, Beautiful Child  supports Christine Fanthome’s argument that the immediate   and inalterable quality of the monoprint made it an ideal medium for Emin to process the emotions associated with her trauma.[30]   Similarly, we would argue that the physical act of painting offered Munch some relief from his anxieties. Like Emin, Munch returned to the scene of personal trauma: he depicted his sister’s death at least six times. Interestingly, the first and fifth versions of the The Sick Child  series (1907, fig 4) have scratch marks on the surface of   the canvas, which Munch attributed to scraping and repainting the scene ‘countless times’.[31] It is likely that this physical process was necessary to work through his residual feelings of anger and guilt surrounding the subject matter. The painting itself shows a frail girl clasping the hands of her grieving companion. Contrary to many of his other pieces of an autobiographical nature, Munch does not include himself in this scene. Instead, he paints what he remembers. Michelle Facos argues that Munch’s vertical brushstrokes let the viewer see the scene as he once did, through ‘tears or the veil of memory’.[32] Perhaps Munch’s absence from the painting is also symbolic of the powerlessness he felt when his sister begged for him to save her life. That said, in the same way Emin used her art to castrate her attacker, Munch seems to have given his sister the inner peace he could not offer her on her deathbed. However, unlike Emin, Munch almost obsessively repeated the exact same composition each time he revisited the scene. While it is likely the act of painting provided Munch with temporary relief, his rigid depiction of the memory seems indicative of his inability or unwillingness to fully process his trauma. Fig 4. The Sick Child (Edvard Munch 1907, oil paint on canvas, 118.7 x 121cm). Tate Britain. Wikimedia Commons. . The prevailing narrative of the ‘mad genius’ in the late nineteenth century is likely to have shaped Munch’s sense of identity as an artist and influenced his willingness to engage in recovery. He once said: ‘Without anxiety and illness I am a ship without a rudder … My sufferings are part of myself and my art. They are indistinguishable from me, and their destruction would destroy my art. I want to keep those sufferings’.[33] This suggests that Munch’s fear of losing his creativity, spurred on by the ‘mad genius’ trope, outweighed his desire to recover. In this way, Munch seems to exemplify Perpetua Neo’s argument that the relationship between art and mental illness is often self-fulfilled.[34] While Munch is known to have experienced some form of recovery,[35] he never fully overcame his nervous disposition.[36] His continued struggle with mental illness is reflected in the subject matter of some of his later self-portraits, like Sleepless Night. Self-Portrait in Inner Turmoil  (1920, fig 5). The scene depicts Munch in old age, his fists raised, as if at odds with himself. In contrast, Emin’s more recent explorations of mental suffering are inspired by an image of herself that is ‘out of date’. Emin has recovered from her mental struggles, whilst still drawing creative inspiration from the memory of how she once felt.[37] This engagement with recovery suggests that Emin does not consider her creativity to be contingent on her suffering. In this way, Emin has likely benefited from the dismantling of the antiquated ‘mad genius’ trope that inhibited Munch’s own recovery.   Fig 5. Sleepless Night. Self-Portrait in Inner Turmoil (Edvard Munch 1920, oil on canvas, 150 x 129 cm). Munchmuseet. Wikimedia Commons. . The lives of Edvard Munch and Tracey Emin exemplify the symbiotic relationship between art and psychopathology. Their experience of mental illness has clearly inspired their subject matter and enriched their creative output. This in turn has let them evoke feelings with which the viewer can identify. Furthermore, both Emin and Munch demonstrate how the creative process can help an artist work through and recover from their mental health issues. While Munch’s art alleviated some of his symptoms, he was ultimately held captive by the concept of the ‘mad genius’, and thus never able to fully break free from his sufferings. In contrast, Emin’s own account of her recovery suggests that she has not fallen into the same cycle. Moreover, the undiminished relatability of her recent work proves that this distance from her lowest emotional state has not inhibited her creativity. Emin demonstrates that the recovered artist can still access the intensity of feeling required to convey the most troubling aspects of the human experience. Amelia Bateman and Lucy De-Rhune   Amelia Bateman is a third-year undergraduate in Social Sciences at the University of Bath, with a particular interest in psychology. Alongside her studies, she is the Founder and Chair of Bath’s first Sustainable Fashion Society. She is also an avid, albeit amateur, painter and writer.   Lucy De-Rhune is a third-year undergraduate in History of Art and Modern Languages at the University of Birmingham. In 2021 she will undertake a study exchange in Granada, Spain and Florence, Italy, furthering her interest in Spanish and Italian art, language, and culture. She is the former head of art and exhibition coverage for the Birmingham University Radio Network, and has produced a weekly show for the network about fashion and sustainability. [1] Anna Abraham, ‘Editorial: Madness and creativity—yes, no or maybe?’ (2015) 6 Frontiers in Psychology 5. [2] Anthony White, ‘Art and Mental Illness: An Art Historical Perspective’ in Art and Mental Illness: Myths, Stereotypes and Realities  (Neami Splash Art 2007) 24-9. [3] Judith Schlesinger, ‘Creative mythconceptions: A closer look at the evidence for the “mad genius” hypothesis’ (2009) 3(2) Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts 62. [4] Nancy Coover Andreasen, ‘Creativity and mental illness: prevalence rates in writers and their first-degree relatives’ (1987) 144(10) American Journal of Psychiatry 1288. [5] Schlesinger (n 3). [6] ibid. [7] Albert Rothenberg, Creativity and Madness: New Findings and Old Stereotypes  (Johns Hopkins University Press 1990). [8] Rosemary Waugh, ‘The enduring connection between art and mental health’ ( Art UK , 4 November 2020) < https://artuk.org/discover/stories/the-enduring-connection-between-art-and-mental-health > accessed 24 March 2021. [9] Tracey Emin, Strangeland  (first edn, Sceptre 2005) 200. [10] Anne McElroy Bowen, ‘Munch and Agoraphobia: His Art and His Illness’ (1988) 15(1) RACAR: Revue D’art Canadienne/Canadian Art Review 23. [11] VY Skryabin, AA Skryabina, MV Torrado, and EA Gritchina, ‘Edvard Munch: the collision of art and mental disorder’ (2020) 23(7) Mental Health, Religion & Culture 570. [12] ibid. [13] Emin (n 9) 24. [14] ibid 153. [15] Skryabin, Skryabina, Torrado, and Gritchina (n 11). [16] Reinhold H Heller, Edvard Munch: The Scream (first edn, Viking Press 1972). [17] Giulia Bartrum (as quoted in Alexander Smart, ‘The radical prints of Edvard Munch: New ways to express moods and emotions’ ( Christie’s , 9 April 2019) < https://www.christies.com/en/stories/the-prints-of-edvard-munch-e079de7b78634b228aa38bf8717bd6e5 > accessed 25 February 2021). [18] Campbell Crockett, ‘Psychoanalysis in Art Criticism’ (1958) 17(1) The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 34. [19] McElroy Bowen (n 10). [20] Stanley Steinberg and Joseph Weiss, ‘The Art of Edvard Munch and its Function in his Mental Life’ (1954) 23(3) The Psychoanalytic Quarterly 409. [21] McElroy Bowen (n 10). [22] Tate Britain, Tracey Emin's My Bed at Tate Britain ( YouTube , 30 March 2015). [23] Jonathan Jones, Tracey Emin: Works 2007-2017 (first edn, Rizzoli 2017) 8-33. [24] White (n 2). [25] Rachel Sloane, ‘Edvard Munch. Chicago’ The Burlington Magazine  (London 2009) 151(1274) 347. [26] Tate, ‘Young British Artists (YBAs)’ < https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/y/young-british-artists-ybas > accessed 25 March 2021. [27] Christina Blomdahl, Birgitta Gunnarsson, Suzanne Guregård, and Anita Björklund, ‘A realist review of art therapy for clients with depression’ (2013) 40(3)The Arts in Psychotherapy 322. [28] Miguel Medina, ‘Tracey Emin: Life Made Art, Art Made from Life’ (2014) 3(1) Arts 54. [29] Turner Contemporary, ‘BBC HARDTalk with Tracey Emin’ (2012) < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=og5FqDxPUKg&t=116s > accessed 23 March 2021. [30] Christine Fanthome, ‘Articulating authenticity through artifice: the contemporary relevance of Tracey Emin’s confessional art’ (2008) 18(2) Social Semiotics 223. [31] Mille Stein, ‘Patterns in Munch’s painting technique’ in Gary Garrels, Jon-Ove Steihaug, and Sheena Wagstaff (eds), Edvard Munch: Between the clock and the bed  (first edn, Yale University Press 2017). [32] Michelle Facos, An Introduction to Nineteenth-Century Art  (first edn, Routledge 2011) 339. [33] C Marcelo Miranda, C Eva Miranda, and D Matías Molina, ‘Edvard Munch: disease and genius of the great norwegian artist’ (2013) 141(6) Revista médica de Chile 774. [34] Lindsay Dodgson, ‘Creativity and depression don’t go hand in hand, but it can seem like they do — here’s why’ ( Insider , 27 July 2018) < https://www.insider.com/the-link-between-creativity-and-mental-health-2018-7 > accessed 21 February 2021. [35] Russell R Monroe, Creative Brainstorms: The Relationship Between Madness and Genius  (first edn, Irvington Publishers Inc 1992) 73. [36] Garrels, Steinhaug, and Wagstaff (n 31) 17-9. [37] Jones (n 23) 8-33.

Sharon Ament is the Director of the Museum of London, and inspiring passion in the capital and its museum is her goal. Sharon joined the Museum in September 2012 to steer the world’s leading city museum through to the next phase of its development by inspiring a passion for London and reflecting the capital’s energy and dynamism. Throughout her career Sharon has been driven by the simple aim of ‘turning people onto great ideas and causes’. This started early with her work for a number of social causes in Liverpool. Thereafter she became involved in wildlife conservation and worked with the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust, moving from Lancashire to Slimbridge to oversee a national portfolio of wetland centres. In the 1990s she worked at the Zoological Society of London and from there joined The Natural History Museum.   CJLPA : What role does the Museum of London play in London? How do you want this to develop?   Sharon Ament : Putting it simply, the Museum of London tells the story of what I consider to be the greatest city in the world and its people. It’s also a complex city with a long and rich history containing every positive and negative aspect of urban life and one that lives with a legacy of being at the centre of an empire. Central to our identity as a cultural institution is the idea of openness. London has always been an open city—open to all people, faiths, cultures, perspectives, and conversations—and it’s in that spirit that we tell London’s story. In the next few years, we’re recreating the Museum of London in West Smithfield, an old marketplace that has lain untouched for 30 years and been an important trading place for many centuries. We’re saving this remarkable building for society and breathing a different sort of cultural life into the City of London as a result. We will be London’s shared place: smack bang in the middle of the story, open for all, and created with Londoners who’ve joined us along the way. Post-pandemic our project has more meaning than ever before.   CJLPA : Like all cultural institutions, the Museum has struggled in the COVID-19 pandemic, having only been open for 13 weeks between March 2020 and 2021. Do you see any upsides to COVID-19?   SA : The past year has been a real struggle for the whole culture sector in the UK, but what has been front of my mind is the impact the museum and gallery closures are having on young people. In my opinion, these young people have to be at the heart of our efforts to rebuild cultural institutions. Creating a new museum in the aftermath of the pandemic provides a special opportunity. It’s a time when we can really step back and think about what social history museums should be now and in the future. Who are they for? Who should they represent? What stories should they tell?   In terms of the area of the City that the new museum is located, it’s also a great opportunity for cultural regeneration. The old general market building has been derelict for some time. By transforming this extraordinary heritage space, we’ve been able to save the building from commercial development in the form that is familiar with office buildings and give it to the people of London. I want Londoners to feel that they belong here, that it’s their space. The new museum will be a ‘museum wrapped in a high street’ with space for independent businesses, restaurants, and cafes. The museum itself will be like a marketplace: you’ll be able to walk straight through it on your way to work, you’ll be able to walk your dog through it—or stay and watch performances, see community-curated exhibitions, or delve into the deep history of London. It will truly be a new type of museum, built for the times in which we live. And we have a train running through our Past Time Galleries.   CJLPA : Do you think museums will be important in keeping city centres thriving and lively after COVID-19?   SA : Museums have a huge role to play post-COVID in enlivening city centres as well, of course, as being part of the cultural infrastructure alongside libraries, parks, galleries, and other social spaces. We may find that after the pandemic the pace of change in city centres has increased dramatically. That might be because people choose to work from home more often, or because retail businesses that have struggled during COVID do not survive. Museums don’t just give people a reason to visit their city, but it also gives space to reflect, consider, and explore. Museums are trusted places and the flow back after lockdown to our museums and galleries shows that people want to visit.   The City of London, where we are based, has felt the effect of the pandemic very harshly. Footfall has plummeted and will take some time to recover. That is why the City of London Corporation have put culture front and centre of their COVID recovery plans, announcing a Culture and Commerce Taskforce, as well as investing in major cultural infrastructure including the Barbican and of course the new Museum of London.   CJLPA : You will have opened on 19 May 2021 with the exhibition ‘Dub London: Bassline of a City’. Could you tell us about the exhibition and how it fits into bigger plans for the Museum?   SA : From its roots in Jamaican reggae to how it shaped communities over the last 50 years, our new display explores not only dub music, but also the cultural and social impact it has had on the identity of London and its people.   Dub has had a far-reaching impact across the music industry and the history of the capital. It has influenced multiple genres from drum and bass, garage, and hip-hop to even mainstream pop, and played an important role in the early days of the city’s punk scene with bands such as The Clash and The Slits drawing on its unique sound. The story of dub culture in London is a fascinating one and one that hasn’t been told this widely in a museum setting before. Through getting out into the places and speaking to the people who have been instrumental in the dub scene, we’ve been able to hear stories of how London was central for the emergence of dub in the UK. Even though most of this music originated in the Caribbean and Jamaica, London quickly became important to dub reggae: dub record labels were started in London, and dub music was produced in London and exported to the rest of the world. With London still being home to one of the largest collections of dub reggae record shops outside of Kingston, Jamaica, this display will be a unique and impressive way to tell the story of how dub culture has shaped the identity of the capital and us as Londoners.   The museum is passionate about connecting to Londoners, cutting across multiple scenes, times, and genres. Our past experiences with ‘Punk London’, ‘The Clash: London Calling’, and now ‘Dub London: Bassline of a City’, show us the music runs through London’s veins and is crucial to a Londoner’s identity. It’s a theme we’re exploring for our new Museum of London in West Smithfield.   CJLPA : The Museum recently produced a wide-ranging report on the experiences of Generation Z Londoners. Did this inform your plans for the Museum?   SA : Absolutely. We worked with the Partnership for Young London on the largest survey of Gen Z Londoners of its kind. Over 3,000 young Londoners took part, and told us what mattered to them, about their concerns and hopes for the future. I want young Londoners to play an active role in the creation of the new museum and to see their experiences reflected in its displays and ongoing programming. Young people told us that they didn’t always feel welcome in cultural institutions. I want the new museum to make young Londoners feel comfortable, valued, and inspired. This research will help us place young people front and centre of the new museum and will inform our plans as they develop.   CJLPA : What prompted the move to West Smithfield, away from the current Brutalist site on London Wall?   SA : The current site at London Wall is simply too small for our ambitions to reach every schoolchild in the capital and tell the stories of London and Londoners past, present, and future—no longer a museum fit for twenty-first-century London. It’s also very a tricky location, with access via highwalks and no ground-level entrances. In fact, it would be fair to say we are invisible behind the walls of the roundabout that shields us. The new museum at West Smithfield will be situated at one end of the City’s Culture Mile and is directly opposite the new Crossrail station in Farringdon. We like to say that the new site is two stops from Paris! Situated within beautiful, historic market buildings designed by the inimitable Sir Horace Jones, they’re the perfect new home for a museum for London: not shiny new buildings or a grand old palace, but very special market structures grounded in the working and trading history of the city. We are aiming to attract two million visitors in the first year, compared to our current footfall of around 800,000, and the project will be a key part of London’s post-COVID recovery.   CJLPA : The new site has an interesting plan centred around different types of ‘Time’. Could you tell us about this, and how it came to be?   SA : The ground floor of the General Market, ‘Our Time’, will be a hub for London events. With gatherings ranging from festivals, markets, and performances to talks and discussions about urgent local matters, it will become a new space for Londoners and visitors to the city to come together. Even when no event is on, it will simply be a new, welcoming space to meet friends or just spend time amid displays and activities which explore London’s lived experience—the London of our own living memories.   Beneath the General Market, ‘Past Time’ will be a spectacular underground space, home to the rich historical galleries of the museum. Here we will showcase the unrivalled breadth of our London Collection, made up of some seven million items. Content will range from skeletons to dresses, vehicles to art and photography, and include the exquisite jewellery of the Cheapside Hoard in the Goldsmiths’ Gallery. There will be theatrical, sensory, and interactive displays, full of 10,000 years of human drama.   A live train line runs alongside this space, which was once a huge goods depot for the Great Northern Railway. At the far end, in the old salt store, visitors will be able to watch the trains rumble by as passengers peer in—a visceral reminder of the connectedness of these buildings to the city in which we are rooted.   CJLPA : You have spoken well on how you want the new Museum to tell the stories of a wider range of Londoners. What role do you see for the more traditional elements, like the Tudor and Roman collections?   SA : Before London, there was Londinium. Our Roman story is crucial in telling the story of our city and its people with, as we know, remnants still around today. These iconic London ‘moments’, including the Romans, the Great Fire, and the Suffragettes form the foundation of our museum and city alike. These core pieces of the narrative will be told in full in our new museum galleries, in a space we’re currently calling ‘Past Time’. They’re also key curriculum topics and, with our vision to reach every school child in London, will form vital elements of our learning programmes. In essence we will be illuminating London across time in a way that is both familiar and very, very different. We can’t tell the story of London and miss out the Great Fire, but we can draw out new narratives, new voices, new insights that come from looking at London from the perspective of 2021.   CJLPA : How will you be growing your permanent collections?   SA : We are actively collecting in three ways, adding to our collections through archaeological finds thus building an ever more comprehensive London Archaeological Archive. Secondly, we are adding to our collections through contemporary collecting programmes such as ‘Collecting the Pandemic’. When a compelling reason to record a moment that is happening now becomes apparent, we get collecting. The last time we undertook such a large-scale contemporary collecting programme was during the war, when we collected what people were wearing—particularly clothes that were designated as utility wear. Finally, we continue to collect historic objects in the traditional ways from donations to purchase. Some examples of these would be Daphne Hardy Henrion’s Festival of Britain sculpture and Pierre Prévost’s 1815 Panorama of London  , which came up for sale in 2018. These objects become part of the London Collection, which is more than seven million items strong.   CJLPA : You have plans to use digital technology to get people around the world thinking about important cultural issues. What exactly do these plans entail?   SA : Being truly 24/7, live-streaming data from London, broadcasting from the Museum, just to name a few activities. But it would be fair to say that this, as for every other cultural organisation, has become a more significant focus. Watch this (digital) space!   CJLPA : How important do you consider it to see the Museum’s collections in person versus digitally?   SA : More than ever, the last year has shown us that we cannot be complacent and rely on physical visits alone (although we can’t wait to welcome back our much-missed visitors!). How we’ve developed our digital offer has been nothing short of incredible and we must continue to build on this progress. We have seen the appetite is there. From our Great Fire livestreams beaming directly to thousands of school children in summer last year, through to our digitising former exhibitions such as ‘Disease X’ and turning our blockbuster exhibition ‘The Cheapside Hoard’ into the ‘Tweetside Hoard’—just some of examples of our recent digital work—we have a great foundation to build on. The story of London and Londoners isn’t confined to within the M25; it transcends borders and has national and international appeal as one of the greatest cities in the world, so we have an obligation, as well as a passion, to share our content as far as possible. We’re thinking hard about how to apply this mentality to the new Museum of London where we have the opportunity to shape our digital presence, both physically within the buildings but also online, from the ground up. We’re adding to our collections all the time; most recently we’ve acquired a host of COVID-related objects to make sure this unreal time is captured— we’ve collected people’s experiences of Ramadan in lockdown, the sounds of London’s silent streets during the pandemic, posters, flyers from protests, and much more.   Our role also extends beyond our collections and our ‘stuff’. Museums are increasingly becoming spaces for important debate, relearning, and exploration of hard-hitting subjects that affect us all. Of course, our role will always be rooted in history, but we have a voice and must use it. Joseph Court, the interviewer, is an Archaeology graduate from Trinity College, Cambridge, who placed first each year and specialised in the ancient Near East. He is interested in the very new as well as the very old: tech law and policy, Wikipedia editing, and film.

Iqan Shahidi is a PhD candidate in Intellectual History at the University of Cambridge. He completed his undergraduate studies in Sociology at the Bahai Institute of Higher education and was arrested in 2010 because of his activities in support of the universal right to access education. After he was released from a five-year prison sentence, he continued his studies in the UK with a Master’s in Social and Political Thought at the University of Sussex, and an MPhil in Intellectual History and Political Thought at the University of Cambridge. CJLPA : Iqan, where did you grow up, and what did you study before arriving in Cambridge? Iqan Shahidi : I grew up in a city in the west of Iran called Kermanshah. When I turned 18, I took the national university entrance exam. I was informed that I couldn’t attend university because my file was incomplete. That’s a common error encountered by members of the Baha’i faith. After being turned down, I wanted to explore the issue and to access my right to higher education. So, I started corresponding with a number of authorities: from various commissions of the parliament, the Islamic Commission on Human Rights, various NGOs defending civic rights, religious and political authorities in our region and at the national level, to courts of justice. But the result was the same. I was not allowed to go to university because I was a Baha’i. CJLPA : So, wherever you went they just said: ‘Sorry, that’s not possible’? IS : It wasn’t fully clear in all the cases. Some of them said they would investigate, but I never heard anything back. It was interesting because the agency that was responsible for the national exam said: ‘You can’t go to university because of a memorandum that was signed in 1991 by Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran’.[1] In that memorandum, it is mentioned that Baha’is must not be permitted to attend university, and that any paths towards their economic or cultural progress should be blocked. That’s the reason why Baha’is can’t access higher education, hold governmental jobs, or be teachers, for example. I started studying at an institution founded in 1987 by the Baha’i community itself: the Baha’i Institute for Higher Education (BIHE). It was an active and constructive response to the systematic deprivation of their right to education. They hired all the Baha’i professors who had been expelled after the Islamic revolution, taking advantage of this wide pool of human resources and putting it to good use. I studied sociology at the BIHE and was arrested during the last semester of my studies because of my human rights activities. Whilst I was studying, I collaborated with an increasing number of lawyers, human rights defenders and social activists that were trying to follow legal paths for acquiring the right to education for those who had been deprived of it. CJLPA : So, you were very much making connections and exploring the options there. Did you then hold protests? IS : No, we didn’t hold protests. The Baha’i faith recommends that Baha’is obey the government, and if they face discrimination or persecution, they are encouraged to focus on attaining their legal rights through legal means at the local and national level. If that doesn’t resolve the issue, like in Iran, they are urged to simultaneously explore every international legal avenue in order to acquire these rights. CJLPA : Would you say the Baha’i approach to obtain social rights—through legal pathways—is a humanistic approach? Is it in line with Baha’i beliefs? IS : Yes, Baha’is actively try to promote these kinds of values, because they believe that humans hold the utmost responsibility to bring injustice to a standstill. They have tried to promote these ideas in peaceful ways, to share these principles, to promote them at all times, in all possible spaces. The original Baha’i population of Iran was a mixture of different communities from various backgrounds: Zoroastrians, Jews, Christians, Muslims (both Sunni and Shia), and atheists. They tried to embody these principles within that community so that people could hold the same rights and respect for each other. CJLPA : How would you describe the Baha’i faith? It’s quite modern, but has it been persecuted for a long time in Iran, or is that something that arose with the Islamic Revolution? IS : The Baha’i faith, as you mentioned, is a relatively new religion. It was born in Iran, but it’s now a global community. There are Baha’is in every country and in most cities in the world. Baha’is believe in the oneness of humankind, freedom of opinion, in the equality of men and women, and in the harmony of science and religion. Baha’is also believe that divine educators or manifestations of God—Abraham, Krishna, Zoroaster, Moses, Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, and Baha’u’llah (whom Baha’is believe is the latest of these messengers so far)—come from the same source. In essence, these religions are different manifestations of one truth and are all from God. The Baha’i community in Iran has been persecuted since its birth—mainly because of their convictions. Originally, persecution against the Baha’i community arose from their belief in oneness and gender equality, for example. Their ideas weren’t acceptable to the religious understanding of the era, or of that specific geography. Over time, the persecution of Baha’is took various forms. After the Islamic Revolution it intensified: over 200 Baha’is were executed over false accusations such as spying for Israel or promoting corruption on Earth. CJLPA : What has been the main reason for persecution of the Baha’is in Iran? IS : This persecution is still religious in its nature, but, for example, Baha’is have long been accused of being Israeli spies, because their holiest shrine is in Israel. If someone knows the history, however, they would know that the Baha’i faith was born in Iran, about a century before the existence of Israel and that Baha’u’llah was exiled to Palestine by two Muslim rulers—the Qajar rulers of Iran and the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. This was decades before the establishment of Israel. A finite number who had followed Baha’u’llah into exile remained there and later the Baha’i World Centre was established there to assist in the management of Baha’i community affairs. The accusation of spying for Israel arises from ignorance and the fact that Baha’is have never had freedom of the press in Iran. They aren’t able to defend themselves or to raise awareness of their own ideas or principles. In the public sphere, many Iranians think that Baha’is do not believe in chastity, but this is a slanderous lie promoted by the clerics to incite hatred and justify persecuting the Baha’is. Anti-Baha’i organisations in Iran hold the freedom to promote these false accusations through national TV, radio, or newspapers, but Baha’is were never granted the opportunity to respond. Instead, they were imprisoned or exiled. But I think the situation has changed in the last few decades. Baha’is now have access to global media, where they can share the true principles and values of Baha’i Faith. Now, more of the Iranian people know that the Baha’i Faith has millions of followers all over the world. However, in Iran, Baha’is still don’t have access to the national media or the press and unfortunately, lots of hate speech still takes place every day in Iran against them. CJLPA : When you started campaigning for equal education rights, had you heard about these issues facing Baha’is before experiencing them first-hand? Was it something you knew about, or was it your experience that led you to take action? IS : I had heard about it—my mother was expelled from university in the early years of the revolution, so I knew that Baha’is weren’t allowed to access higher education. Although the Baha’is are the largest community deprived from education in Iran, there are others who have also been denied a right to education. In 2006, however, when my application to university was unsuccessful, there were 600 Baha’is turned down, just in that year. CJLPA : How does that take place? Does the government have records of who is Baha’i? Do you have to state it when you take the national exam? IS : I don’t know how the government finds out. It’s not difficult, really, because if you ask a Baha’i if they are Baha’i or not, of course they would say: ‘Yes, I’m Baha’i’. One of the principles of the Baha’i Faith is truthfulness, because it fosters social capital and is the foundation of all human virtues. CJLPA : When you took the exam, did you suspect that you would be barred? IS : Yes, but I wanted to try my absolute best. I dedicated a full year and a half to studying intensely all day and night before the exam, on the off chance that things would go differently this year and I would be allowed to go to university. I had very good grades. But it didn’t happen. CJLPA : Clearly it paid off somehow, since you’re now doing your PhD! Was it difficult to transfer to Sussex University for your Masters? IS : It was difficult because the BIHE is not recognised by the Iranian Education Department or Ministry. When you apply for higher education in other countries, in most cases, you are asked to provide the name of your previous university. As a Baha’i from Iran, you have to explain in depth to the institution that you are applying to that although the BIHE isn’t recognised as an official university, it functions just like one. I don’t know of any other such university or higher educational institution in the world. CJLPA : It is a very unique concept. There are universities that don’t even exist in some countries, where you can pay to receive a degree, but they don’t even have lecturers. It’s funny that this can exist, but you can’t have recognition of the BIHE as a legitimate educational institution. IS : Exactly. Luckily, nowadays, there are a growing number of prestigious universities that have accepted Baha’i students from BIHE. On the website of the BIHE there is a list compiling these, with universities such as Harvard, Yale, the University of California, Columbia, the University of Chicago, and so on—and that’s just in the United States. CJLPA : How many Baha’i citizens do you think have been deprived of higher education overall? IS : That’s very difficult to estimate. Not everyone speaks about it. Every year though, hundreds of Baha’i students are turned down from university and now this is a multi-generational problem, so it is fair to say thousands and thousands of the Baha’is have been deprived of higher education. CJLPA : When you started campaigning for the universal right to education in Iran, you went to all of these institutions, all of these public services—was there any one event that led to your arrest in 2010, or was it something that built up gradually? IS : We were a group of Baha’i students actively asking for our rights. In 2010, as you mentioned, a number of us were arrested along with some other non-Baha’i human rights activists. This happened very suddenly, and I never anticipated anything like it because every single thing we were doing was completely legal. CJLPA : Your measured attempt to obtain equal education rights was met with aggression and violence . IS : It was, and not just towards us. In the next couple of years, many other Baha’i students were threatened with intimidating messages, or arrested. I was arrested in 2010 and interrogated for 72 days. They kept me in solitary confinement, all day, for that entire period. It was very difficult. I was even tortured physically and psychologically. I was just 21 years old. The conditions in which we were kept were horrifying. It was neither a formal nor a peaceful detention. When we were arrested, it felt like a kidnapping. It took place in the middle of the night in a dark street, and I wasn’t told why I was being arrested. My parents had no idea where I was, and for the next 10 days they were searching everywhere for me. CJLPA : That’s terrifying. IS : I didn’t even know where I was, because I was taken to Tehran, a considerable distance from the city where I lived. One night, after the interrogations started, I was beaten extensively and forced to wear a blindfold. I never actually saw my interrogator’s face, or the people who were beating me. I didn’t even know what objects they were beating me with. I remember the first day they started the beatings—it was eleven in the morning and it continued until sunset. When I was returned to solitary confinement, I felt immense pain in my entire body. My main question was: ‘What have I done?’. The pain subsided after a few days, but the question never left my mind. At the time, they were attempting to get a video confession out of us: that, for example, we had participated in various demonstrations. They wanted us to confess that we were ordered by Baha’i institutions to be present at protests against the government. This was when the Green Movement[2] was taking place. But it was all false. We resisted the confession, despite the pain. To have agreed to the interview would have meant an admission of guilt, for something we had never done. Following the 72 days of interrogation, I was released and taken to court. When I informed the general prosecutor that I had been tortured in detention, he just laughed in my face. It was shocking, and extremely embarrassing because he represented the final authority that I could have turned to for justice. I think this kind of attitude has become systematic in various kinds of persecution against a wide variety of citizens in Iran. In court, it was like another interrogation. The judge was questioning me and insulting me—he was completely biased. He sentenced me to five years of imprisonment. I was accused of being a member of a ‘misled Baha’i sect’, and an illegal group. It was just a made-up charge. I was 22 when I was brought to court. I couldn’t believe that I was going to be sentenced for five years of prison for absolutely nothing. CJLPA : When you should have been at university. IS : Exactly. I was asking to go to university and they sentenced me to jail. When I was granted an appeal but the verdict was reiterated, it was an even greater shock. The second court hadn’t even read my file. They just confirmed it. I was in prison from 2012-2017. It was a very difficult time. It was tough, but I learned a lot in those years because I was in prison with many other political prisoners and prisoners of conscience from different backgrounds. Funnily enough, the relative majority of the prisoners were Baha’i. Baha’is were no longer a minority in prison! CJLPA : Did you find a sense of community? Did you make any good friends? IS : In that particular sense, it was a good time. Of course, it was tough, the sanitary conditions were awful and the food was terrible. We didn’t have access to a phone. We couldn’t call our families or friends. Added to the pressure of living in a very, very small place with many people—all male—it was hard. I tell my friends that when you love someone and have chosen to live together, you may have disagreements from time to time, but you always have the possibility of getting a coffee or having a walk in the park. But in prison we hadn’t chosen each other, we weren’t in love with each other, and we didn’t have any opportunities to leave. We had to stay in each other’s company for 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, for five years. Many prisoners had much longer sentences than mine: some were there for 10 or 15 years. I was living in a room with two friends who had been given execution sentences. You can probably understand how difficult it would be to have that death sentence hanging over you and to be summoned one day… Everyone was going through a very hard time. But even in that space, you had to be kind, to serve them, and to listen to them. Although we were all very distressed, I tried to be as friendly and helpful as possible to my friends who were in there. Unfortunately, both of my roommates were executed in 2018. CJLPA : I’m so sorry to hear that. IS : You can begin to understand the pressure that everyone was under: this was the negative and difficult aspect of prison. And though it’s ironic to talk about the positive side of prison, we could talk to people from different backgrounds, with people who had never associated with Baha’is. Some of them were political activists, but had never had met any Baha’is. Some didn’t even know that Baha’is had been deprived of a right to education. Can you believe it? They were political commentators and they hadn’t heard of that fact. Earlier I discussed how the Iranian government had been trying to maintain people’s ignorance about Baha’i ideas and the Baha’i situation in Iran. They were somehow successful, because these political activists knew absolutely nothing about it. Anyway, we had a unique opportunity to talk amongst ourselves. Some of them felt estranged in the early days. But after that, the feeling evaporated, because we were living together and they could see my life, my attitude towards various things, and my love for them. We tried to help them correct their misunderstandings, to bring us closer together. It wasn’t as if they were just learning from us, either. We tried to go beyond an idea of ‘us and them’, and there was a lot that we, as Baha’is, learned from these different political activists in prison. Baha’is learned that they ought to be even more active in various civil spheres which Baha’is had previously thought inaccessible. We are now all close friends, and have the amazing privilege of being able to call each other whenever it’s necessary. I think it was a big step for the Baha’i community in Iran, actually, to have been able to meet these people and to have had the opportunity to exchange so many ideas about Iran’s future. How could we engender a more diverse and inclusive society? How could we be more united, since Iran is made up of so many different ethnicities, ideas, and religions? The fact that we were stuck together also represented an amazing opportunity to reflect on these cardinal subjects. CJLPA : It may be difficult to talk about this, but what was your daily routine like? IS : It’s not difficult. It’s still part of my life, unfortunately, because many of my friends remain in prison. Everyone had his own schedule. You could sleep during the day and work at midnight. The important thing was to respect the privacy of others, because it was so hard to find. Not having a room to yourself, everyone had to respect each other. I tried to get up early in the morning and to study. We sometimes struggled to get books brought into the prison, since each one had to be reviewed by the director, who often vetoed them. You can understand why the head of the prison didn’t exactly want us to be happy there. It was difficult, because we wanted to read, to study, to walk even. We only had two or three hours a day in the yard where we were allowed to get some fresh air. You could run, if you had shoes, but no-one was actually allowed to have them inside the prison. That was an added challenge. It was a very small yard, with only one tree at its centre and no grass. They even cut down the tree after two or three years. As a service to prisoners, I distributed the prison meals twice a day. I was so ashamed during lunch and dinner because the food was absolutely terrible. I had to convince people to come each time, to encourage them to eat, and they were always disappointed. But someone had to do it. CJLPA : In terms of facilities, did you have a library, or a reading room? IS : Actually, the books were all kept in various rooms. For example, when I managed to import some books for myself, I kept them in mine. You had to keep up to date with which books were in whose room. It was also, of course, dependent on your relationship with people. If you knew them, you could borrow a book from them. We didn’t have many books and our options were really limited. But they were from different contexts, so if you wanted to you could read across a wide array of subjects. CJLPA : You’re now doing your PhD at Cambridge, with almost limitless access to any book that you like. What did you choose to write about? IS : I’m writing on the concept of decline in the writings of Iranian intellectuals of the 20th century. If someone in prison had told me that I would be doing my PhD at Cambridge in three years’ time, I wouldn’t have believed it. One day you’re in prison because of your struggles for the universal right to higher education, and then three years later you find yourself at one of the most famous universities in the world. CJLPA : How do you remain in contact with the Baha’i community in the UK? IS : The UK has a strong Baha’i community. They organise different community-building activities that aim to build capacity in people to become protagonists of the wellbeing of their community and society. These activities are open to everyone. Baha’is welcome members of the public, so that they can consult and reflect together on how best to promote justice in society, to build unified communities, to apply the principles of gender equality in different settings of family, work and so on. There is a focus at the grassroots level on community-building and social activities, in order to empower people, but the Baha’i community in the UK is also trying to contribute to different discourses such as social cohesion, the role of the media, freedom of religion and belief and so on, and to collaborate with various actors of civil society. CJLPA : If there were one thing that people reading this interview should walk away with, what would you like them to share with other people, to raise awareness of? IS : I think the most important thing is the concept of universal participation, to understand that every human being has a potential that should be released through education, and that it is our duty to help everyone access that right. In a healthy body, all the cells are involved in the body’s well-being. The body itself supports all cells by feeding them, so it’s also a mutual relationship. In our society, if you want to have a healthy society, all the cells, the different citizens of the world should be educated and empowered, so that their potential can materialise and they can work in promotion of the public good. That’s how I perceive the main role of education and it is probably the ultimate goal of my activities. CJLPA : I wanted to ask you one last personal question. Being away from home is an important theme in Iranian popular music, for example in LA and other exile communities. Is there a song that that you particularly associate with Iran, that makes you think of home? IS : There is a very famous song by Shajarian, called Morgh-e Sahar. The main idea expressed in the song is one of optimism for the future and taking steps towards overcoming the barriers in our way. I think that’s something we should always keep in mind. There are many difficulties or challenges in our lives, and I think we need to nurture this optimism. We should also be systematic, of course, with evolving conceptual frameworks that are fostered both by spiritual principles and scientific knowledge. CJLPA : You remain hopeful about the future of Baha’is in Iran, and their education. You have to, in a way, don’t you? IS : Yes, that’s an indispensable part of any kind of desire for change. We need to keep going on, and I think this song fosters both hope and action, so that we can all take part in the betterment of the world, and build a brighter future. This interview was conducted by Casper Alexander Sanderson. Casper has received an MA (Hons) in Arabic, Persian and Russian at the University of St Andrews, as well as an MPhil in Modern Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Cambridge, for which he was awarded the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Studentship Grant. [1] The memorandum is available online at < https://www.humanrights.bic.org/iran >. [2] The Green Movement, or Green Wave, was a political movement that arose after the 2009 Iranian presidential elections, demanding the removal of Ahmadinejad from office.

Introduction No one knows about Amir Tataloo. Bahman Ghobadi’s film No One Knows About Persian Cats (2009) could be seen as a dynamic and thrilling introduction to Iranian popular music: two rock musicians form a band and run around Tehran, desperately looking for a way to leave the country. Many Iranian musicians, however, criticised the film’s sensationalist representation of the popular music scene, stating that it greatly exaggerated the danger they face in order to depict them as victims of an oppressive regime.[1] The rapper Amir Tataloo, too, has been subject to an overly politicised portrayal, failing to be considered as a complex figure by the media and in scholarship. I first became aware of Tataloo’s music when I came across his video Energy Hasteei [Nuclear Energy], in which he sings in support of the Iranian nuclear program on board a navy ship. At the time, I was interested in the intersections between rap and politics in Iran, and had never before heard any rap songs in support of the government. I was intrigued as to what led Tataloo to produce the music video—was he coerced into making it, or perhaps rewarded with a small fortune? My further research did not provide answers to these questions. His story only became increasingly confusing: in May 2017, he appeared in a high-profile meeting with current president Ebrahim Raisi, but only three years later, in January 2020, Iranian judicial authorities requested that Interpol issue a ‘red alert’ for his arrest in Turkey ‘for spreading corruption’.[2] With each article, whether from news outlets or academic journals, it was difficult to gain any real sense of who Amir Tataloo was. It appeared that Tataloo the person, the rapper, could not be disentangled from his relations to the Iranian government. Writers seemed only able to view him through the distorted lenses of resistance or propaganda: he has generally been portrayed either as an illegal party rapper, fighting against the autocratic government, or as a mere pawn of the Iranian regime’s propaganda centres. In this article, I aim to look beyond the reductionist binaries that often dominate discussions of popular music and power in Iran (anti- vs. pro-regime, liberal vs. hardliner) and present a more multifaceted perspective of rap music’s significance in Iranian politics. Looking at this music scene through the figure of Tataloo provides a deeper understanding of its evolution in the last few years, how social media has impacted the genre, and the ways in which rap’s legality is constantly under negotiation. The main body of this paper is divided into two sections. The first section explores the evolution of Tataloo’s image and artistry through three music videos: Energy Hasteei [Nuclear Energy], Shohadā [Martyrs], and Jahanam [Hell]. The stark contrast between each video’s discourse and artistic choices highlights the need for more complex portrayals of Tataloo, depictions that consider the significance of these works for the rapper and his career. In addition, I argue that scholars and journalists, in their focus on the political messages in the first and second videos, funded by the Revolutionary Guard, have omitted an important perspective. An analysis of these videos’ aesthetic elements reveals two noteworthy processes taking place: an appropriation and sanitisation of conventional hip-hop tropes for the purpose of propaganda, as well as a clear improvement in the artistry of rap music videos. The second section considers what Tataloo’s career and interactions with several branches of the Iranian government can reveal about the legitimisation of rap music in Iran. I explore the main arenas on which the negotiation of rap’s legality can play out, and identify the principal stakeholders and agents of influence in this process. Amir Tataloo—background Amir Tataloo is the stage name chosen by Amirhossein Maghsoudloo; a popular but controversial Iranian rapper considered part of the first generation of the Iranian underground hip-hop scene. The musician was born in Tehran on September 21, 1987. He started singing pop music at the age of 17 in 1998 and, in 2003, set up a blog where he would publish his compositions.[3] Tataloo’s career began as an illegal ‘underground’ rapper, directly criticising the government for not providing him with a legal outlet for his music. He has repeatedly sought to obtain official licenses for the release of his music from the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, but to no avail. Indeed, to this day, very few rap albums have ever been approved by the Ministry for official release.[4] For this reason, Tataloo chose to publish all his music online.[5] On three separate occasions, the rapper has been detained at the orders of Iranian authorities: 2013, 2016 and 2020. In December 2013, Tataloo was briefly arrested by the Iranian gasht-e ershād [morality police] on charges of cooperating with foreign satellite news channels[6]. The rapper was arrested for a second time in 2016 on charges of ‘ tashviq be fesād u fahshā ’ [encouraging corruption and prostitution].[7] It was later revealed that the cause of his arrest was an audio file posted to his Instagram, which lead to Tataloo being charged with several crimes, such as insulting a government official, qazf [accusing someone of adultery or sodomy], and inciting threats.[8] Finally, in January 2020, Tataloo was arrested for a third time by Turkish authorities in Istanbul, who stated that Interpol had issued a ‘red notice’ for him. This notice was reportedly issued by Iranian judicial authorities who accused him of ‘encouraging citizens, especially young people, to use drugs, especially psychotropic drugs, and for spreading corruption’.[9] Having once held the most followed account on Instagram, Tataloo also broke several other records on social media, such as the most comments on a single Instagram post: 18 million[10], and the most viewed live broadcast on Instagram: 626,000 views.[11] The rapper, in the court session during his first arrest, suddenly stood up and stated: ‘ nemi tavānid harkāri mi khāhid bā man bekonid; man milionhā havadār dāram ’ [You can’t do whatever you want with me; I have millions of fans].[12] After his arrest in 2016, his fans took to social media to defend him and demand his release, posting 700,000 comments on Instagram, including on the accounts of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, saying that musicians do not belong in jail. According to the data recorded by the users themselves on Twitter, these reactions came from two age groups: 13 to 17 years old and 18 to 24 years old.[13] The rapper’s immense popularity on social media has allowed him to explore a space in which he can express himself freely, uninhibited by most of the cultural and political restrictions facing musicians living in Iran. Tataloo’s unofficial online releases, which have been published and shared endlessly on social media apps such as Telegram and Instagram, essentially sidestep the state’s official cultural institutions. The public forums and comment sections which surround these releases represent a worryingly opaque space for hardline Iranian authorities, where fiery young people could possibly gather to chat about subversive beliefs or to ‘spread corruption’. Overall, Tataloo occupies a highly contested position in Iranian society. The rapper’s most ardent fans refer to themselves as ‘ tatāliti ’ [Tatalites], and have written a 500-page fan book compiling his biography, transcribed interviews and his complete lyrics. They follow certain rituals inspired by their idol, such as the ‘ dure-ye pāki ’ [period of purity]: fourteen days in which fans should not eat or smoke, sin or have relationships with the opposite sex, and should exercise daily. Tataloo even designed a flag for his fans.[14] As a result of the near-zealotry of his fans, he has been perceived as a cult leader or as a fraudster who exploits the vulnerability of adolescents.[15] Literature Review Popular music and politics in Iran The relationship between music and politics in Iran is a complex tapestry, in which several interweaving power structures have varying degrees of influence over music’s permissibility, making the latter exist in a constant state of negotiation. Rap music, which is the focus of this article, stands in marked contrast to other genres of popular music: rappers are very rarely granted a license from the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, without which it is illegal for any musician to record or release music. Tataloo’s pigeonholing in scholarship as either a protest rapper or a pawn of Iran’s propaganda centres prevents us from understanding the implications of his unique position in Iranian society. Both Nooshin[16] and Semati[17] have drawn attention to the reductionist binaries which dominate discussions of popular music and power in Iran, with overly simplistic conceptions of hegemony and resistance, reformists and hardliners, modernity and tradition, etc. Indeed, in their haste to view music through the lens of politics, scholars have missed something fundamental about music: its aesthetic value. Street[18] and Steward[19] stress the danger of looking at music purely through a political lens when, for many, it functions primarily as a source of aesthetic pleasure. Within the context of Persian cultural studies, this sentiment is echoed by Nooshin, who discusses the romanticisation of ‘resistance’ in representations of Iranian popular music.[20] In over-politicising music scenes in Iran, she argues that scholars disregard or push other equally important aspects of musical activities to the margins, and that this portrayal is more representative of the author’s beliefs than the motivations of the musicians. The political fetishisation of musicians from the Middle East has also been discussed by Swedenburg[21] in relation to Palestinian musicians, who finds that their music is only appreciated if it fits within a narrative of Palestinian resistance. The necessity of stepping beyond reductionist narratives of hegemony and resistance in interpretations of popular music is crucial to the analysis of Tataloo’s music, motivations, and persona. Laachir and Talajooy’s book, though centred around Resistance in Middle Eastern Cultures , compiles several convincing examples of how to surpass oversimplification in analyses of resistance.[22] Mozafari, for example, succeeds in conveying the resistance of solo female vocalists, a marginalised group in Iran, whilst still granting them agency.[23] By focusing on the social and professional implications of these musicians’ strategies to resist censorship, Mozafari provides a multifaceted perspective of the significance of this form of resistance. The works cited above stand as the exception that proves the rule, revealing the gap in current scholarship of accounts of popular music that examine the differing motivations of musicians beyond the purely political. Iranian rap music Beyond its subversive potential, there are several more aspects of rap music worthy of scholarly investigation. Ranjbar insists that all rap music in Iran should be considered oppositional due to its unofficial and highly contested nature, regardless of whether the lyrics of songs are political, however this assertion rests on the idea that rap music is entirely ‘underground’.[24] This is a misleading and reductionist term which fails to account for the several occasions on which rap albums have been licensed by the Islamic Republic’s Ministry of Culture, as early as 2003,[25] or on which rappers have collaborated with the state’s media centres.[26] Although such examples are as of yet relatively uncommon, they problematise Ranjbar’s clear-cut model of resistance and hegemony. Few English-language works in scholarship supersede this binary in their analysis of rap lyrics. In Persian, however, some scholars treat the oppositional lyrics of rappers with more nuance. Goudarzi and Alvandi, whilst focusing on counter-hegemonic themes, reveal the numerous socio-economic topics tackled by rappers beyond the purely political: widespread poverty, unemployment, corruption, or addiction.[27] Similarly, Kowsari and Mowlaei emphasise how Iranian rap music, in addition to being a marginal discourse in society, itself contains several dominant and marginal discourses; radical protest only constituting one of the nine discourses they identified. These discourses indicate several other lyrical themes worthy of scholarly investigation, notably feminism and hedonism.[28] Tataloo is acknowledged as one of the main rappers in the latter discourse, stressing the need to consider his position in Iranian society with an aesthetic angle, and from the perspective of his audience. It is relevant to consider how Iranian rappers have been classified in scholarship, and whether Tataloo fits neatly into these categories. As I have already mentioned, Kowsari and Mowlaei grouped rappers into certain themes of discourse, based on an analysis of their song lyrics. The consensus, however, is that categorisation based on the goals and motivations of rappers is the most useful.[29] Johnston and Ranjbar divide these musicians into three categories: aggressive ‘gangsta’ rappers who break taboos, moralistic rappers who strive for social awareness and commercial ‘pop’ rappers. As Golpushnezhad[30] and Johnston28 point out, however, the traditional distinction between ‘political’ and ‘party’ rappers is of limited use: many artists known for poppy, superficial songs became outspoken critics of President Ahmadinejad during the 2009 Green Movement, including Amir Tataloo.[31] Whereas rap remains essentially unauthorised and unofficial in Iran, several genres, like pop and rock, have now become legalised and accepted following a period of illegality in the wake of the Islamic Revolution. Nooshin argues that whereas in the 1980s the Islamic Republic essentially gave pop music its subversive power by banning it, in the following decade, the government appropriated this genre and embedded it into official establishment institutions in order to render it safe, controllable and docile.[32] She later discussed the recurrence of this trend with the genre of rock music.[33] Siamdoust points out that the Islamic Republic would rather bring certain music under its control and express a vacuous joy through it, than permit musicians to freely express real, potentially subversive feelings.[34] Only Golpushnezhad has specifically focused on this trend of appropriation in rap. By dividing an analysis of Iranian rap music into three chronological phases, she argues that it has evolved from being completely marginal and unauthorised, to a genre partially supported and funded by the IRGC.[35] New nationalist propaganda There is general agreement in scholarship that Iran’s youth is the demographic that the Islamic Republic is most focussed on to preserve its political legitimacy and perpetuate its revolutionary values. Bobbio, Khatam, and Zimmt argue that the Islamic Republic’s lack of support from the youth arises from its failure to respond to their demands of economic and social freedoms. Their analysis of the political situation in Iran, however, tends to be overly reductionist; the broad assertions that young people are moving away from Islamic values towards a ‘Western’ (read ‘liberal’, ‘democratic’) lifestyle[36] and that Iran is essentially a ‘post-Islamist’ society[37] reveal more about the author’s political fantasies than those of the young Iranian population. In addition, Bobbio’s claim that Western-inspired music is forbidden in Iran betrays a rather superficial understanding of the Iranian cultural sphere: far from being banned, pop and rock music have gradually become endorsed by the Islamic Republic’s cultural centres.[38] Other scholars offer more nuanced and valuable perspectives, such as Varzi[39] with a wide focus on various forms of data (media, newspapers, interviews etc.) and Bajoghli, with detailed findings obtained through two years of participant observation. Propaganda producers in the Revolutionary Guard espouse a view that through their work, they have ‘distanced [them]selves from young people and that’s the real danger’. Alongside this perceived estrangement exists an acute awareness that the young population would be unlikely to defend the regime in times of crisis, as their fathers and grandfathers had done during the Iran-Iraq War: ‘we could turn into Syria!’[40] In addition, their argument that the regime’s cultural producers are redirecting propaganda away from a traditional Islamic conception of nationalism towards one that emphasises Iran’s uniqueness is highly significant, as it reveals the motives behind the production of new forms of nationalist propaganda in Iran, such as Tataloo’s music videos Energy Hasteei [Nuclear Energy] and Shohadā [Martyrs]. In examinations of this new form of propaganda, however, too much agency has been granted to the media producers of the IRGC, rather than the artists involved. In all accounts of Tataloo’s collaboration with conservative branches of government,[41] the rapper is never treated as anything more than a puppet of the regime’s propaganda centres. Bajoghli’s call for the need in scholarship to perceive regime media producers as ‘complex actors’ is not extended to the musicians and directors who actually create the nationalist promotional material—the question of who these artists are, and whether they are all fully supportive of the regime, remains wholly unexplored. In valuing the regime producers’ experience over that of the artists they employ, this scholarship has inadvertently reproduced the authoritarian and prescriptive dynamics between official cultural institutions (the Ministry of Islamic Culture and Guidance, the Islamic Propaganda Organisation) and Iranian artists; artists have been stripped of their agency and have failed to be considered beyond the gaze of the state and its intentions. An exploration of Tataloo’s unique status would encourage a multifaceted portrayal of the artists involved in regime-supported media, and help paint a fuller, more complex picture of all the actors involved. Sources and method The first two music videos by Tataloo selected for analysis, Energy Hasteei [Nuclear Energy] and Shohadā [Martyrs], were produced in collaboration with regime media producers and the third, Jahanam [Hell], was released independently. Together, they reveal the broad evolution in Tataloo’s beliefs, values, and aesthetics from 2015 to 2020. Since it is impossible for rappers to appear on state media and in concerts, the virtual space of these Internet-propagated mediums is the only concrete link between the rapper and his audience. Whereas most sources discussed above tend to primarily examine the messages found in the lyrical text of these music videos, their visual and musical form is also worthy of investigation. The first two videos do not merely convey the regime media producers’ nationalistic messages—they also entertain with aesthetic elements, and form a part of Tataloo’s artistic image. Further, the context of their production is highly significant— Jahanam [Hell] is all the more significant due to the stark contrast it draws with the relatively conservative aesthetics of Energy Hasteei [Nuclear Energy] and Shohadā [Martyrs]. Section 1: Propaganda, entertainment or more?—Amir Tataloo through his music videos Energy Hasteei [Nuclear Energy] ‘h ich qodrati nemi tavānad melat-e Irān rā az dāshtan-e energi-ye salah āmiz-e hasteei mahroum sāzad ’ [No power can deprive the Iranian nation of peaceful nuclear energy]. This Persian phrase, appearing at the beginning of Energy Hasteei [42] (0:01), is the most straightforward expression of the music video’s message. Most striking, however, is the sight of Tataloo, a rapper previously shunned by the Iranian regime, singing and dancing on the deck of the IRIS Damavand, the flagship of the Islamic Republic of Iran Navy’s northern fleet.[43] This image quickly captured the attention of international media, who, in conventionally sensationalist terms, noted the significance of such propaganda being released in the final stages of the Iran nuclear talks in Vienna.[44] It is clear why international journalists exclusively focused on the music video’s elements of propaganda—these are the most immediately apparent, and require only a basic knowledge of Iran’s nuclear policy to decode.[45] Visually, there is an evident involvement of the regime in the music video’s production, in the presence of soldiers, a navy frigate and a not-so-subtle portrait of Khamenei in the background.[46] The song’s lyrics (helpfully translated into English for the benefit of international audiences) condemn the hypocrisy of foreign powers in prohibiting Iran from developing nuclear energy whilst being in possession of nuclear weapons: ‘If it’s bad, then it’s bad for you too!’ Tataloo questions why critics have focused on the negative aspects of nuclear energy, when all things contain both ‘good’ and ‘bad’: the sky can provide ‘rain’ but also ‘hurricanes, lighting and hailing’, a fire can both ‘burn’ and be ‘warm’, and water can both ‘drown you’ and ‘save you from thirst’. There is a sudden escalation in analogies however, when the same judgement is applied to guns: they can ‘kill’ but also ‘protect your homeland’.[47] Here, firearms are posited as an extension of nature, hence making it seem perfectly natural for a nation like Iran to develop the capacity for nuclear energy. Released in the final moments of the JCPOA’s negotiation (an agreement on the Iranian nuclear program), this message reads as a nationalistic cry of victory. Bajoghli discusses a new tactic employed by regime media producers to make their propaganda less easily identifiable—they create small and unidentifiable production studios, still funded by the Revolutionary Guard and the government’s cultural budget, but not directly affiliated with them.[48] Indeed, nothing in the music video nor the ‘behind-the-scenes’ footage published alongside it suggests that this video was funded by these organisations—besides one small detail. In its final frame, acknowledgements of all the military divisions who assisted with the music video’s production are followed by a reference to ‘ shabake-ye interneti-ye nasr ’ [Nasr Internet Network].[49] The ‘ darbāre-ye mā ’ [About Us] section of this production studio’s website reveals that it was founded in order to combat the domination of the ‘ mafiyā-ye resāne-ye sihonisti ’ [Zionist media mafia],[50] betraying some of the Revolutionary Guard’s harsh anti-Israeli zeal.[51] There are several elements of Energy Hasteei , however, that journalists and scholars alike have omitted in their focus on its nationalistic propaganda—who the video is addressing and how the video addresses this audience. The populist message in Tataloo’s lyrics, portraying him as a simple, everyday Iranian who is unaware of ‘what is happening in [his] country’ but who senses ‘a scent of exhaustion’[52] is not only meant for an audience in Iran. The fact that this was Tataloo’s first music video to come with English subtitles is not a mere coincidence: the video was clearly intended to have a global reach. At regular intervals, images of ‘normal’ Iranian citizens holding posters with English slogans appear, urging viewers not to ‘let the media fool [them]’, and declaring that Iran is a ‘peacful’ (sic) nation who has ‘never invaded a country’.[53] Behind these citizens are some of the most popular Tehrani sites that any tourist would recognise: the Azadi and Milad towers (0:42, 1:48), the Darabad quarter leading up to the Alborz mountains (0:34) and the capital’s train station (0:16).[54] Tataloo’s assertion that ‘silence is for statues’[55] also gives the impression that he is a courageous hero speaking out against injustice, a narrative that is easily digestible for foreign viewers who only have a superficial knowledge of Iranian politics. Beyond this political narrative, however, there is also something else at play. Conventional aesthetic elements of hip-hop music videos are appropriated and sanitised in Energy Hasteei , in order to instinctively appeal to Iran’s young population, without crossing any of the government’s cultural red lines. The standard rap trope of backup dancers, usually a troupe of attractive women or members of the rapper’s clique, is here replaced by stone-faced soldiers in uniform performing a drill with their rifles in hand. These servicemen can even be seen singing along to the song’s chorus.[56] Considering dance’s position as the most vilified art form in Iran,[57] the use of a military drill as a substitute for backup dancing allows the video’s producers to preserve the form of a hip-hop trope whilst avoiding any problematic display of immodesty. Similarly, the fog machine typically employed in music videos for atmospheric effect is here replaced by smoke grenades and the navy ship’s funnels.[58] A parallel process of the militarisation and sanitisation of hip-hop tropes is also audible in the music of Energy Hasteei . Several conventional elements of rap music are present, such as a groovy, hip-hop style break being played on the drums, as well as floaty arpeggiated melodies from a keyboard in the verses. In the chorus, however, a noticeable shift takes place.[59] Monotone, choir-like backing vocals, short staccato notes on the strings, and intermittent shouts all imbue the music with an element of tension, more typical of military parades or anthems than rap songs. Shohadā [Martyrs] The music video for Amir Tataloo’s song Shohadā [Martyrs] was released on September 23 2015, during Sacred Defence Week, Iran’s most important annual commemoration of the Iran-Iraq war, for which the government schedules public events, television and radio shows. The narrative of martyrdom has its origins in the Battle of Karbala (680 AD) during which the grandson of the prophet Muhammad, Hussain ibn Ali, was killed and beheaded. In fact, virtually all Shi’i imams excluding the 12th are conventionally believed to have been killed in their youth by their opponents. Consequently, shahādat [martyrdom] is intrinsically linked to the ideal of heroism in Shi’ism. In Hamid Dabashi’s words: ‘the only hero is a dead hero’.[60] When Iraq invaded Iran in September 1980, Ayatollah Khomeini was provided an ideal opportunity to strengthen his authority as a religious leader. The largest mobilisation of the Iranian population was essentially achieved by embracing martyrdom as ‘state policy’.[61] The phrases jang-e tahmili [imposed war] and defā’e muqaddas [sacred defence] became common in public discourse, due to their implication that fighting on the front, more than a protection of the nation, constituted a heroic religious act.[62] Released only two months after Energy Hasteei , the music video for Shohadā similarly represents the desire of regime media producers to move away from traditional Islamic conceptions of nationalism towards those that will resonate with Iran’s youth. Much like the Museum of Sacred Defence, opened in 2012 in Tehran, Shohadā redirects the narrative of martyrdom: instead of being seen as a heroic deed or a path to heaven, dying for one’s country is portrayed as being brutal, but necessary. Shohadā opens with a dedication in Persian: ‘ be khānevādehā-ye shohadā-ye jang-e tahmili va hasteei ’ [to the families of the martyrs of the imposed and nuclear war].[63] The video is essentially comprised of three perspectives: soldiers dying at the front, the assassinations of nuclear scientists, and Amir Tataloo paying tribute by singing and rapping. Throughout the music video, the casualties of the ‘imposed’ Iran-Iraq war are visually equated with the assassinations of nuclear scientists, which the state claims were orchestrated by Israeli spies.[64] This parallelism allows regime producers to renew the narrative of martyrdom for a new generation by presenting scenes that young people will be familiar with, since the assassinations portrayed are seemingly based on real events: the first[65], on Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan’s killing by car bomb[66] and the second,[67] on the drive-by shooting of Darioush Rezaeinejad in 2011.[68] The core message here, that all those who die for the state are martyrs, is expressed in several ways which aim to appeal to young people. Firstly, the emotional impact of the assassinations is increased by portraying the victims as ‘ sāde va ‘āsheq ’ [simple and in love]: the first is shown buying a teddy bear, presumably for his love interest, moments before his death, and the second is shown laughing with his wife on the doorstep of their home.[69] Secondly, the image of such a popular celebrity as Tataloo standing in front of coffins draped with the Iranian flag presents a role model for young people to follow in the expression of their nationalistic grief. Furthermore, Tataloo’s singing and rapping conveys grief through a medium that the youth will be able to relate to: ‘ bazi harf-hā geriye dārand ’ [some words cry]. Finally, his assertion that anybody can give their life for their country, ‘ farq nadāre ke jensi, ke rangi, ke qomi ’ [no matter what gender, colour or ethnicity], reads as a rather unusual attempt to appeal to the more liberal tendencies of Iran’s youth.[70] Amir Tataloo, though taking centre stage in Energy Hasteei and Shohadā , has failed to have been considered as a complex character. Any investigation of his motivations, actions and goals in the context of the music videos has been omitted in favour of what he represents: a shocking symbol of the regime’s desperation to appeal to young people, or of rap’s appropriation for the purposes of propaganda. It is no less important to ask what Energy Hasteei and Shohadā mean for Tataloo, lest he be treated as a mere pawn of the regime’s media producers. Though the rapper claims ‘No, I am not involved in political games’,[71] for over a decade he has either been directly associated with politicians, sung about political issues, or taken a public stance on contemporary political issues. In 2009, Tataloo sang in support of the reformist politician Mir Hossein Mousavi during the Iranian parliamentary elections, with the song Irān-e Sabz [Green Iran]. Keeping in mind also that Tataloo was arrested in 2013 for appearing on unauthorised satellite channels, such high-profile, state-supported productions as Energy Hasteei and Shohadā could be seen as providing the rapper with an opportunity to reinvent himself, and wipe his slate clean in the eyes of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance. Certainly, his attire in the music videos suggests as much: the understated tones of his clothing, his beard and the Islamic prayer beads around his neck would seem far more tolerable to government officials than his trademark long hair, exposed chest, arm tattoos and cross necklace. Jahanam [Hell] Tataloo’s music video for Jahanam , released independently in 2020, is far more ambitious than Energy Hasteei and Shohadā , both conceptually and in terms of production value. In duration alone, Jahanam has a longer runtime than both of the state-funded projects combined. Where Energy Hasteei and Shohadā were both literal and realistic in their narratives, Jahanam stands as a multi-layered symbolic exploration of hell through themes of depression, betrayal and political injustice. Three scenarios are juxtaposed in Jahanam , all of which end in Tataloo’s death. The first shows the rapper walking to the edge of a rooftop, looking down at a city, only to turn around and be pushed off by his double.[72] This marks the culmination of his character’s increasingly deteriorating mental state, reflected in the song’s lyrics: ‘az hamishe ghamgin taram’ [more depressed than ever], ‘ chizi namunde azam’ [there’s nothing left of me] and ‘ jahanam mirize tu tanam’ [hell is pouring into me].[73] Here, hell is used as a symbolic representation of a dark mental state, from which there is no escape. In the second narrative, Amir Tataloo depicts a passionate love affair which ends in heartbreak. This hell—the pain of his lover’s betrayal—is expressed visually through Tataloo’s second death: moments after being resuscitated by a doctor, his partner plants a kiss on his lips and proceeds to stab him in the heart.[74] The third narrative portrayed in Jahanam is arguably the most intricate: Tataloo’s tale of incarceration and torture functions on both a symbolic and a literal level. Jahanam opens with a scene of Tataloo on trial—he is seen standing in the defendant’s podium in a prison uniform and handcuffs. Following this trial, Tataloo is violently thrown into a prison cell[75]. It quickly becomes clear, however, that this tale of imprisonment is more than just a metaphor for his vilification and ostracization by society. The song’s lyrics suddenly become very literal: ‘bāyad jelo bāzpors chet furan barge ru pureh kossher konam’ [I have to fill the paper with a bunch of bullshit in front of the interrogator] and ‘mige bas ni bāzam benevis be ki vasli martike olāq?’ [he orders me to write more and asks me: who are you working for, you prick?].[76] The tendency of the Iranian criminal justice system to crack down on artists for ludicrous charges is well documented[77], and here Tataloo reveals another face of hell, a country where his fate is either ‘a’dām ya qafs’ [execution or a cage][78] (‘ Jahanam’ 5:12). The injustice of this system is not only expressed through the very direct portrayal of abuse in an interrogation cell, but the image of a prison guard psychotically attempting to stab a bird with a screwdriver through the bars of its cage.[79] Whether or not one enjoys Tataloo’s character or music, it is undeniable that Jahanam uncovers an artistry which transcends the rapper’s one-dimensional portrayal in scholarship and media as a mere party rapper or a puppet of the Revolutionary Guard’s media centres. In addition, it is hard to think of a greater change of lifestyle than Tataloo’s in between Energy Hasteei and Jahanam . Whereas the rapper appears as a model Islamic citizen in the former, his self-portrayal in Jahanam deliberately crosses the regime’s cultural red lines, as if he is keen on provoking officials at every turn. The music video shows Tataloo drinking whisky, cracking a whip whilst staring at a woman’s derriere and smoking cannabis.[80] Tataloo’s lyrics, too, in addition to being sexually explicit, also contain numerous examples of profanity. With Janaham , Tataloo consciously crosses the point of no return in attempting to appeal to the Iranian authorities—the values espoused in Jahanam are the polar opposite of regime-friendly. Energy Hasteei and Shohadā stood out upon their release in 2015 due to their impressive visuals, and seemed to suggest that regime-funded music videos were far superior in production value to those independently released by rappers. The video for Tataloo’s Jahanam , however, reveals that such a large contrast no longer exists in 2020: unofficial rappers are now able to release productions which rival the quality of state-supported projects. A small sign in one frame of Jahanam reveals that the music video was filmed in Turkey: ‘ hasta hizmetleri ’ [patient services],[81] where Tataloo currently lives. The new trend of Iranian rappers releasing immensely popular tracks and music videos from abroad— Jahanam has 3.5 million views, and the LA-produced Tehran Tokyo by Tataloo’s friend Sasy has 5 million—is reminiscent of Iranian expatriate music releases in the 80s and 90s. So-called Tehrangelesi [a portmanteau of Tehran and Los Angeles] musicians were able to reach Iranian audiences on the black market through cassettes—a new technology far harder for authorities to confiscate and which listeners could copy with ease.[82] It would seem that for this recent wave of rappers, who have also left Iran and are taking advantage of the possibilities of a novel medium, social media is the new cassette. Section 2: The legitimisation of rap in Iran Whether rap music is to become fully sanctioned in Iran remains in question. However, it is clear that a process of co-option and sanitisation has begun in relation to rappers, their music, and aesthetics. If this trend were to continue, rap would join both pop and rock as genres which were once entirely subversive, but gradually became adopted into official state framework in order to rid them of any disruptive potential. The figure of Amir Tataloo, as the most noteworthy and infamous rap musician involved in politics, provides a valuable angle from which it is possible to consider on what arenas the legalisation of rap music could play out, and who could contribute to its unfolding. As explored in the first chapter, music videos funded by the Revolutionary Guard’s media centres such as Energy Hasteei and Shohadā mark the beginning of a co-option of rappers and the aesthetics of their music for the purpose of making nationalist propaganda more appealing to young people. As such, they constitute an important arena through which rappers could gain a higher profile, and their music could gradually become more acceptable. If, like the Chinese government,[83] the propaganda centres of the Islamic Republic such as the IRGC or the Islamic Propaganda Organisation continue to fund and produce music videos to further their message, this would undoubtedly improve rap’s reputation amongst even the most hardline branches of the state—as it would demonstrate that even the vilified rap music can be used to promote the values of the Islamic Republic. Social media provides a space both for famous rappers to gain official social recognition, and for the transmission of hardline political views. Tataloo has published several posts in support of the Ayatollah and the Revolutionary Guard, and has sought to legitimise himself through social media in other ways, such as appearing alongside celebrities that are accepted in the official sphere. As an example, the rapper attended a Persepolis F.C. training session in April 2020 and was photographed alongside famous footballers such as Payam Sadeghian and Mohsen Bengar.[84] Such photoshoots are beneficial for both parties involved: footballers are able to gain publicity through Tataloo’s countless social media followers, and the rapper, by association with figures that are legally recognised by the government’s cultural system, acquires an air of legitimacy and greater cultural influence. The presence of unlicensed yet popular musicians at official events and conferences is an additional site for the negotiation of rap’s legitimacy: much like with footballers, appearing alongside eminent politicians allows rappers to seem endorsed by the regime, whereas politicians can extend their sphere of influence to the musicians’ young fanbase. The principlist politician Hamid Rasaee, prior to denouncing Tataloo for his ‘heretic’ views on Instagram, was seen shaking the rapper’s hand and gifting him a ‘prize’ caricature at a Fars News ceremony in July 2017.[85] Fars News is the ‘semi-official’ news agency of the Iranian government, associated with the Revolutionary Guard[86]—suggesting that Tataloo’s relationship with the latter extended beyond the production of music videos or the publishing of conservative opinions on his social media. Undoubtedly the most significant of these encounters between rappers and hardline politicians remains Tataloo’s meeting with Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi in May 2017. This ‘Elvis Meets Nixon’ moment came as a shock to many Iranians, not least for the sheer absurdity of seeing the two figures sitting side by side: the rapper’s tattoos, visible on his bare forearms, strongly juxtapose with Raisi’s sombre black cleric robes.[87] Beyond their appearance, Tataloo’s career path and past arrests for ‘encouraging prostitution and corruption’ appear wholly irreconcilable with Raisi’s exceptionally conservative politics: the latter was named as one of the four figures who led the 1988 executions of Iranian political prisoners, in which over 5,000 political dissidents were imprisoned, interrogated and killed because of their opinions or non-violent campaigning[88] (‘Blood-Soaked Secrets: Why Iran’s 1988 Prison Massacres Are Ongoing Crimes Against Humanity’). In a video of the meeting, Raisi is noticeably uncomfortable as they discuss Imam Reza, the eighth Imam in Twelver Shi’ism, and his national significance: Tataloo asserts that Imam Reza is not just for clerics but ‘ barā-ye hame-ye Irān-e’ [but for all Iranians!].[89] Indeed, Raisi is also the custodian for the Imam Reza shrine in Mashhad, and the son-in-law of Ahmad Alamolhoda, the prayer leader and Grand Imam of the shrine who, incidentally, banned all music performances in the city of Mashhad.[90] Raisi was in the midst of his presidential bid when the video of his meeting with Tataloo was released in May 2017, and many joked that the rapper cost him the election, as Rouhani was re-elected.[91] The implications of this encounter, however, between hardline cleric and unauthorised musician, are quite serious. The fact that such a conservative politician would even consider meeting a rapper, let alone release a video of their encounter, is a testament to the hardliners’ sheer desperation to appeal to young people. It also suggests that similar compromises in the future could pave the way to the legitimisation of unauthorised musicians. Despite the fact that Tataloo emigrated to Turkey, and spoke out against the regime and Islam in Instagram posts and his music video Jahanam , his popularity on social media continues to be exploited to spread conservative political messages. In December 2020, a video recorded from Instagram Live was posted on Youtube by the channel ‘Amir Tataloo Original Fan’. In the video, an older woman discusses sexual topics with a teenager in order to encourage him to delete Instagram.[92] Iran’s Communications and Information Technology Minister, Mohammad Javad Azari-Jahromi, stated that a ‘certain hardline thinktank’ was responsible for the widespread distribution of the video, which reached half a million views on Youtube.[93] What is unusual about this video, however, is the appearance of the woman, Mina Namdari. She appears without a hijab (compulsory in Iran) and with visible cleavage and a bottle of wine in her hands (though she fails to actually drink from it during the video). It is difficult to understand why a hardline think tank would promote such a video that is blatantly in transgression of Iran’s modesty laws, unless one considers the Revolutionary Guard’s tendency in recent years to attempt to conceal their role in the production of certain propaganda videos.[94] IRGC producers often include profanity and anti-regime messages in their media in order to mask the fact that it is propaganda. With this video, it seems as if hardline producers are hiding their involvement by employing a woman who superficially appears to be breaking the Islamic Republic’s modesty laws. There exist several stakeholders which negotiate the legality and legitimacy of rap music through the arenas outlined above. Media producers in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps such as Reza Hosseini believe that they need to ‘tell better stories’[95] to young people through their content, so that they do not feel ostracised by nationalistic or revolutionary values; they recognise a need to speak ‘in the language of youth’. By pushing their sanitised and professionally-produced appropriation of rap into the limelight, they are also able to detract attention from its more subversive form, essentially silencing any voices of dissent. Their enduring interest in rap as a means to talk to young people, even after Amir Tataloo has turned against them, is clearly visible in the propaganda video published through a Tataloo fan page on Youtube. Hardline politicians too, such as Hamid Rasaee and Ebrahim Raisi, by appearing alongside Tataloo, essentially recognise rap music’s legitimacy and influence in Iranian society and bring it into an official framework. Politicians meeting such rappers displays this genre of music in the light of public attention, and suggests that their transgressive history can be overlooked on certain occasions –casting doubt on the legitimacy of rap’s illegality. Of course, the central factor in any question of rap’s possible legalisation in Iran remains the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, from which all musicians must obtain a license in order to perform and release any music legally. The ministry’s opposition to rap as a genre seemingly arises out of an aversion to its implications of Western influence, rather than out of any particular opposition to its musical aesthetics. It appears that it mostly fears the word ‘rap’, and its ‘European and American’ allusions, but recognises that there is potential for a legitimate form of the genre to be fully licensed in the future: the director of the ministry’s music department Pirooz Arjmand suggests that the term ‘ goft-avāz ’ [musical spoken word] be used to replace ‘rap’, which he asserts takes notice of a tradition of musical spoken word that existed far before rap arrived in Iran, called ‘ tartil khāni ’ [recitation].[96] Indeed, the arrest in March 2021 of producers associated with Sasy Mankan’s video Tehran Tokyo , in which he appears alongside American porn star Alexis Texas, reveals that combating the influence of these expatriate rappers still remains a matter of great concern to the Islamic Republic and its cultural centres. Several members of the Iranian parliament decried the video’s harmful influence, perceiving it as an issue of ‘ āsibha-ye rohāni [...] barāye kudakān-e bi dafā'e ’ [psychological harm to helpless children][97] or ‘ kudakān rā be tamāsha-ye pornogrāfi tashviq konad ’ [encouraging children to watch pornography].[98] The example of pop music’s legalisation, which partially arose from the government’s failure to quash the inflow of subversive expatriate pop in the 80s and 90s, suggests that the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance would benefit from giving licenses to more rappers. Since they are unable to prevent the songs of expatriate rappers such as Amir Tataloo and Sasy Mankan from spreading through the internet, sanctioning a legitimate domestic rap scene would provide a viable alternative to the ‘obscene content’ these musicians freely release from abroad.[99] The IRGC as well as hardline politicians such as Hamid Rasaee and Ebrahim Raisi, perhaps inadvertently, provided Tataloo with a certain legitimacy and cultural standing by granting him an official stage. To a certain extent, propaganda posted through Tataloo’s fan pages reveals that the IRGC hardliners still recognise rap’s powerful influence. There is also the sense, however, that the compromise between hardline branches of the state and rappers such as Tataloo is no longer deemed beneficial to either party. Why would Raisi deem it necessary to resort to endorsing such controversial figures when presidential elections were rigged in his favour?[100] Furthermore, as Jahanam has shown, rappers no longer need to depend on the Revolutionary Guard’s media centres or the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance in order to release professional music and video productions. The power of social media such as Instagram and Youtube has allowed certain rappers to create a ‘hyperground’ rap scene, which the Iranian government cannot censor and through which they can escape its restrictions. Though it is still uncertain whether rap music is to become fully legitimate in the next few years, the case of Tataloo suggests that rappers like himself hold immense influence over the future of the genre, and continues to stand as a strong symbol of rap’s persistence influence and significance in Iranian society. Conclusion If we are to know about Amir Tataloo, it is clear that a different approach is needed. Until researchers move beyond the overly simplistic narratives by which they define rappers, as either fighting against the regime or collaborating with it, they will fail to gain any real sense of rap music’s significance in Iran. In this article, I have attempted to provide several alternate perspectives which account for the multifaceted intersections between music and Iranian politics and paint a more complex picture of the status of rappers in Iranian society. Firstly, I have discussed how certain aesthetic aspects of Amir Tataloo’s music videos, which are taken for granted in favour of their immediate political messages, reveal deeper trends affecting rap music in Iran behind the scenes. In Energy Hasteei [Nuclear Energy] and Shohadā [Martyrs], certain tropes of hip-hop culture are co-opted and rendered ‘safe’: a troupe of backup dancers is replaced by a military parade, and smoke grenades become fog machines. Tataloo’s Jahanam [Hell] reveals that rappers no longer have to depend on funding from the Revolutionary Guard’s media centres in order to create visually impressive music videos. In addition, by juxtaposing the discourse between the videos funded by the IRGC and one which Tataloo released independently, I call for a more multifarious and subtle portrayal of the rapper: one which considers what these videos could represent from his perspective. Secondly, I have examined Amir Tataloo’s career and interactions with various branches of government in order to explore the negotiation of rap music’s legality in Iran. I have revealed how the IRGC and other conservative branches of government continue to recognise rap music’s influence, and the extent to which social media rappers from abroad constitute a threat to the strict guidelines of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance. It is worth considering whether such factors could lead to the emergence of an official form of rap music, vacuous and emptied of any potentially subversive meaning, as has occurred previously with the genres of pop and rock. Casper Alexander Sanderson Casper Alexander Sanderson has received an MA (Hons) in Arabic, Persian and Russian at the University of St Andrews, as well as an MPhil in Modern Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Cambridge, for which he was awarded the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Studentship Grant. [1] Theresa Parvin Steward, ‘I Am the Brave Hero and this Land is Mine’: Popular Music and Youth Identity in Post-revolutionary Iran (University of Edinburgh 2013) 22-130. [2] ‘Iranian Rapper Tataloo Reportedly Arrested in Turkey’ ( RFERL , 28 January 2020) < https://www.rferl.org/a/iranian-rapper-arrested-in-turkey-tehran-authorities-say/30402470.html > accessed 12 June 2022. [3] Mohammad Fowladi, Hell & Purgatory (Tatality.com, January 2020) 16-17. [4] Laudan Nooshin, ‘Hip-Hop Tehran: Migrating Styles, Musical Meanings, Marginalized Voices’ in Byron Dueck and Jason Toynbee (eds), Migrating Music (Routledge 2011) 99. [5] Fowladi (n 3) 16-17. [6] ‘ Amir Tataloo khānande-ye irāni bāzdāsht shod ’ [Iranian Singer Amir Tataloo Was Arrested] ( BBC Persian, 3 December 2013). [7] ‘ Amir Tataloo be etehām-e ‘tashviq be fesād u fahshā’ bāzdāsht shod ’ [Amir Tataloo Was Arrested on Charges of ‘Encouraging Corruption and Prostitution’] ( Voa News, 25 August 2016). [8] ‘ Barresi-ye hoquqi-ye anāvein-e etehami-ye Amir Tataloo ’ [Legal Investigation of the Accusatory Topics of Amir Tataloo] ( JameJamOnline , 3 September 2016). [9] RFERL (n 2). [10] ‘ Rekord-e tāze-ye Tataloo dar Instagrām ’ [Tataloo’s New Record on Instagram] ( Radio Farda, 4 September 2019). [11] Fern Taghizadeh, ‘ Live-e Instagrām dar qarantiye; az sargarmi va āmuzesh tā sokhanrāni va mosābehe ’ [Instagram Lives in Quarantine; From Entertainment and Education to Lectures and Interviews] ( BBC Persian , 13 April 2020). [12] ‘ Mored-e ajib-e Tataloo u tatalitihā ’ [The Strange Case of Tataloo and Tatalites] ( ISNA , 28 August 2016). [13] ‘ Talāsh-e tatalitihā ’ [The Endeavours of Tatalites] ( BBC Persian , 2 September 2016). [14] Fowladi (n 3) 17, 72. [15] ‘ Jomhouri-ye tatalitihā ’ [The Republic of Tatalites] ( Radio Zamaneh , 29 August 2016); ‘ Tasir-e tatalihā dar tartib-e nojavānān ’ [The Impact of Tatalites on Adolescents] ( Farhang News , 11 September 2016). [16] Laudan Nooshin, ‘Prelude: Power and the Play of Music’ in Laudan Nooshin (ed), Music and the Play of Power in the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia (Routledge 2009) 1-31. [17] Mehdi Semati. ‘Sounds like Iran: On Popular Music of Iran’ (2017) 15(3) Popular Communication 155-62. [18] John Street, ‘‘Fight the Power’: The Politics of Music and the Music of Politics’ (2003) 38(1) Government and Opposition 113-30. [19] Steward (n 1). [20] Laudan Nooshin, ‘Whose Liberation? Iranian Popular Music and the Fetishization of Resistance’ (2017) 15(3) Popular Communication 163–91. [21] Ted Swedenburg, ‘Palestinian Rap: Against the Struggle Paradigm’ in Walid El Hamamsy and Mounira Soliman (eds), Popular Culture in the Middle East and North Africa: A Postcolonial Outlook (Routledge 2013) 17–32. [22] Karima Laachir and Saeed Talajooy (eds), Resistance in Contemporary Middle Eastern Cultures: Literature, Cinema and Music (Routledge 2013) 207-275. [23] Parmis Mozafari, ‘Female Solo Singing in Post-Revolution Iran’ (2013) in ibid 262-278. [24] Morvarid Ranjbar, ‘Emergent Culture: Iranian Rap Music as a Tool for Resistance’ (Wilfrid Laurier University 2016) 50-57. [25] Nooshin (n 4) 99. [26] Narges Bajoghli, Iran Reframed: Anxieties of Power in the Islamic Republic (Stanford University Press 2019) 99-106; Elham Golpushnezhad, ‘Untold Stories of DIY/Underground Iranian Rap Culture: The Legitimization of Iranian Hip-Hop and the Loss of Radical Potential’ (2018) 12(2) Cultural Sociology 271-73. [27] Mohsen Goudarzi and Alireza Alvandi, ‘ Musiqi be masabe-ye moqāvemat; mazamin-e kanterhezhemonik dar rap-e fārsi-irāni ’ [Music as Resistance; Counter-Hegemonic Themes in Persian-Iranian Rap] (2019) 8(30) Jām’e farhang resāne [Society Culture Media] 122–44. [28] Masoud Kowsari and Mohammad Mahdi Mowlaei, ‘ Gune-shenāsi-ye goftemānhā-ye musiqi-ye rap-e irāni-fārsi ’ [A Typology of the Discourses in Iranian-Persian Rap] (2013) 29(8) Motāle’āt farhang va ertebātāt [Cultural Studies and Communication] 91–116. [29] Sholeh Johnston, ‘Persian Rap: The Voice of Modern Iran’s Youth’ (2008) 1(1) Journal of Persianate Studies 102–19; Ranjibar (n 24) 50-54; Mahmood Shahabi and Elham Golpoush-Nezhad, ‘Rap Music and Youth Cultures in Iran: Serious or Light?’ (2016) 3 Youth, Space and Time 218–19. [30] Golpushnezhad (n 26) 268. [31] Nahid Siamdoust, Soundtrack of the Revolution: The Politics of Music in Iran (Stanford University Press 2017) 271-281. [32] Laudan Nooshin. ‘Subversion and Countersubversion: Power, Control, and Meaning in the New Iranian Pop Music’ in Annie Randall (ed), Music, Power, and Politics (Routledge 2005) 250-262. [33] Laudan Nooshin, ‘The Language of Rock: Iranian Youth, Popular Music, and National Identity’ in Mehdi Semati (ed), Media, Culture and Society in Iran: Living with Globalization and the Islamic State (Routledge 2008) 70; Laudan Nooshin, ‘‘Tomorrow Is Ours’: Re-Imagining Nation, Performing Youth in the New Iranian Pop Music’ in Nooshin (ed) (n 16) 246–249. [34] Golpushnezhad (n 26) 268. [35] ibid 262–73. [36] Raz Zimmt, ‘The Conservative Predicament in Iran’ ( Institute for National Security Studies , 2017) 2 < https://www.inss.org.il/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/No.-944.pdf > accessed 12 June 2022. [37] Azam Khatam, Struggles over Defining the Moral City: The Problem Called ‘Youth’ in Urban Iran (Oxford University Press 2010) 14. [38] Emanuele Bobbio, ‘Winning Back the “Left Behind”: Iran's New Nationalist Agenda’ (Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI), 2018) 8 < https://www.iai.it/en/pubblicazioni/winning-back-left-behind-irans-new-nationalist-agenda > accessed 12 June 2022. [39] Roxanne Varzi, Warring Souls: Youth, Media, and Martyrdom in Post-Revolution Iran (Duke University Press 2006) 13-21. [40] Bajoghli (n 26) 15-22. [41] ibid 104-106; Bobbio (n 38) 8; Abbas Milani, ‘Iran’s 2017 Election: The Opposition Inches Forward’ (2017) 28(4) Journal of Democracy 30–37; Zimmt (n 36). [42] ‘ Energy Hasteei ’ [Nuclear Energy], ( Youtube , Amir Tataloo, 12 July 2015) 0:01 < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VywTiTVMHts > accessed 12 June 2022. [43] ibid 1:07-1:14 [44] Hanif Kashani, ‘Iranian Rapper Drops Bomb with Pro-Nuke Video’ ( Al-Monitor , 14 July 2015) < https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2015/07/FOR%20WED%20iran-rapper-tataloo-video.html > accessed 12 June 2022. [45] Kay Armin Serjoie, ‘This Is the Surprising Way the Iranian Military Responded to the Nuclear Deal’ Time (New York, 16 July 2015) < https://time.com/3958928/amir-tataloo-iranian-military/ > accessed 12 June 2022; Ishaan Tharoor, ‘Watch: Iranian Rapper Celebrates Nuclear Power from the Deck of a Warship’ The Washington Post (Washington, 16 July 2015) < https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/07/16/watch-iranian-rapper-celebrates-nuclear-power-from-the-deck-of-a-warship/ > accessed 12 June 2022. [46] Tataloo (n 42) 1:03, 1:06, 1:21. [47] ibid 0:04, 0:31-33, 0:42, 0:46, 0:59. [48] Bajoghli (n 26) 114. [49] Tataloo (n 42) 3:15. [50] NasrTV, ( NasrTV , 2021, fa.nasrtv.com/page/about). [51] Al-Monitor Staff, ‘IRGC Chief: Israel Could Be Blown up in a Single Operation’ ( Al-Monitor , 6 May 2021) < https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2021/05/irgc-chief-israel-could-be-blown-single-operation > accessed 12 June 2022. [52] Tataloo (n 42) 1:38-41. [53] ibid 0:16, 0:36, 1:49. [54] ibid 0:42, 1:48, 0:34, 0:16. [55] ibid 2:44. [56] ibid 1:04, 1:19. [57] Parmis Mozafari, Negotiating a Position: Women Musicians and Dancers in Post-Revolution Iran (The University of Leeds 2011) 240. [58] Tataloo (n 42) 2:02, 1:38. [59] ibid 1:04-28. [60] Hamid Dabashi, Shi’ism: A Religion of Protest (Harvard University Press 2011) 82-4 [61] Roxanne Varzi, ‘Iran’s Pieta: Motherhood, Sacrifice and Film in the Aftermath of the Iran–Iraq War’ (2008) 88 Feminist Review 47. [62] Pedram Partovi, ‘Martyrdom and the “Good Life” in the Iranian Cinema of Sacred Defense’ (2008) 28(3) Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 522. [63] ‘ Shohadā ’ [Martyrs], ( Youtube , Amir Tataloo, 23 September 2015) 0:01 < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HK_A-tgM5C0 > accessed 12 June 2022. [64] Ian Black, ‘Bullet-Riddled Cars and Lush Gardens: Iran’s Memorial to Its ‘Nuclear Martyrs’’ The Guardian (London, 2 July 2015) < https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/02/iran-memorial-museum-nuclear-martyrs > accessed 12 June 2022. [65] Tataloo (n 63) 2:04-20. [66] Saeed Kamali Dehghan, ‘Iran Nuclear Scientist Killed in Tehran Motorbike Bomb Attack’ The Guardian (London, 11 January 2012) < https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jan/11/iran-nuclear-scientist-killed > accessed 12 June 2022. [67] Tataloo (n 63) 2:40-55. [68] Saeed Kamali Dehghan, ‘Iran Denies Assassinated Academic Worked on Nuclear Projects’ The Guardian (London, 25 July 2011) < https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/25/iran-denies-assassinated-academic-nuclear-connection > accessed 12 June 2022. [69] Tataloo (n 63) 2:02, 2:04, 2:43. [70] ibid 2:45, 2:30. [71] Tataloo (n 42) 2:02, 1:32. [72] ‘ Jahanam ’ [Hell], ( Youtube , Amir Tataloo, 15 Jan. 2020) 0:49, 3:22, 6:14 < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1OELRZ0eOo > accessed 12 June 2022. [73] ibid 1:19, 6:11, 6:17. [74] ibid 5:42, 5:49, 5:57. [75] ibid 0:17, 1:10. [76] ibid 4:30, 4:45. [77] ‘Tortured Filmmakers and Musicians Face Imminent Arrest Amid Crackdown on Artists’, ( Amnesty International , 1 March 2016) < https://www.amnestyusa.org/press-releases/iran-tortured-filmmaker-and-musicians-face-imminent-arrest-amid-crackdown-on-artists > accessed 12 June 2022. [78] Tataloo (n 72) 5:12. [79] ibid 5:01, 5:35. [80] ibid 1:43, 1:44, 5:51. [81] ibid 3:39. [82] GJ Breyley and Sasan Fatemi, Iranian Music and Popular Entertainment from Motrebi to Losanjelesi and beyond (Routledge 2016) 141. [83] ‘Chinese Health Workers Dance and Sing in Music Video to Promote Covid Vaccine’, The Independent (London, May 2021) < https://www.independent.co.uk/tv/news/chinese-health-officials-dance-and-sing-in-music-video-to-promote-covid-vaccine-v68bb264d > accessed 12 June 2022. [84] ( Varzesh3 , 21 April 2020) < tinyurl.com/tataloofootball > accessed 12 June 2022. [85] Hossein Velayati, ‘Hamid Rasaee and Amir Tataloo’ (Wikimedia Commons, Fars News, 16 July 2017) < https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hamid_Rasaee_and_Amir_Tataloo_13960425001800636358248576455809_36810.jpg > accessed 12 June 2022. [86] Maryam Sinaiee, ‘Iranian News Agency Targeted by US Sanction Resorts to Hacking to Get Domain Back’ ( Radio Farda , 25 January 2020) < https://en.radiofarda.com/a/iranian-news-agency-targeted-by-us-sanction-resorts-to-hacking-to-get-domain-back-/30396680.html > accessed 12 June 2022. [87] ‘Jalase-ye Amir Tataloo bā Ebrahim-e Ra’isi’ [Amir Tataloo’s Meeting with Ebrahim Raisi], ( Aparat , amiromega, June 2020). [88] ‘Blood-Soaked Secrets: Why Iran’s 1988 Prison Massacres Are Ongoing Crimes Against Humanity’, ( Amnesty International , 2018) < https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde13/9421/2018/en > accessed 12 June 2022. [89] (n 87) 0:50-5. [90] Rohollah Faghihi, ‘Senior Iran Cleric Faces down Culture Minister over Concerts’ ( Al-Monitor , 23 August 2016) < https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2016/08/iran-mashhad-concerts-friday-prayer-leader-alamolhoda.html > accessed 12 June 2022. [91] Holly Dagres, ‘This Young Iranian Rapper May Have Cost Raisi the Presidency’ ( Al-Monitor , 31 May 2017) < https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2017/05/iran-raisi-tataloo-tatalee-election-race-endorsement-rapper.html > accessed 12 June 2022. [92] ‘Amir Tataloo Original Fan’, ( YouTube , Amir Tataloo Original Fan, 17 December 2020) < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMqe-B_1Ohc > accessed 12 June 2022. [93] ‘Iran Judiciary Prosecutes Communications Minister Over Internet Access’, ( Iran International , 20 January 2021) < https://old.iranintl.com/en/iran-politics/iran-judiciary-prosecutes-communications-minister-over-internet-access > accessed 12 June 2022. [94] Bajoghli (n 26) 114. [95] ibid 2, 100. [96] ‘Ayā vezārat-e ershād musiqi-ye rap rā be rasmiyat mi shenāsad?’ [Does the Ministry of Culture officially recognise rap music?] ( Tarāne Music , 13 May 2016). [97] Mojtaba Tavangar, ( Twitter, 2 March 2021) < https://twitter.com/motavangar/status/1366636303828340739 > accessed 12 June 2022. [98] Mohammad Sarshar, ( Twitter, 2 March 2021) < https://twitter.com/m_sarshar/status/1366637692038107137 > accessed 12 June 2022. [99] ‘Iranians Arrested Over Viral Video Featuring US Porn Star’, ( IranWire , 10 March 2021) < https://iranwire.com/en/features/69145 > accessed 12 June 2022. [100] Ali Vaez, ‘Iran’s Rigged Election’ ( Foreign Affairs , 16 June 2021) < https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/iran/2021-06-16/irans-rigged-election > accessed 12 June 2022.

Had any of the players who competed for the inaugural tennis grand slam of 2022 in Melbourne been complete (i.e. sovereign, self-governing) individuals, they would have declared the ‘AO’ boycott before the tournament started.[1][2] Not only because of Djokovic, but also because of Renata Voráčová. Not only out of the camaraderie with the two fellow members of the traveling circus which professional tennis (along with all other professional ‘spectator’ sports) has become, courtesy of the ‘contemptible money economy’.[3] Nor because of supporting Djokovic’s undoubtedly hard and inevitably controversial choice not to get vaccinated. Not even because the famed AO had fallen easy prey to inconspicuous electioneering by the incumbent government. The principled individuals would have abandoned the tournament in light of what the cases of Djokovic and Voráčová inadvertently told us about what we have become. The boycott, however, was unthinkable. It could never happen, not in a million years. The inverse vision emphatically unfolded as part of a history adorned with the narratives of the ‘great success’, ‘uplifting finale’ and reignited ‘GOAT’ debates. To borrow the self-righteous assertion of Victorian Premier Dan Andrews, echoed by many, ‘the Australian Open was bigger than Djokovic, much bigger’.[4] No doubt they were right, although it is less clear whether any of them thought through the repercussions of their emotional and patriotic endorsement of the AO’s hyperbole. It is no secret that we have long since dispensed with the critical gift of unhurried and prolonged contemplation.[5] As a result, we tend to become too wrapped up in today’s multitude of political whirlwinds, whether big or small, brief or protracted. Nietzsche warned us about the perils of foregoing the ‘ vita contemplativa ’ and living, instead, ‘as if one always ‘might miss out on something’. When this happens, he argued, ‘hours in which honesty is permitted’ become rare, and even when they arrive, we have no energy left to for them.[6] Heeding Nietzsche’s warning, we might stop to ponder ‘why not?’. Why wouldn’t the boycott happen, why couldn’t it, should there have been one and, most importantly, what does the highly publicised scandal around Djokovic tell us about ourselves? Admittedly, it has always been a tall order to expect athletes to act as a barometer of collective conscience. It is, however, not without precedent. Sport often ends up caught in the crossfire of politics, which has in recent decades marred and brutalised the Olympic spirit, still vaguely synonymous with the few remaining pockets of uncommercialised athletic endeavour. Still, past athletes have, on occasion, shone an uncomfortable and uncompromising light on the perils of a situation the majority might passively sanction as ‘normal’. Jesse Owens did just that in 1936. Today, inside the fact that the boycott could never happen, hides a small but important secret. It binds us in a manner we prefer to pass over in silence even though we must speak about it. The secret is that we have firmly forgotten the original meaning of the word ‘idiot’. These days, when we casually throw around the term ‘Cov-idiot’, we refer to someone dangerously (almost offensively) weak in their mental and ethical faculties, unable to recognise the blindingly obvious benefits of getting vaccinated. In so doing, we habitually misuse the term or, to be more precise, we utilise its inverted meaning . An ‘idiot’ (from the Greek ἰδιώτης , or ‘ idiotes ’), however, is not at all a ‘fool’ or mentally incapacitated.[7] Neither Aristotle, nor Dostoyevsky, nor Nietzsche thought so.[8] The root adjective ἴδιος (‘ idios ’) denotes a state of affairs which is ‘not shared’ or an individual who, akin to a branch torn from the tree, is ‘disconnected’ from a larger whole, ie whose communitarian sensibility has been disabled. In other words, an ‘idiot’ is simply a ‘ private person ’.[9] That is, ‘idiot’ is a designation for an individual whose psychic cord—informing and enabling their sense of the ‘communal’ and the ‘collective’—has been irreparably severed, turning such fragmented human beings into ‘ dividuums ’. These dividuums are those who can be re-assembled as the meaningless (in and of themselves) and disposable (Marx would say ‘commoditised’) cogs of new socio-economic wholes—the vast religious, industrial, commercial, and ideological, forms of repressive machinery.[10] Much as in ancient Athens ‘idiot’ denoted a person positioned, by choice or fortune, outside of the polis (i.e. a form of disenfranchisement) and made weaker and more vulnerable on account of such externalisation, today the same term denotes the basis on which we are re-incorporated into society—i.e., as idiots.[11] Put slightly differently, we are incorporated into society as subjects who have internalised our own disenfranchisement from the community and from the communal, and therefore as inevitably of lesser value than individuals. Nietzsche would remind us that two other forms of reactive power, namely religion (meaning Christianity) and slave morality, operate according to exactly the same principle, the ‘reversal of the evaluating glance’, in terms of creating obsequious subjectivity.[12] Don’t get me wrong, today’s ‘private persons’ are invariably clever, educated, sophisticated and endowed with high morals. Yet, having been moulded into ‘idiots’, they have unwittingly become vulnerable and susceptible to being fooled and manipulated, without even realising this.[13] Private persons arranged into a ‘society’ serve as a powerful repellent of the few non-idiots from the new configuration of the polis .[14] The behaviour and the decision-making of idiots is different from that of individuals.[15] Idiots are powered and informed by a fundamentally different algorithm: one of constantly chasing after and maximising (but never fulfilling) the elusive personal marginal utility, in the form of the abstract notion of happiness, a ‘bubble’ that requires continual inflation. So much so, that ‘dividuums’ come to internalise and normalize their idiocy in much the same way, Nietzsche explains, as we have internalised the valuations of slave morality which inhibit individual autonomy and privilege the collective welfare of idiots as the ‘gold standard’ of good citizenship.[16] Tsitsipas, the Greek tennis ace, said that Djokovic made ‘the majority’ look like ‘fools’, and he was absolutely right.[17] ‘Fools’, however, in what sense? Did Tsitsipas inadvertently express the sentiment of the righteous idiotic majority that lacks an authentic collective identity which could extend beyond the mere slogans ‘expanded into a political theory’?[18] Echoing him, Martina Navratilova, a fellow idiot, suggested that Djokovic ‘should have taken one’ (i.e., the vaccine) ‘for the team’.[19] The embattled Australian government, justifying their decision to deport Djokovic after a protracted theatrical performance that all but revitalised the notion of the ‘kangaroo court’ and ended up dramatically invoking the ghosts of ‘civil unrest’, stated with unwavering confidence that they acted in the ‘public interest’.[20] The curious thing is that all of Navratilova, Tsitsipas and the Australian ministers genuinely believed that they spoke on behalf of a community: the tennis community, the Australian nation, humankind even. Using Covid as the new universal leveller, they believed they spoke on behalf of the ‘greater good’ in the firmly Benthamite/Millean sense. The kind of ‘good’ that extends beyond the notion of mechanical compliance with the rules. The kind of ‘good’ that should appeal to our ethical core notwithstanding that the chief functionality of the latter has long since been replaced with the plight of the idiot, powered by the totalising drive for equalisation intolerant of difference and thirsting for unanimity at any cost. Incidentally, Adam Smith thought that agents acting to further self-interest, without either ‘knowing it’ or ‘intending it’, helped to advance the ‘interest of society’.[21] One thing Smith overlooked and Nietzsche problematised was how the nature of collective interest may evolve following the reconfiguration of individuals into idiots and their subsequent re-incorporation into society. Nietzsche was weary that such ‘living for others in egoism’[22] would only ‘conceal knavery and harshness’[23] in the same way that ‘public opinions’ only serve to hide ‘private indolence’,[24] and by so doing aid in weaponizing the vindictive drives of the idiotic multitude.[25] Reinforcement of such ghostly yet militant collective identity, stitched together by exasperation and ressentiment , was on full display in the ‘no holds barred’ approach by the Aussie government in the pre-election fight for their idiots’ hearts and minds. Djokovic, in the wrong place at the wrong time, ended up being precisely the right person, offering a once in a lifetime gift to the politically fraught rhetoric of the ‘democracy of concepts [that] rules in every head—many together are master: a single concept that wanted to be master has crystallised in an ‘‘idee fixe”’.[26] Redolent though it may seem, even Smith would agree that ‘idiot’ does not necessarily designate someone of inferior intelligence.[27] Rather, it denotes someone who is (liable to be) manipulated on account of having been placed into and fully accepted the context (and the consequences) of acting only out of one’s—presumed autonomous and enlightened—self-interest, albeit one that is no longer informed by the authentic sense of the ‘communal’ or the ‘collective’ and, for that reason, unable to find fulfilment. The ‘collective’ now connotes an entirely abstract construct, hollow and lacking substance. It no longer allows for the possibility of ‘1+1 > 2’, where the ‘collective’ or ‘communal’ transcends the individual without trumping them. The present day ‘collective’ is a simple sum of private egoisms, each acting in their own self-interest. Crucially, however, each ‘private person’—a dividuum, or idiot—is a vastly diminished version of the ‘individual’, and the sum of ‘private persons’ invariably represents a far lesser magnitude than the fellowship of individuals. The ‘atomistic chaos’ of modern society lacks the ethos and material necessary for building the ‘new form of community’[28] (‘ Gemeinschaft ’) of truly ‘free individuals’,[29] which would be a ‘fellowship rather than the flock’.[30] As a result, Nietzsche argues, the collection of ‘atomistic individuals’[31] does not add up to a ‘collective individual’.[32] When we become incorporated as private persons, we trade individual autonomy for the collective welfare of idiots . Though we may be adorned with the labels of equality, freedom, and dignity, we effectively surrender the right to make principled choices. The latter, Nietzsche tells us, is not at all a ‘private matter’.[33] The assemblage of private persons is far weaker, more vulnerable, and politically impotent beyond the periodic hysterical outpourings of ressentiment, the ‘signs of the lowest and most absurd culture’.[34] The mass of ‘private persons’ will never win a war. It will never build anything worthwhile, let alone guarantee a stronger future. It will, however, happily submit itself to any coercion, just as long as this subjection is sublime enough and doesn’t hurt too much, allowing private persons to bask in the oblivious trinketry of the present moment.[35] Having undergone this transformative journey ‘at the freezing point of the will’,[36] private persons lackadaisically dwell in the ‘self-created world of opinions’,[37] no longer able to detect ‘the weight of the chains’.[38] Zarathustra forewarned that ‘even a prison’ of slave morality would ‘seem like bliss’ to the ‘restless people’, who can only ‘enjoy their new security’ in its inescapable nets.[39] The trouble is that any form of ‘mass idiocy’, by amplifying collective ‘moral effects’, invariably creates fertile ground for and becomes the conduit for the development of fascism and tyranny, which leverage ‘the power that lies in unity of popular sentiment, in the fact that everyone holds the same opinions’.[40] Nietzsche argues that the ‘private lazinesses’ hidden behind ‘popular sentiment’ come at an extremely high price: they turn the masses into the accomplices of the very crimes they think they help safeguard against.[41] The tyranny of words, idioms, ideas and opinions, once embraced by the multitude of idiots, soon becomes transformed into a real and potent weapon of reactive power: tyranny by the people, of the people and for the people.[42] Except that these people—akin to the Homeric ‘lotus eaters’—have lost, forgotten, or put to sleep their meaning as individuals.[43] They have traded their right to choose as autonomous individuals in exchange for the chimera of private citizenry, for the illusion of a social construct ‘in which everyone enjoys their own social ‘contract’.[44] They have effectively agreed to subordinate themselves to totalising oppressive drives, having squandered their ability and credibility to resist them. These idiots may occasionally develop a faint sense that they are being fooled and yet they are powerless ‘to not be fooled’, thus only exacerbating their predicament.[45] They have become the ‘fooled ones’, and we know well the sort of things the fooled can end up sanctioning and even eagerly participating in, believing all along that they are playing their part in bringing about the greater good.[46] Viewed in this context, Djokovic’s visa cancellation and his subsequent deportation were acts by the government acting ‘in the public interest’ of idiots: ensuring that idiots remain just as they are, and the bliss of idiocy remains unperturbed, for its veneer, concealing myriads of ‘subterranean demons and their knavery’, tends to be thin and fragile.[47] That is where the contradiction lies, inverting reality and distorting valuations. This, Nietzsche—following in Aristotle’s footsteps—suggests, is where we ought to start looking for answers. Many may argue that comparisons between the AO of 2022 and the Berlin Olympics of 1936 are misplaced. For the most part, I would agree. But in one important respect, namely that of the perilous complacency which has rendered us mere spectators in face of the pervasive rise of the repressive social control systems, the parallels could hardly be more merited. Make no mistake, ‘Let’s turn the world into one hospital or penitentiary’ (otherwise known as ‘build back better’) is a clever slogan. Unlike many others, it represents a realistic and achievable target.[48] It feeds on the energy we all, mostly unwittingly, lend it whilst we appear to be craving and beckoning it with nothing but the ‘good intentions’ of our hearts and minds. Alas, Nietzsche cautions that when individual sovereignty is made into a private affair ‘an abundance of dragon’s teeth are sown’ at the same time.[49] The more we demand that general security be guaranteed, ‘the more do new shoots of the ancient drives to domination assert themselves’.[50] We are no longer dealing with an isolated case of the ‘lunatics taking over the asylum’. Rather, the rapid and pervasive spread of idiotism resembles a situation in which the entire world, as though consumed by irredeemable guilt, has obsequiously agreed to place itself in the same woke asylum just so no idiot would any longer feel out of place. That is why the news of Djokovic’s deportation has caused many an idiot to experience an uplifting, if fleeting, sense of exaltation. Not being discriminating enough in what we wish for, not daring to be individuals (i.e. un-idiots and anti-idiots), we may sooner or later have our wish granted, if only to prove right either the gloomy prophet Silenus[51] or Plato, who warned that the penalty idiots end up paying is none other than to find themselves ruled by evil.[52] This is important because—and in this we can be certain—the machine will not stop harvesting our freedom in the name of ‘unanimity’, as long as we continue to submit ourselves to it ‘as material for heating’: Mankind mercilessly employs every individual as material for heating its great machines: but what then is the purpose of the machines if all individuals (that is to say mankind) are of no other use than as material for maintaining them? Machines that are an end in themselves - is that the umana commedia ?[53] However, ‘precisely because we are able to visualize this prospect, we are perhaps in a position to prevent it from occurring’.[54] For this reason, we need a Jesse Owens to emerge from the cirque macabre enveloping us. Not as a solution, not as an Übermensch , but as a flicker of light and an instant of ‘counter-reckoning’ informing the sense of our ‘counter-action’—to ‘put a stop to the injury by putting a stop to the machine’.[55] Dmitri Safronov Dmitri Safronov holds a PhD in Political Economy from the University of Cambridge for research on ‘Nietzsche’s Political Economy’ (2020). Dmitri received an M.Sc. from the London School of Economics, and Honors BA in Philosophy and Politics from Trent University. Prior to matriculating at Cambridge, he spent over 20 years in the City of London, working for the leading global investment banking franchises. Dmitri’s profile and list of recent publications can be found on < https://philpeople.org/profiles/dmitri-safronov >. [1] This article quotes extensively from Nietzsche’s unpublished notes. These are assembled in the Nachlass and accessed from < http://www.nietzschesource.org >. Notes in the Nachlass are organized according to the year, number of the notebook, and number of the notebook entry, e.g. NF-1885(year): 2(notebook) [179] (note). [2] The author is triple vaccinated, lost his beloved aunt to the virus, does not hold anti-vax views, and is not a Djokovic fan. [3] Friedrich Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations (first published 1873-76, Cambridge University Press 1997) ‘Schopenhauer as Educator’ §§4-6. [4] Crystal Wu, ‘Dan Andrews says Australian Open is “much bigger than any one person” as Novak Djokovic faces wait over visa stoush’ ( Sky News Australia , 16 January 2022) < https://www.skynews.com.au/australia-news/dan-andrews-says-australian-open-is-much-bigger-than-any-one-person-as-novak-djokovic-faces-wait-over-visa-stoush/news-story/c2a4a0388fc026bf6c28dcfcf97d31f6 > accessed 15 February 2022. [5] Cf. Nietzsche’s discussion in Nietzsche (n 3) ‘Schopenhauer as Educator’ §4; ‘David Strauss, the Confessor and the Writer’ §8. [6] Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (first published 1882, Vintage Books 1974) §329. [7] Only in English and only by the late 14th-early 15th century does ‘idiot’ become a designation for the ‘mentally deficient’ (Oxford English Dictionary). [8] Cf. Aristotle, The Politics and The Constitution of Athens (Cambridge University Press 1996) 1253[a]. His two main claims are that man is by nature social (or political) and that ‘the whole must necessarily be prior to the part; since when the whole body is destroyed, foot or hand will not exist except in an equivocal sense…’. Dostoyevsky presents a masterful exploration of this subject in The Idiot (1868-69) . Nietzsche echoes Aristotle’s logic, arguing that community is ‘a body on which no limb is allowed to be sick’ (NF-1888:15[1]) as well as exploring its permutations in modernity with recourse to Dostoyevsky’s psychological insights. Cf. also Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human (first published 1878-80, Cambridge University Press 1996) ‘The Wanderer and His Shadow’ §33; Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist (first published 1888) in The Portable Nietzsche (Walter Kaufmann ed, Penguin Classics 2008) §16. [9] Precisely this connotation of ‘idiot’ is used exclusively throughout the article. Should you find the usage of ‘idiot’ distressing, simply replace the offending term with the placating ‘private person’ as you feel necessary. However, it is recommended to take the cue from Nietzsche’s treatment of the similar semiotic challenge to modern sensibility as was posed by the discussion of the highly uncomfortable subject of ‘slavery’. Nietzsche, who was well aware that the modern world anxiously avoided the word ‘slave’ (cf. his 1871 essay ‘The Greek State’), nevertheless challenged our ability and willingness to do anything about the substance of ‘slavery’, when we cannot even handle the sound of the word (cf. NF-1871:10[1]). So, perhaps, see how much ‘offence’ you can take before boiling over with righteous indignation – one way or another, this exercise will tell you something about yourself. [10] Cf. Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human (first published 1878-80, Cambridge University Press 1996) §57; NF-1885:2[179]; NF-1887:10[17]. Cf. also Richard Mulgan, ‘Aristotle and the Value of Political Participation’ (1990) 18(2) Political Theory 195-215; Julian Young, Individual and Community in Nietzsche’s Philosophy (Cambridge University Press 2015) 5-10; Raymond Geuss, A World Without Why (Princeton University Press 2014) 231. [11] Cf. Nietzsche (n 10) §§472, 481, ‘The Wanderer and His Shadow’ §33. [12] Cf. Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality (first published 1887, Cambridge University Press 1994) I §10; NF-1881:11[73]; NF-1887:10[135]; NF-1888:14[9]. [13] Cf. NF-1886:5[71]; NF-1888:15[42]. Cf. also the definition of ‘idiot’ in Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary (Brockhaus-Efron 1890) < http://www.vehi.net/brokgauz/index.html > accessed 15 February 2022. [14] Cf. NF-1881:11[185]; NF-1888:14[91]. [15] For the purposes of this discussion, we leave out the possibility highlighted by Aristotle that an ‘idiot’ could also be a ‘god’; cf. Aristotle (n 8) 1253a 27–29. Nietzsche, likely echoing Dostoyevsky, strongly disagreed with this Aristotelean possibility when discussing Jesus; cf. NF-1888:14[38]. Dostoyevsky makes this point in The Idiot through the image of Prince Myshkin. [16] Cf. Nietzsche (n 10) §45, ‘The Wanderer and His Shadow’ §276; Nietzsche (n 12) I §§4-5. Nietzsche also suggests that ‘wherever slave morality predominates, language shows a propensity for the words “good” and “stupid” to edge closer together’; Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (first published 1886, Cambridge University Press 2001) §260. [17] Harry Latham Coyle, ‘“It makes the majority look like fools” – Stefanos Tsitsipas slams Novak Djokovic for “playing by his own rules”’ ( Eurosport , 13 January 2022) < https://www.eurosport.co.uk/tennis/australian-open/2022/it-makes-the-majority-looks-like-fools-stefanos-tsitsipas-slams-novak-djokovic-for-playing-by-his-ow_sto8707032/story.shtml > accessed 15 February 2022. [18] Friedrich Nietzsche, Nietzsche Contra Wagner (first published 1888) in The Portable Nietzsche (Walter Kaufmann ed, Penguin Classics 2008) §7. [19] Tom Parsons, ‘Novak Djokovic told to “take one for the team” as Martina Navratilova weighs in on debacle’ Daily Express (London, 10 January 2022) < https://www.express.co.uk/sport/tennis/1547560/Novak-Djokovic-visa-Martina-Navratilova-Australian-Open-Roger-Federer-Rafael-Nadal > accessed 15 February 2022. [20] Ben Doherty, ‘Novak Djokovic visa: Australian minister Alex Hawke says risk of ‘civil unrest’ behind cancellation’ The Guardian (London, 15 January 2022) < https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/jan/15/novak-djokovic-visa-australian-minister-alex-hawke-says-risk-of-civil-unrest-behind-cancellation > accessed 24 June 2022. [21] Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (first published 1759, Oxford University Press 1976) 183. [22] Nietzsche (n 10) §1. [23] ibid §443. [24] ibid §482. [25] Cf. ibid ‘The Wanderer and His Shadow’ §33; NF-1887:10[113]. [26] ibid ‘The Wanderer and His Shadow’ §230. [27] Cf. Smith (n 20) Ch. 3, Section 3, ‘Of Self-Command’. [28] NF-1883:16[50]. [29] NF-1880:8[61]. [30] NF-1882:4[48]. Cf. the excellent discussion on this point by Vanessa Lemm, Homo Natura (Edinburgh University Press 2020) 176-177. [31] NF-1882:4[83]. [32] Nietzsche (n 10) §94. [33] Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak (first published 1881, Cambridge University Press 1997) §9; Nietzsche (n 3) ‘Schopenhauer as Educator’ §§1-2. [34] NF-1888:14[38]. [35] Cf. Nietzsche’s discussion in Nietzsche (n 3) ‘Schopenhauer as Educator’ §4; Nietzsche (n 10) ‘The Wanderer and His Shadow’ §286; Nietzsche (n 12) ‘Preface’ §6; Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo (first published 1888) in Basic Writings of Nietzsche (Walter Kaufmann ed, Modern Library 2000) ‘Why I Am a Destiny’ §5. [36] Nietzsche (n 10) §349. [37] NF-1887:11[341]. [38] Nietzsche (n 10) ‘The Wanderer and His Shadow’ §10. [39] Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (first published 1883-5, Random House 1954) IV ‘The Shadow’. [40] Nietzsche (n 10) §472. [41] ibid §482. [42] Cf. Victor Klemperer, The Language of the Third Reich (first published 1947, Bloomsbury Academic 2013) 43-5. Cf. also Plato’s discussion on the creation of ‘the fiercest extremes of servitude’ from ‘the height of liberty’; Plato, The Republic (Penguin Books 1905) 563[a]-564[a]. [43] The image of the ‘Lotus eaters’ is used by Plato in his discussion of the ‘democratic man’ – i.e. private person lacking in willpower and judgement – in Plato (n 41) 561[e]-562[d]. Plato’s reference is to Book IX of Homer’s Odyssey . [44] NF-1888:14[197]. [45] NF-1886:5[71]. [46] Cf. Adam Smith on the ‘invisible hand’ – a euphemism for the magic wand that transforms individuals into idiots; Smith (n 20) 183. Nietzsche’s assertion that it is always ‘the invisible hands that torment and bend us the worst’ (Z: I, Tree ) appears imminently more accurate; Nietzsche (n 38) I ‘The Tree on the Hill’. [47] Nietzsche (n 10) §111; NF-1887:10[113]. [48] Cf. the discussion in Nietzsche (n 6) §329; NF-1886:4[7]; NF-1888:14[182]. [49] Nietzsche (n 10) §472. [50] Nietzsche (n 10) ‘The Wanderer and His Shadow’ §30. [51] Cf. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy (first published 1872, Vintage Books 1967) §§3-4. Leonard writes beautifully about this ‘frightening wisdom’ of Silenus in Miriam Leonard, Tragic Modernities (Harvard University Press 2015). [52] Plato (n 41) 347c. [53] Nietzsche (n 10) §585. Consider the latest cynical attempt to shame Djokovic into vaccination by the UK’s Health Secretary, Mr. Sajid David, who suggested that it is only the millions of vaccinated spectators who make it possible for Djokovic to ‘get back to play the sport in front of them and earn millions again, it’s ok for him to have them take the vaccine, but the vaccine is not OK for him ’ (author’s emphasis); Jennifer Meierhans, ‘Novak Djokovic is urged by the UK health secretary to reflect on his Covid jab refusal’ ( BBC News , 15 February 2022) < https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-60391876 > accessed 21 February 2022. [54] Nietzsche (n 10) §247. [55] ibid ‘The Wanderer and His Shadow’ §33.

The article examines the current state of the Ukrainian contemporary art market in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the occupation of a portion of the country’s territory. We look at how the war affects various agents of the art world in the short term and how they respond to the crisis. As the crisis is still ongoing, this is an interim study; the information was collected up until mid-April 2022. We believe that putting the data together now will be critical for a better understanding and analysis of what will transpire afterwards. As we can see, the war has turned into the most heinous embodiment of violence against Ukrainian culture. Employees of the Kyiv-based art gallery Portal 11 gathered the materials for this article. The majority of the materials were gathered during a written survey of artists with whom the gallery has worked since its foundation. We also included materials obtained privately from collectors. Many facts are covered for the first time in our article because they only just occurred during this specific period. The Ukrainian art market has actively sought to integrate itself into the global art market. Every year an increasing number of artists and galleries from Ukraine participate in various art events, exhibitions, and auctions. Digital technologies, social networks, and globalisation have opened up many opportunities for Ukrainian art. Many Ukrainian artists and art dealers have found success in foreign markets. The war is an unprecedented event, having a profound impact on the Ukrainian art community. It has no parallels in Ukrainian history and possibly in European history since World War II. The fates of most Ukrainian artists, collectors, galleries, and artworks were irrevocably altered on February 24, 2022, when the first Russian bombs exploded. We have unwittingly become participants and witnesses to a massive cultural disaster, as well as a shift in all processes related to the art market in Ukraine. Artists and the art industry as a whole are now actively working on various ways to help the country. One of the most essential messages in this article is that the Ukrainian art sector requires assistance as well. Fig 1. Artist Oleksii Koval in Ljubljana where he was on 24 February 2022. (Credit: Oleksii Koval). Artists A survey of artists, with whom we have collaborated since the gallery’s establishment, allowed us to record important facts, including their emotional states. First of all, we were interested in the places where our respondents were when the war started and where they are after 3–4 weeks. Other questions included the following: Where are your works now? What is happening with your workshop now? Can you continue to work and create art under these conditions? Do you already have ideas and plans for a creative future and what are they? Have you cancelled any projects because of the war and which ones? Do you know the fate of your works that are in private collections around the world, especially in Ukraine? Any forms of answers were accepted. Subsequently, they were organised according to their content. Under ideal conditions, we would wait for a response from the 67 artists with whom we have interacted since the opening of the gallery. But we are glad that more than half of them responded to us in these extreme conditions. We believe the findings from the sample of 34 artists can represent the situations of all Ukrainian artists and the entire country. The gender ratio of participants reflects the population of Ukraine. The respondents turned out to be artists from all parts of our country (from the west, east, and centre of Ukraine), including an artist from Crimea (who once experienced a similar situation of being attacked by the Russian Federation and forced to move), an artist from Mariupol (who miraculously escaped with her family from this city), and more from Poltava, Kyiv, Lviv, and other cities respectively. They got in touch, took the time, and shared their experience, for which we are very grateful. We also received a response from an artist-veteran of the ATO (Anti-Terrorist Operation on the territory of Donetsk and Lugansk regions since 2014), who is now at the forefront. Fig 2. Where the artists were at the time of the survey, about 1 month after 24 February 2022. (IBM SPSS Statistics 23 Output). Fig 3. Infographics of losses of exhibitions and other projects by artists. (IBM SPSS Statistics 23 Output). Statistics show that on February 24, 2022, all but one of the artists encountered the sounds of the first rocket strikes at home. Subsequently, 30% remained in the same place at the time of the survey, 48% became internally displaced, and 21% went abroad. Artists from western Ukraine, further from the borders with the Russian Federation, stayed at home, and most of the inhabitants of the eastern, northern, and southern parts became refugees. Egor and Nikita Zigura, two well-known sculptors working in tandem, are experiencing difficulties. They worked together before the war but were separated as a result of it. Egor is currently in Europe while Nikita is in Ukraine. We wonder what kind of dynamics their work will take on in the future. Artists of each gender were impacted differently by the war. Since the start of the war and the introduction of martial law, many female artists have left Ukraine. They lost access to their works and studios, but found themselves safe and supported in the West. Male artists do not have the opportunity to leave Ukraine before the end of martial law. Although some of them have retained access to their workshops and artworks, they do not have the opportunity to be safe and work at full capacity. Regarding the location of the artists’ works, results show that 84% of works remained on the territory of Ukraine, 54% of them at home and in studios. Only 15% had some work outside their homeland. They are preserved from being destroyed by war by international projects as well as by being in private foreign collections. Astian Rey, for example, was one of the artists whose work was stuck at exhibition sites: ‘It just so happened that a week before the conflict began, I presented a personal exhibition, Form. Symbol. Time , at Kyiv’s city gallery Lavra . In addition, I participated in an Italian project at the Institute of Contemporary Art on the subject of Dante Alighieri. The majority of my work remains in these institutions. However, a portion of them remained in the workshop’.[1] Artists cannot always track their paintings in private collections. It is possible that they were resold. While people run from war, leaving all of their belongings behind, it becomes even more difficult. Therefore, only 27% of artists knew that their works were safe, while 4.5% were only aware of the destiny of a portion of their work. Others surveyed did not have any information. Maxim Mazur offered perhaps the most emotional and humane answer to the question about his work’s location: ‘there is nothing more important than human lives. I didn’t think about the fate of my works in the collections’. His exhibition was to be mounted in our gallery on February 24, 2022, and an opening was planned for the next day.[2] Vsevolod Kovtun also told us: ‘the last purchased work was for a private collection, I do not know the fate of it and other works sold. And I will not try to find out about them, so as not to provoke an excessive sense of guilt in people who may not have been able to save art during hostilities. The main thing is that these people are saving their lives now—because human life is much more valuable than my work’. We have also learnt from other sources that the exhibition of the famous street artist Gamlet, 3652019 + 2/3 , is stuck in the Kyiv art platform M17 .[3] He presented the exhibition on February 18, 2022. During the war, he took a proactive stance and is raising funds on social networks to help the Armed Forces of Ukraine and civilians.[4] After the recent exhibition in the gallery Portal 11 of the artist Victoria Adkozalova,[5] one of the bought paintings, Pink Flamingo , remained in our framing workshop; the new owner will collect it after the war. For an artist, a gallery is a stage, and an exhibition is a performance. This is a crucial aspect of life for a successful artist, so we couldn’t ignore it. More than 87% suffered from the disruption of plans due to the war. Of these, a quarter needed to deal with both postponed and cancelled plans. As most of the galleries and museums in the country have paused their exhibitions, and the delivery of works abroad is problematic, only 12% of artists have not cancelled any projects. As far we are aware, some projects are still going as planned, and most of them are located abroad. Ivan Turetskyy’s paintings were stored in Europe after a museum project in Italy and an exhibition in Switzerland in 2021. In April, two exhibitions became possible: one in Fabrica del Vapore in Milan[6] and the other in Villa Longoni near Milan. One exhibition was planned ahead of time, while the other occurred as a result of a rising interest in Ukrainian art. Fig 4. ‘From the Italian Diary’ exhibition opening at Villa Longoni near Milan. (Credit: Valerio Lombardo). Fig 5. ‘HOW ARE YOU’ project in Kharkiv’s Yermilov art centre. (Credit: Natalia Ivanova) . The studios of 75% of respondents were intact at the time of our study. Most of the answers contained the hope that everything was fine with the workshop because it was difficult to find out about its condition. We hope that, even if it is impossible to find out about the state of the workshop at the moment, after the war they will be reunited with their owners unscathed. In fact, 20% of respondents remain unaware of the state of their workspaces. And 3% reformatted these premises out of necessity into, for example, a shelter for friends, acquaintances, relatives, and those who needed it. Olga Zaremba wrote: ‘the room where my workshop is located is used as a shelter and for other wartime needs’. Oleksandr Prytula shared his unique experience: ‘the workshop is in working condition, but since sculpting requires a lot of money (materials, moulding, 3D printing, casting, etc.), I spend little time there...My workshop is now entirely my computer’. As many artists do not have access to their workshops, their regular tools and materials have to change. Those who worked with large scale oil paintings are now switching to smaller sizes and watercolours or pencil and chalk. Sculptors cannot continue their work with stone, wood, and metal. Olga Zaremba, an artist from Kyiv, replied to our survey: ‘my notebooks, pencils and watercolours go with me. These materials take up as little space as possible’. Artists who are familiar with new technologies embraced digital art completely. Many artists have told us that they are now working with NFT art to support Ukraine with the funds raised from the token sales. Anna Moskaletz said: ‘I make digital works for sale at NFT auctions to transfer 100% of the profit to the needs of the Armed Forces’. Fig 6. What happened to the artists’ workshops, 1 month after 24 February 2022. (IBM SPSS Statistics 23 Output). Fig 7. Infographics about the readiness/ability of artists to create art, 1 month after 24 February 2022. (IBM SPSS Statistics 23 Output). Creativity Art is a social phenomenon; it is always affected by and reflects the state of the society. The experience of war transforms art; it gives rise to new styles, new techniques, and movements. Resentment, rage, despair, depression, and, on the other hand, unity and solidarity are all powerful emotions that artists experience and express in their work. Although a quarter of the respondents experienced difficulties in their creative processes, more than half of the survey participants were able to continue creative activities in one form or another. 22% cannot even hold a pencil in their hands and are waiting for victory, peacetime, and a sufficient sense of security. Mariko Gelman admitted that it is extremely difficult for her to work: ‘I am creating a graphic series # summer2050 about the sanctions and the turn of Russia to the Paleolithic. I can’t paint. Maybe, because right now everything is ruined in my homeland—people, connections, adequacy. That is why it is very hard for me to live and create vividly’. She still tries to do something useful, ‘donating my artworks for the needs of the Ukrainian army, volunteering, and not falling into despair, now I take part in exhibitions and events in support of Ukraine. For example, we worked together with Urban Sketchers Prague on a painting session on the island of Kampa in Prague, and then sold our work, transferring all the money to the Člověk v tísni Foundation, which cares for displaced Ukrainians in the Czech Republic. A similar event is currently being held by the Czech gallery Holešovická Šachta , where I have donated three of my works’.[7] A lot of artists have retained the ability to create. They record events and create supportive patriotic art. Those who have adjusted take part in humanitarian missions and assist in battle on their front lines. They are also in a difficult situation, but they help to collect money and even deliver food under siege. In terms of plans and ideas for the future, only 77% of the artists are thinking about creative projects and their implementation. Because of a substantial emotional shock as well as an inability to meet fundamental human needs, such as security, 23% confessed they are unable to think about their artistic career. What are these plans about? Everyone in the survey, without exception, mentions the war and the reflection on personal experiences during this challenging time. Nataliia Antypina, a ceramic artist, responded: ‘Ideas for art are very difficult to produce because constant stress keeps you from concentrating. There are ideas to help rebuild Ukraine, I think I can take part, and fill it with art and important meanings. So that future generations will never forget this tragedy and the heroic struggle of the Ukrainians’. Artists are now focused on helping the country in whatever manner they can, with the great majority of concepts centred on promoting Ukraine’s brand. In the post-war period, a boom in patriotic motives is foreseen. Artists always show the most acute problems, raise the most daring questions, experiment with the most contradictory forms, and discover the most unexpected facts. Collective shock trauma is afflicting our people. Independent artists and other creative organisations have already begun to respond. Current events undoubtedly drive artists to create patriotic art, with the most visible trend being a widespread fascination with national Ukrainian symbolism. The yellow and blue colours of the Ukrainian flag, the national flower, the sunflower, the Ukrainian Coat of Arms in the shape of a trident, the characteristics of national clothing, and so on, are frequently used to encourage the national spirit. Anna Moskaletz wrote in an answer to our survey: ‘since my art was imbued with Ukrainian motives before the war, I will continue to work in the same direction. Now my series with national scarves is more relevant than ever. Although, I think that after my experience the narratives will still change a bit and become even deeper because through the prism of acquired emotions and atrophy of fears it is quite natural’. We must, however, emphasise that before the war we noticed that demand for contemporary art pieces with traditional national symbols was lower than the desire for modern art pieces with a more global style in the art market. We expect this to change in Ukraine as a result of the current surge of patriotism, although the pieces in the current trend may be less popular in the international art market. It is appropriate at this point to quote Oleksandr Prytula, one of the artists who replied to our questionnaire: ‘every day, new ideas emerge. Politics and topics concerning global issues only appeared on rare occasions in my work. That’s why it’s important for me to keep it balanced now, so that everything said through creativity is first and foremost honest, not because Ukrainian symbols are hyping now. Obviously, soon, I plan to create sculptures and graphics inspired by events that take place literally outside the window. I will try to keep everything in the style that was inherent in my work before. It’s critical, in my opinion!’ Fig 8. Oleksandr Prytula ‘Blinded madman’, 3D graphics, sculpting. . Because art images have the undeniable force and potential to convey a powerful message in a concise form, art has become increasingly effective for ideological purposes. People are brought together by artistic imagery. A lot of art images serving this purpose can be found on the streets, on billboards, and on social media. Contemporary Ukrainian patriotic art images are actively used now as illustrations for news reports. There are partnerships between the top magazines in the world and Ukrainian artists. Visual artists working in the field of documentary photography are highly significant, because they chronicle the horrific moments of this conflict for the rest of the world to see. Documentary photography exhibitions from Ukraine are being held all over the world. On March 28th, renowned American magazine Time published two covers, one titled ‘The Resilience of Ukraine’ and the other ‘The Agony of Ukraine’. A photograph by Ukrainian artist Maxim Dondyuk depicts the country’s suffering in the face of the Russian invasion on one of the covers. In the photograph, a Ukrainian soldier is seen assisting a mother and her child in evacuating the Kyiv suburb of Irpin, which Russian forces were attempting to occupy as part of their besiegement of the capital.[8] War-inspired street art is already emerging. In Odesa, the artist Igor Matroskin draws cats. These cats represent the Ukrainian Army and ordinary people with patriotic symbols.[9] Fig 9. Igor Matroskin’s street art in Odesa. The inscription means: ‘I believe in the Armed Forces of Ukraine’. . Text art is also actively used as words become a symbol of support; they empower people. Graffiti and posters where the text appropriates symbolic value and is turned into popular art can be seen all over Ukraine. This type of art can also be attributed to propaganda art. The phrase ‘Russian warship go fuck yourself’ was communicated by a Ukrainian soldier, defender of the Zmiinyi (Snake) Island of Ukraine, Marine Roman Grybov, and became one of the most important slogans of this war.[10] Artists are actively using the phrase, as do companies for marketing purposes. It is used now as a symbol, written on the streets, in tabloids, on t-shirts, on cars, and even in the official design of bank cards. The popularity of these words inevitably led to the rise of the problem of copyright protection and royalty. When the soldier returned to Ukraine from captivity, he filed for an EU trademark application as the phrase had become viral and its value had grown to be of national importance.[11] The Ukrainian national postal operator Ukrposhta has announced a competition for artists to design a collectable postage stamp for the slogan discussed above.[12] The winning image became the sketch by the artist from Crimea, Boris Grokh. As soon as the sale began, there was a queue kilometres long in front of the central branch of Ukrposhta in Kyiv. People stood in it for five hours for the brand, which has already become a legend. On April 22, Ukrainian postage stamps, on which a Russian warship sets off in a direction known to all, signed by the author of the legendary phrase and General Director of Ukrposhta, were sold at the Prozorro charity online auction for 5 million UAH (≈165 thousand USD). This is 200 times more than the starting price.[13] This is an example of how artists are being used for ideological and marketing purposes. Fig 10. ‘HOW ARE YOU’ project in Kharkiv’s Yermilov art centre. (Credit: Roman Pyatkovka) . We can see how art performances around the world bring attention to the conflict in Ukraine. On the 25 March in Warsaw, approximately four thousand people laid down on the ground and covered themselves with bags and coats in solidarity with Ukraine, to show how Ukrainian cities look now with the dead bodies of Ukrainian civilians who cannot be buried under fire.[14] This action, under the title ‘Stop promising, start acting!’, was organised to force the US president to provide everything to close the sky above Ukraine.[15] Later these actions were reproduced in many cities all over the world. An art installation was created by the French artist JR in Lviv. A 45-metre-long photograph of a 5-year-old Ukrainian refugee Valeriia was held up by more than 100 people on March 14. This performance draws attention to the terrifying number of Ukrainian children who have been slain since Russia’s invasion began, and the thousands who have fled in search of safety. The ‘Resilience’ cover of Time magazine features an aerial view of this performance.[16] As a contemporary art gallery in Kyiv, we are fascinated by artists’ ideas. We are prepared to organise exhibitions of front-line photographs, heroic sculptures, paintings, and other installations that depict the experience. Although art with a political agenda is frequently seen as inferior, we are aware of numerous instances in art history where artwork was used first as propaganda and afterwards acclaimed as a masterpiece. In wartime, the significance of symbols cannot be overstated. Art galleries Kyiv Kyiv, Ukraine’s undeniable cultural capital, is home to a plethora of museums and art galleries of remarkable cultural and historical significance. Treasuries of national art saved here represent Ukraine’s rich culture from antiquity to the present day. In the early days of the war in Kyiv, citizens were actively evacuated. Many employees of galleries and museums were forced to flee the city or were trapped in the outskirts. According to our conversations with colleagues from other galleries, practically all Kyiv galleries are now focusing their efforts on assisting in the evacuation of contemporary art pieces, as well as various humanitarian missions in Ukraine and abroad. Art galleries in Ukraine are often located in semi-basement converted premises with a separate entrance. Since the galleries are equipped with heating and other amenities, some gallery owners in Kyiv and other cities have turned their premises into shelters. Gallerists are planning several exhibition projects abroad but cannot hold exhibitions in their galleries in Kyiv until the ongoing hostilities have ended. Fig 11. The temporary storage of artworks by Portal 11 gallery. (Credit: Igor Globa). On the day war broke out, an exhibition by the artist Maxim Mazur was scheduled to be mounted in the Kyiv-based gallery Portal 11 . The catalogue was ready, there were big plans for the opening the next day. With the first rocket blasts in Kyiv, it was obvious that our gallery’s exhibiting activity would be interrupted. Shock was the initial reaction. Then came the time to reflect on the situation and make decisions. All gallery employees were notified that all projects were being stopped until the situation was clear. Our gallery had plenty of plans for the coming months, several projects in our space, participation in the Luxembourg Art Fair, and an exhibition of our artists in Italy in April 2022. We always plan projects for at least a year ahead in the schedule of our gallery. Since the gallery is located in the historical centre of Kyiv and is close to the government quarter, we found ourselves in a place of a potential attack by Russian troops. Access to the Gallery has been blocked for security reasons. There was the question of the safety of the works that were brought to the gallery the day before for the installation of the exhibition. Also, there was the question of the safety of the gallery’s collection and works commissioned by the gallery, but not completed by the artists. On the day the war began, we had to organise the conservation and preservation of an unfinished large-scale tapestry that we were preparing for the autumn exhibition. After two months of the war, we were able to organise the continuation of the tapestry work. We, as a gallery, have also organised temporary storage of the works of the artist Alexei Koval. In addition, a private collection of contemporary art from Kharkiv was brought to us for safe storage. During the war, we managed to complete the creation of an audio guide in the Ukrainian language for the Pantheon in Rome. The audio guide is already published on the museum’s website, and now the Pantheon is speaking Ukrainian. War crimes in Bucha, near Kyiv, were broadcast all over the world. A huge gallery space was opened there half a year before the conflict. Fortunately, it was out of the way of the battle, and the gallery building was unharmed. The gallery’s future is unknown, as the city was severely devastated and will take a long time to recover. Some gallery owners fled to other countries during the war. Some gallerists were already abroad, where they held exhibition projects. For example, the Voloshin Gallery owners were in the USA with an exhibition project of the gallery and the run of their pop-up exhibition there was extended.[17] East Kharkiv is a region located in the East of the country on the border with the Russian Federation. Kharkiv itself is known as a clean, beautiful, cultural city, full of students and youth, with many educational opportunities. The creative artistic life of the city is as highly developed as in the capital. According to our calculations, before the war, about 22 exhibition spaces were operating in this area, including state museums with unique collections, as well as about 20 art schools, 3 specialised colleges, and an art academy. Fig 12. Kharkiv Municipal Gallery during the war. (Credit: Maryna Koneva) . The Kharkiv Art Museum announced on its social networks that the team managed to evacuate the permanent exhibition at the beginning of the war. They also shared photos of empty walls.[18] Tatyana Rud, an employee of the Kharkiv Literary Museum, spoke on Hromadske radio about the movement and evacuation of art objects: ‘The topic of evacuating the museum collection has been discussed since 2014. At the same time, we compiled lists of the most valuable museum items in the collection... In the summer of 2021, the museums of Ukraine received a questionnaire from the Ministry of Culture about readiness for the evacuation of cultural property in the event of an armed conflict...The Ministry of Culture has an idea of ​​how ready museums are for the evacuation of what they need’.[19] The Kharkiv Municipal Gallery, which actively promoted artists, including participation in foreign art fairs, showed their premises during the war on their social media. The gallery was hit by a shell; there is damage but the building survived. Friends of the gallery helped to close the broken windows and protect the premises from possible further destruction. The gallery team now works remotely. Kharkiv’s Yermilov art centre has become a safe place for local artists, as it is located in the basement of the university. Hiding from shelling in this makeshift shelter, the activists created the ‘HOW ARE YOU’ project. Konstantin Zorkin writes: ‘the project ‘HOW ARE YOU’ is a total installation consisting of various constructions for sleeping, cooking, washing and entertainment. This is a performance where artists constantly work in the environment which they created and in the company of other artists. This is an adaptation of the exhibition space with the remnants of the last exhibition for life and creative needs. This project shows a new form of relationship between the space and the artist, the art institution and the art community, which may be the final for the great historical cycle of Kharkiv art. We were there together, we built a house out of what we could find, we worked and rested, we were synchronously scared of explosions and calmed each other down. And everything we did was real art’.[20] Fig 13. ‘HOW ARE YOU’ project in Kharkiv’s Yermilov art centre. (Credit: Margarita Rubanenko) . The city also contains the art studio Aza Nizi Maza . They have a very recognizable style of art, but it is nonetheless clear that the students are given maximum freedom of expression. Now the studio conducts classes in the Kharkiv metro where people are hiding from airstrikes. For everyone, this is akin to art therapy. Their work reflects the reality and experiences of every Ukrainian.[21] Fig 14. The artwork from Aza Nizi Maza’s poster diary — ‘WHAT I SEE’. The inscription means: ‘Heart beats — Ukraine beats’. . Mariupol is the city that probably has suffered most from the war. According to reports, there was not a single intact building remaining in the area.[22] One of the destroyed buildings was the Academic Drama Theatre, which was hit by an air bomb. According to inaccurate data, 300 people died in the basement of the theatre.[23] At the time of writing, the Azovstal plant, where about a thousand residents have been hiding for 2 months, is being attacked by the Russian army. The plant is held as the last fortress. Local residents who escaped along the green corridors are an exception. Most were forcibly deported to Russia. We were very lucky to contact an artist who managed to escape from Mariupol and is in a relatively safe city now. About the past cultural life of the city, Violetta Terlyha recalls: ‘the galleries that I know are the popular Kuindzhi Gallery and the Tu! platform, but I don’t know the fate of either of them, since it was completely impossible to move from area to area in the city and track the situation’. In total, according to our calculations, there were about 10 spaces dedicated to contemporary art in Mariupol. The Kuindzhi Gallery was destroyed. It kept the originals of works by Ivan Aivazovsky, Tatiana Yablonskaya, Mykhailo Deregus, and other world-famous Ukrainian artists. The fate of these paintings is still unknown. But according to the head of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine, at the time of the shelling, there were no original paintings by Arkhip Kuindzhi. There were only copies by A. Yalansky and O. Olkhov.[24] The Tu! platform is an urban space created in 2015 to fight against the war. Their motto has been relevant to our country ever since. They took a quote from the correspondence of Freud and Einstein: ‘everything that works for culture works against war’. In the period up to 2022, they held lectures, creative performances, and exhibitions. In the new setting, the Tu! platform promotes its Emergency Assistance Fund. They raised about $30,000 and transferred that money to help families in Mariupol. Thanks to the activities of the platform, more than 200 residents of Mariupol received assistance. The Foundation helps not only financially, but also with evacuation and volunteer support.[25] We have received news not only about everyday looting by the Russian army of the Ukrainian population but also of exhibition spaces. Russian troops are robbing the archival and cultural funds of museums that did not have time to evacuate. They take the exhibits to Donetsk for evaluation and will take the most valuable exhibits to Russia.[26] West Since the war started, one of the authors of this article has moved to Lutsk. Life in the city is as normal as it could be in these circumstances. It is a beautiful historical city and is home to The Korsaks' Museum of Contemporary Ukrainian Art. The cultural and entertainment centre where the museum is located was transformed into a temporary shelter for up to 500 refugees and organises a one-day course ‘Tactical Medicine and Combat Training’.[27] The museum created the Art Battalion, an art marathon that will last until Ukraine’s victory. They invite musicians, artists, poets, philosophers, and writers and organise daily concerts, literary meetings, performances, and classes, which are free of charge for anyone who wants a distraction and to enjoy the therapeutic properties of art.[28] The Lutsk gallery of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine stopped its exhibition activity but stayed open. Volunteers are making camouflage nets for the Ukrainian army. There is also an art therapy class and the paintings of those who attend are hung on the walls of the gallery. In Ivano-Frankivsk, the art space Assortment Room has stepped up its efforts to preserve Ukrainian art. In times of peace, they planned to hold many residencies. Now they are evacuating private collections and helping artists. The up-to-date information is that they have received 30 requests, implemented 10 of those and could move works by 17 artists to bunkers. These total around 400 artworks.[29] Lviv galleries did not stop their exhibition activities after the outbreak of the war, and further adjusted their efforts to humanitarian projects. With the beginning of the war, only one gallery stopped working in Lviv (the Veles gallery, since its owner temporarily went abroad). Art collectors Information about private collections was gathered through collectors with whom the gallery collaborated, as well as from open publications on social networks. The majority of the collectors requested anonymity. The situation with private collections is currently in flux and is solely dependent on the success of the Ukrainian armed forces. Fig 15. Evacuation of the collection of Boris Grinev from Kharkiv. . The unexpectedness of the Russian invasion of Ukraine predetermined the fate of many private collections. Most of the collections of contemporary art at the time of the beginning of the war were in Ukraine in their places of permanent storage. None of the collectors we interviewed believed in the possibility of a full-scale Russian invasion. The only exceptions, where the art objects were moved in advance, were those in the collections of the diplomats. Following the announcement of the US citizens’ evacuation, the procedure of exporting the valuable property of all foreign citizens began. Some foreign citizens evacuated their private collections partially, they tried to quickly sell some items by offering them to Ukrainian auctions and other private collectors. To our knowledge, these attempts were not successful. The majority of contemporary art collections are located in the largest Ukrainian cities including Lviv, Kharkiv, Odesa, and Dnipro, with Kyiv taking the lead. Private houses are typically clustered around large cities in the suburbs where collectors frequently reside and store their collections. The general situation at the moment is that there is no mass departure of collectors from their homes in the western region of Ukraine, and they do not see at this stage the need to evacuate collections. We should note that in conditions when hostilities are rapidly approaching and evacuation is not planned, art objects are usually not taken along as first priority. Human instincts are triggered to take what is necessary for survival in the coming hours and days. These are clothes, food, medicines, and fuel. It is only possible to bring small works of art with you in such circumstances. For collectors who lived in the suburbs of Kyiv and Kharkiv, the time to get ready for evacuation was sometimes calculated in several minutes. In the Kyiv region, most of the collections have not been evacuated, since Russian troops already reached the northern suburbs of the city on 24 February 2022, the first day of the invasion. In the first days, there were individual manifestations of panic among the population, and leaving the city was hampered by huge traffic jams. One of the clients of the gallery, who lives in the suburbs of Kyiv, said that the workers of his estate put his collection in the basement. For some time, they were monitoring the house, but as soon as the battle broke out in the village, they abandoned the house. After the liberation of the suburbs of Kyiv, it was possible to find out the fate of his collection. Most of the items survived; only a few paintings were damaged. The Russian soldiers who settled in the house were not interested in art, since the house also kept a large collection of wines, which they completely drank and plundered. Another collector left his home near Kyiv and now has a Russian tank in his yard; he has yet to return and has no knowledge of what has been going on inside the house. We only know of a handful of cases when collections of contemporary art were partially evacuated from Kyiv when the war broke out. The collection of a private museum belonging to Igor Ponamarchuk’s family was partially evacuated. He has both antique and contemporary paintings in his collection. When the war started, he was able to transport a portion of the collection from Kyiv to Lviv in the west of Ukraine. The situation is especially difficult in Kharkiv and its environs, as the city was subjected to massive shelling by heavy artillery and airstrikes. Collections were not taken out of this city and the situation will be clear only after the end of the war. At the moment, we know that several collections of contemporary art are intact. One of them contains a painting by Ivan Turetskyy, purchased from the gallery Portal 11 at the exhibition. We discovered its fate through the research for this article. According to a publication by Boris Grinev, a well-known Kharkiv collector, his collection of contemporary art was evacuated with the help of volunteers and territorial defence. One of the volunteers, Anton Khrustalov, later died because he was shot by the Russian occupants. Given the intensity of hostilities, the Kharkiv, Kyiv, Sumy, and Chernihiv collections are in the greatest danger. Border areas are suffering the most at this time. Regarding Odesa and Dnipro collections, we can say that they were in relative safety up to this moment, but the situation changed as, after 2 months of the war, rocket attacks on Odesa and Dnipro intensified. All art objects located in Mariupol shared the fate of the city. Part destroyed, part looted and taken to Russia. Regarding Western Ukrainian collections, we can say that they are in relative safety at the moment, but the situation may change. Art objects located in the suburbs of Kyiv and Kharkiv may have been lost or significantly damaged since these territories were occupied for a long period and were a zone of active hostilities. The widespread looting and vandalism by Russian forces is a major issue. Hundreds of instances of looting and cruelty committed by the occupying troops have been documented on social media. It can even be assumed that some of the art stolen by Russian soldiers in Ukraine will later appear on sale in Russia. Therefore, it is critical to compile a list of stolen works of art from private collections in order to track them down in Russia. It is already clear that after the war, many pieces of contemporary art will require restoration. It will be possible to assess the total damage to private and museum collections of contemporary art only after the end of the war. Auction Houses Ukrainian art is sold through both international auction houses and several Ukrainian-based auction houses. Goldens auction house (in the past Golden Section ) is one of the leading auction houses in Ukraine. It has not held any auctions in Ukraine after the full-scale Russian invasion. In collaboration with the Swiss international auction house Koller they have organised a charity auction of Ukrainian modern art titled ‘Have a heart’, taking place on the platform of the Swiss partner. Koller claims that all of the proceeds will go to the artists who created the works.[30] Goldens has also organised an NFT project to support artists, illustrators, and designers, as well as get money for donations to support the Armed Forces and purchase humanitarian aid. The auction team has announced an open call for everyone to create designs for beads that are transformed into tokens. A collection of NFTs called Namysto (which refers to a piece of traditional necklace jewellery) is published and promoted by the Goldens on the NFT marketplace OpenSea . Percentages of the proceeds go to artists and charities.[31] The Kyiv-based auction house Dukat specialises in Ukrainian books, Ukrainian art of the first half of the 20th century, national unofficial art of the 1950s–1990s, and contemporary art. Their plans had to be postponed because of the war. Recently Dukat has announced a charity auction of a painting called Flowers Grew around the Fourth Block from a series of works by artist Maria Primachenko, dedicated to the Chernobyl tragedy. The painting was presented by the art collector Igor Ponamarchuk, from his family collection. All proceeds will be given to the Serhiy Prytula Charitable Foundation.[32] From 5 to 17 April, the auction house Arsani was planning to hold a pre-auction exhibition ‘Classical and Modern Art’ within the walls of the National Museum of Taras Shevchenko in Kyiv. The auction was supposed to take place online on 16 April.[33] Although the situation in Kyiv was becoming more stable in April, the war was not over yet and these plans were postponed or cancelled. As Arsani is based both in Kyiv and in Kharkiv, we do not have information about the condition of the auction house exhibition space in Kharkiv, where fighting is going on at the moment. During the pandemic and lockdown, an initiative to support artists by the gallerists and collectors Marat Gelman and Yevhen Karas became very popular. This is a group on Facebook named Сіль-Соль (Salt-Salt) , an accessible marketplace of contemporary visual art directly from artists in the low-price range. It attracts many young artists and a large audience of buyers due to its affordability and low barriers to entry. This initiative continues working now, and although there might be some delivery delays, artists continue posting their works and receiving demand for them. Salt-Salt has also successfully organised a charity sale of 82 artworks and transferred 200 000 UAH (≈7000 USD) to the fund helping the arm ‘Come Back Alive’.[34] The painting My Hut, My Truth by Maria Primachenko was sold for €110,000 at the Benefit for Ukraine’s People & Culture charity auction in Italy. The starting price was €1000. Among other lots, there was a work by Ukrainian artist Alina Zamanova and works by foreign artists. All proceeds will be sent to help Ukrainian culture; to the Museum Fund of Ukraine, the Maria Primachenko Family Fund, ‘100% of Life’ and others.[35] The Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art (UIMA), located in Chicago, together with the online marketplace Artsy has organised an online auction, ‘Impact: Artists in Support of Refugees from Ukraine’, on April 14, featuring submissions from Ukrainian and non-Ukrainian artists. It aims to raise cultural awareness, fund Ukrainian artists, and provide support relief for refugees fleeing Ukraine. Artsy is donating a portion of the Buyer’s Premium to the organisation in the USA, which provides aid to people affected by the war in Ukraine and gives support to displaced families. Donations collected by UIMA will be distributed to non-profit organisations among which is the Ukrainian Emergency Art Fund.[36] Export Ukraine had a reasonably liberal system for exporting contemporary art objects before the war. Ukraine has no tariffs on the export of works of art less than 50 years old. Special export permits are not required, although the customs authorities require a document confirming that the item is not older than 50 years. This document is issued by art museums in each regional centre and is not difficult to obtain. The delivery of art objects was carried out by many world postal services, as well as local organisations and private contractors. Since the beginning of the war, major global companies have suspended delivery of art objects on the territory of Ukraine. Many purchased items will not be delivered outside of Ukraine for an indefinite period. Victoria Adkozalova, one of the artists who responded to our survey wrote: ‘I gave one of the works bought by a collector from the USA on February 23 to the DHL branch, and, unfortunately, it could not leave the country and stayed in Kyiv’. The problem also arose from the rapid evacuation of private collections that were under the threat of destruction in regions with active hostilities and bordering them. Under these conditions, local companies and private contractors were the fastest to adapt and were able to establish new land routes for the export of art to Europe. Since airmail is not working during the war and sea transportation is blocked, only land routes along government-controlled highways are used. But not everyone can use the services of such logistics structures, as this requires personal contacts and a history of relationships. It also retained the ability to send works of art abroad with the help of the national operator Ukrposhta . But this service has significant restrictions on the dimensions of the sent items. Naturally, in such conditions, there is practically no possibility of full-fledged insurance of art objects. Any sending of items from the occupied territories is not possible. The removal of art objects from the zone of occupation is associated with a great risk for life. Although we are aware of several examples of the private evacuation of work from besieged or occupied cities, those are exceptions. Preservation and destruction of street art The war destroys Ukrainian cities, streets, and houses with shells. Among the affected buildings are universities, theatres, museums, and even residential buildings and hospitals. Our cultural heritage and art are at risk of being destroyed. Street art suffers first because it decorates the exterior and is not protected from vandalism. The murals were not ready for mines, bullets, and aerial bombs. Just like civilians. Some of the works of famous Kharkiv street artist Gamlet Zinkivskyi will no longer be seen. Since 2014, he has completed at least four projects in Mariupol but this city has now been reduced to rubble.[37] Fortunately, most of the artist’s works have survived in his hometown of Kharkiv and we hope they will not be destroyed in future battles in the east of Ukraine.[38] Sculptures located in open spaces are at an increased risk of destruction since they cannot even be moved to the basements of houses. There are many cases of the production of reinforcing structures for outdoor sculptures that could be at greatest risk. These were mostly made by activists who understand the importance of saving cultural heritage. The cultural and educational project ‘Ukrainian Modernism’, dedicated to researching, preserving, and promoting modern architecture and monumental art in Ukraine created an initiative to protect the stained-glass windows of the pearl of Kyiv modernism at the funicular. They raised funds to strengthen all 12 stained glass windows from enemy shelling as they are very vulnerable to shock waves and debris.[39] At the beginning of the war, a portal was created where volunteers leave photographs of cultural objects damaged by shelling. This is called the cultural loss map.[40] It is important because in the future, according to the initiator’s plan, it will be a single reference book for invoicing the Russian Federation for reparations at the end of the war. NFT art The art industry is actively helping Ukraine; it organises projects where all proceeds go to the charities. Several of these projects are based on the sale of NFT art. A project by the Holy Water tech company united 500 Ukrainian artists who created artworks for their charity NFT collection, presented in a virtual exhibition. On 1 April 2022, they donated to Ukraine’s official crypto wallet more than 61 thousand US dollars.[41] A project named ‘Museum of War’ by the Ukrainian blockchain community and the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine also partnered with Ukrainian artists. This project’s goal is to preserve memories of current events, provide information to the digital community, and collect funds to help Ukraine. It is selling NFTs where each token is a combination of news information and an illustration by Ukrainian artists. The money raised will be used to support the Ukrainian army and civilians.[42] The Ukrainian team FFFACE.ME has created a collection of three non-fungible tokens in support of Ukraine. ‘At a time like this, there is a very strong creative impulse. We are aware that today the task of the creative class is not only to support Ukraine financially but also to form a cultural image of the country, which will not only be remembered but will become fashionable. This is how the concept of the Ukrainian Power Artifacts NFT collection came about. In it, each of the lots is literally the object of force in which we put our strength, formed during the bombing, evacuation and psychological tests. Buyers of each of these artefacts will receive this momentum and become stronger, just as the buyer of the original art object receives a part of the author’s soul’, says the team FFFACE.ME .[43] All proceeds from the sale of this collection will be sent to support the Armed Forces. The Ukrainian Emergency Art Fund The non-governmental organisation Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), in partnership with independent Kyiv-based media agency Zaborona , The Naked Room art gallery, and the National Art and Culture Museum Complex Mystetskyi Arsenal established the Ukrainian Emergency Art Fund. It is a very important initiative in dealing with the consequences of the Russian invasion and helping the Ukrainian art community. The fund facilitates support and administers donations offered by international artistic and charity organisations, as well as from private donors. First, it provides vital financial aid for artists and cultural workers who remain in Ukraine and urgently need support to ensure a basic standard of living and security. They intend to support the continuity of research of curators, theoreticians, researchers, and other cultural workers. Then it aims to globally promote contemporary Ukrainian culture as a powerful instrument for the protection of the values of democracy and freedom in the world.[44] Conclusions As our study makes clear, the art industry in Ukraine is now focused on ways to support the country. At this moment there is no emphasis on the economy of the art industry while all agents in the Ukrainian art market have to also think about their future. There are initiatives to help individual Ukrainian artists. Many galleries abroad have organised open calls for Ukrainian artists, they relocate them and exhibit their works in their spaces and at Art Fairs. This benefits artists and foreign galleries, while there is an increasing interest in Ukrainian art and culture. For some artists, during the war, there was an opportunity to express themselves outside of Ukraine, because there has been more interest in the topic of Ukraine in particular and our country in general. This creates new opportunities after the war. Most projects happening now are created in collaboration with international partners. As the Ukrainian art industry consists of a fairly closed society, social ties and trust are required for international projects. In our own experience, such projects are more likely to happen when the parties have already been personally acquainted with each other. Since the two years before the war were overshadowed by the pandemic crisis, participation in international projects such as the art fairs was almost impossible, and therefore international connections between galleries and other art agents became weaker. Because strong connections are essential now, many projects cannot be implemented quickly and efficiently. Domestic primary agents of the art market, the private galleries, struggle now. Most galleries had to stop their exhibitions. When people are worried about their future, customers’ ability to buy art shrinks and the domestic demand for art is predicted to decrease. At the same time, the ability to participate in international events is limited because of travel restrictions. The initiative of the Ukrainian Emergency Art Fund is very important at this moment, but we expect that private galleries will be one of the most affected parties as a result of the war, and some of them will cease to exist. In some cities, they are simply destroyed and their collections are destroyed. Many galleries will also lose their sources of income from sales at exhibitions and art fairs. The situation with regard to the collection of Ukrainian art is likely to change. Ukrainian art will become more interesting and accessible to Western collectors. At the same time, the economic situation will narrow the ability of the domestic collector to buy art and this will negatively affect the domestic art market. There is a problem that Ukrainian art is often sold under the title of Russian art, i.e., in Russian art departments in auction houses. This needs to be changed now, and Ukrainian art has to be identified as a separate segment. Ukrainian art cannot be sold in the auctions under the name or in the section ‘Russian art’, as this violates the definition of an independent and sovereign country. Ukrainian artists are often mislabelled as Russian, especially Ukrainian born artists during the time of the USSR, for example Kazimir Malevich. Malevich called himself a Ukrainian in his diaries.[45] But, as part of the imperial policy, Russia has always tried to appropriate the Ukrainian cultural heritage. During the war, we see another example of Russia’s barbaric attitude towards Ukrainian art and its institutions. We expect that one of the consequences of the war will be the complete emergence of Ukrainian art from the shadow of Russian art and its recognition as national and original. There will also be a process of revision of Ukrainian art and its complete rethinking as an important part of contemporary European art. The war is a powerful cultural phenomenon that will radically change the direction of the art market and contemporary Ukrainian art in general. Depending on the results of the war, the art market can expect either a long stagnation or a rapid renaissance and the emergence of new works and art projects. We believe in victory. The authors of the article are Igor Globa, Maria Sivachenko, and Anastasiia Yatsyna , members of the team of the gallery Portal 11. Portal 11 is an art gallery in the centre of Kyiv, Ukraine and a space for true connoisseurs of fine arts. The mission of the gallery is to exhibit contemporary Ukrainian artworks that will eventually become classics. Gallery projects attract a broad audience and are highlighted in the press. [1] Mariana Chikalo, ‘Opening of a new project by artist and sculptor Astian Rey’ (Lucky Ukraine, 17 February 2022) < https://www.luckyukraine.in.ua/vidkruttya-vustavku-astian-rey > accessed 15 March 2022. [2] ‘Exhibition by Maksym Mazur “Transliteracija”‘ ( Portal 11 Gallery , 21 February 2022) < https://portal11.com.ua/en/exhibition-by-maksym-mazur-transliteracija/ > accessed 16 March 2022. [3] A Gavrilyuk, ‘From February 18 to March 17 in the Center for Contemporary Art M17 is an exhibition of Gamlet Zinkivskyi "3652019 +’ ( M17 Contemporary Art Center , 2022) < https://m17.kiev.ua/exhibition/3652019-gamlet-zinkivskyj/ > accessed 1 April 2022. [4] Gamlet Zinkivskyi, ‘Gamlet remains in Kharkiv. In the spring he will paint new street works in the European city of Kharkiv. The good will win’ ( Instagram , 1 March 2022) < https://www.instagram.com/gamletzinkivskyi/ > accessed 1 April 2022. [5] ‘Exhibition by Viktoriia Adkozalova “Shadows of unforgotten ancestors”‘ ( Portal 11 Gallery , 24 January 2022) < https://portal11.com.ua/en/exhibition-by-viktoriia-adkozalova-shadows-of-unforgotten-ancestors/ > accessed 16 March 2022. [6] ‘The museum exhibition “From the Italian diary” of Ivan Turetskyy’s paintings is open till the 15 of April in Milan’ ( Portal 11 Gallery , 6 April 2022) < https://portal11.com.ua/en/the-museum-exhibition-from-the-italian-diary-of-ivan-turetskyy-s-paintings-is-open-till-the-15-of-april-in-milan/ > accessed 15 April 2022. [7] ‘Benefit exhibition in support of Ukraine’. ( Holešovická Šachta Digital Gallery , 15 March 2022) < https://www.holesovickasachta.cz/beneficni-vystava-na-pomoc-ukrajine-%f0%9f%87%ba%f0%9f%87%a6/ > accessed 16 March 2022. [8] Simon Schuster, ‘A Ukrainian Photographer Documents the Invasion of His Country’ Time (New York, 17 March 2022) < https://time.com/6158001/ukraine-invasion-in-photos-kyiv-russia/ > accessed 14 April 2022. [9] ‘Patriotic graffiti with cats appeared in Odesa (photo)’ ( Ukrainian Information Service , 17 March 2022) < https://usionline.com/v-odesse-pojavilis-patrioticheskie-graffiti-s-kotami-foto/ > accessed 20 April 2022. [10] Katie Campione, ‘‘Go Fuck Yourself’: Ukrainian Soldiers Celebrated as Viral Heroes for Last Words to Russian Warship’ ( TheWrap , 25 February 2022) < https://www.thewrap.com/go-fuck-yourself-ukrainian-soldiers-memes-tributes/ > accessed 18 April 2022. [11] Tim Lince, ‘Ukrainian Snake Island soldier seeks trademark for the iconic phrase, as major brand challenges grow in Russia’ ( WTR , 17 March 2022) < https://www.worldtrademarkreview.com/ukrainian-snake-island-soldier-seeks-trademark-iconic-phrase-major-brand-dilemma-grows-in-russia > accessed 13 April 2022. [12] Dmitri Ponomarenko, ‘Ukrposhta has started the national selection of illustrations for a postage stamp on the theme "Russian warship, go to x@y", ( Ukrainian News , 1 March 2022) < https://ukranews.com/news/837981-ukrpochta-nachala-natsionalnyj-otbor-illyustratsij-dlya-pochtovoj-marki-na-temu-russkij-voennye > accessed 20 April 2022. [13] Tatiana Nechet, ‘Postage stamps «Russian warship, go ...!» and envelopes with special cancellation signed by the author of the legendary phrase were sold at auction for UAH 5 million. – 200 times more expensive than the starting price’ ( ITC UA , 22 April 2022) < https://itc.ua/news/pochtovye-marki-russkij-voennyj-korabl-idi-i-konverty-so-speczpogasheniem-s-podpisyami-avtora-legendarnoj-frazy-prodali-na-aukczione-za-5-mln-grn-v-200-raz-dorozhe-startovoj-cze/ > accessed 25 April 2022. [14] ‘A four-thousand-strong demonstration in Warsaw – thousands of bodies on the ground’ ( Fundacja im. Kazimierza Pułaskiego , 2022) < https://pulaski.pl/en/a-four-thousand-strong-demonstration-in-warsaw-thousands-of-bodies-on-the-ground/ > accessed 15 April 2022. [15] Emmanuel Wanjala, ‘Stop promising, start acting! Ukrainians to protest for NATO to act on Russia’ ( The STAR , 2022) < https://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2022-03-25-stop-promising-start-acting-ukrainians-to-protest-for-nato-to-act-on-russia/ > accessed 15 April 2022. [16] Tara Law, ‘The Story Behind Time ’s 'Resilience of Ukraine' Cover’ Time (New York, 17 March 2022) < https://time.com/6158007/ukraine-resilience-time-cover/ > accessed 10 April 2022. [17] Brett Sokol, ‘In Miami, a Ukrainian Art Show Becomes Unintentionally Timely’ The New York Times (New York, 28 February 2022) < https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/28/arts/design/miami-ukrainian-art-show.html > accessed 18 March 2022. [18] Anna Chernenko, ‘We save paintings by Russian artists from their own people - a representative of the Kharkiv Art Museum’ ( Hromadske radio , 12 March 2022) < https://hromadske.radio/publications/my-riatuiemo-kartyny-rosiys-kykh-khudozhnykiv-vid-ikhn-oho-zh-narodu-predstavnytsia-kharkivs-koho-khudozhn-oho-muzeiu > accessed 20 April 2022. [19] ‘The Ministry of Culture has not given any orders to Ukrainian museums to act in emergencies or evacuate the collection’ ( Hromadske radio , 22 February 2022) < https://hromadske.radio/news/2022/02/22/minkul-t-ne-dav-ukrains-kym-muzeiam-niiakykh-rozporiadzhen-shchodo-diy-u-ekstrenykh-sytuatsiiakh-chy-evakuatsii-kolektsii > accessed 20 March 2022. [20] Kostyantyn Zorkin, ‘HOW ARE YOU’ ( Yermilov Centre , 2022) < https://yermilovcentre.org/announcements/256/ > accessed 10 April 2022. [21] ‘In the Kharkiv metro, the art studio has started classes with children who live there because of the war’ ( Suspilne Media , 29 March 2022) < https://suspilne.media/223005-u-metro-harkova-hudozna-studia-rozpocala-zanatta-z-ditmi-aki-tam-zivut-cerez-vijnu/ > accessed 10 April 2022. [22] Oksana Kovalenko and Yevhen Spirin, ‘“The Russians are destroying everything. There are no intact houses”. Mykola Khanatov the head of the Popasna Military Administration about life in the almost completely destroyed city’ ( Babel , 21 April 2022) < https://babel.ua/en/texts/77898-the-russians-are-destroying-everything-there-are-no-intact-houses-mykola-khanatov-the-head-of-the-popasna-military-administration-about-life-in-the-almost-completely-destroyed-city > accessed 11 April 2022. [23] Hugo Bachega and Orysia Khimiak, ‘Mariupol theatre: ‘We knew something terrible would happen’’ ( BBC News , 17 March 2022) < https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60776929 > accessed 11 April 2022. [24] Sarah Cascone, ‘A Mariupol Museum Dedicated to One of Ukraine’s Most Important Realist Painters Has Reportedly Been Destroyed by Russian Airstrikes’ ( Artnet News , 23 March 2022) < https://news.artnet.com/art-world/russian-airstrike-destroys-mariupols-kuindzhi-art-museum-2088890 > accessed 16 April 2022. [25] ‘Emergency Fund’ ( Tu! , 28 March 2022) < https://tu.org.ua/news/fond-ekstrenoi-dopomohy/ > accessed 16 April 2022. [26] Vera Perun, ‘In Mariupol Russians rob museums, exhibits taken to Donetsk for an assessment’, - Andryushchenko’ ( LB , 26 April 2022) < https://lb.ua/culture/2022/04/26/514762_mariupoli_rosiyani_grabuyut_muzei.html > accessed 29 March 2022. [27] ‘Refugee Assistance Center in Adrenaline City’ ( MSUMK , 2022) < https://msumk.com/en/tsentr-dopomogy-bizhentsyam-pratsyuye-v-adrenalin-siti/ > accessed 20 March 2022. [28] ‘‘Art Battalion’ in MSUMK!’ ( MSUMK , 2022) < https://msumk.com/en/art-bataljon-u-msumk/ > accessed 25 March 2022. [29] Olga Klim and Ilona Zakharuk, ‘‘Assortment Room’ helps to evacuate works of art from different cities of Ukraine’ ( Suspilne Media , 2 March 2022) < https://suspilne.media/213108-asortimentna-kimnata-dopomagae-evakuuvati-tvori-mistectva-z-riznih-mist-ukraini/ > accessed 29 April 2022. [30] ‘HAVE A HEART’ ( Koller International Auctions , 19 April 2022) < https://www.kollerauktionen.ch/en/ibid-archive.htm > accessed 22 May 2022. [31] ‘Namysto’ ( OpenSea ) < https://opensea.io/collection/namysto > accessed 22 May 2022. [32] ‘Charity auction ‘Primachenko flowers for ZSU’’ ( Dukat , 2022) < http://www.dukat-art.com/en > accessed 29 April 2022. [33] ‘Arsani Auction House’ < https://arsani.art/en.html > accessed 30 March 2022. [34] ‘Saltandpepper’ ( Facebook , 2022) < https://www.facebook.com/groups/saltandpepper.art > accessed 10 April 2022. [35] Victoria Alekseenko, ‘A painting by Maria Primachenko was sold at a charity auction in Italy for €110,000’ ( D1 , 23 April 2022) < https://d1.ua/na-blagotvoritelnom-auktsione-v-italii-za-e110-tysyach-prodali-kartinu-marii-primachenko > accessed 28 April 2022. [36] ‘Impact: Artists in Support of Refugees from Ukraine’ ( Artsy , 2022) < https://www.artsy.net/auction/impact-artists-in-support-of-refugees-from-ukraine?sort=sale_position > accessed 14 April 2022. [37] ‘Gamlet Zinkovsky's new work in Mariupol’ ( Izolyatsia , 16 December 2015). < https://izolyatsia.org/ru/project/zmina/new-work-hamlet-zinkovsky/ > accessed 14 March 2022. [38] Gamlet Zinkovsky, ‘Map of Murals’ ( Kharkiv ) < https://find-way.com.ua/ru/oblasti/kharkovskaya/kharkov/gamlet-zin-kovskij-karta-muralov-khar-kov > accessed 14 April 2022. [39] Ukrainian modernism, ‘Let's protect the stained-glass windows of the Kyiv funicular from enemy shelling!’ ( Instagram , 22 March 2022) < https://www.instagram.com/p/Cbaq-0SNLVI/ > accessed 22 March 2022. [40] ‘Map of cultural loss’ ( Ukraine Cultural Fund , 2022) < https://uaculture.org/culture-loss/ > accessed 27 April 2022. [41] ‘Buy NFTs to Save Ukraine and Stop War’ ( Holy Water Tech , 2022) < https://holywater.tech/ > accessed 27 March 2022. [42] ‘THE NFT-MUSEUM of the war of Putin's Russia against Ukraine’ ( META History Museum of War , 2022) < https://metahistory.gallery > accessed 27 March 2022. [43] ‘FFFACE.ME has created a collection of three NFTs in support of Ukraine’ ( Vogue UA , 15 March 2022) < https://vogue.ua/article/culture/art/ffface-me-stvorili-kolekciyu-iz-troh-nft-na-pidtrimku-ukrajini.html > accessed 27 March 2022. [44] ‘Ukrainian Emergency Art Fund’ < https://ueaf.moca.org.ua/ > accessed 25 March 2022. [45] Tetyana Filevska, Kazymyr Malevych: The Kyiv Period, 1928–1930 (Rodovid Press/kmbs 2016).

Three Stories of Art and War I коли гуркочуть гармати- музи замовкають The Russian invasion catapulted the Ukrainian art world into crisis, and desperate measures were undertaken to secure staff, collections, and artists. Dreams are deferred but stubborn resilience manifests as a desire to not only protect cultural heritage, but also somehow provide opportunities for continued creativity. Three institutions from all regions of Ukraine—Central, East, and West—reflect on their current challenges, on how they are coping, and what might be in store for the future. When cannons roar, the muses will not fall silent. Olesya Ostrovska-Liuta is the Director General of the National Art and Cultural Museum Complex ‘Mystetskyi Arsenal’. Located in a magnificent eighteenth-century structure once devoted to the production and storage of artillery and ammunition in Kyiv’s historic Pechersk district, the Mystetskyi Arsenal (Art Arsenal) is Ukraine’s leading cultural institution, notable for its multidisciplinary programme in the visual and performing arts, as well as for its annual book fair. Before her tenure at Mystetskyi Arsenal, Ms. Ostrovska-Liuta served in several leading roles in the development of Ukraine’s national strategy for culture and creative industries. She has been the First Deputy Minister of Culture of Ukraine, the First Deputy of the National Committee for UNESCO, and was on the board of the International Renaissance Foundation, the Ukrainian Institute, and numerous other professional bodies. She is also a freelance curator and writes on culture and cultural policy. This interview was conducted on 21 April 2022. Olesya Ostrovska-Liuta : I am at Arsenal right now, the air sirens are blaring, and I am in a corridor sitting between two walls. Fig 1. The National Art and Cultural Museum Complex ‘Mystetski Arsenal’ 2012 © Barnbrook. Fig 2. Futuromarenia Exhibition (15.10.2021—30.01.2022 Mystetskyi Arsenal) © Oleksandr Popenko. Constance Uzwyshyn, for CJLPA : How are you able to work at the moment? OOL : We have a very different set of challenges. Our team is scattered all across Ukraine and Europe and this is the challenge for all organisations. People are everywhere. We have to rebuild the processes and understand what the organisations are about now, what the cultural centre should do, and what is the most important task. Yesterday, I had a meeting with a German writer from a Western European publication. It is very difficult to think about the idea of war, that this is possible, and it is very, very strange for Ukrainians to imagine as well. In 2014, we could not imagine the war. Even this summer, Constance, when you were here, you could not imagine it. Consider Putin’s text of 12 July 2021, On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians .[1] It is very explicit in what he thinks and what he is going to do. It seemed like a theory, like mythology, not an action as it turned out to be. CU: What kind of programming can you have now that there is war? OOL : We have multidisciplinary lines of approach. Apologies, I have another call from security and must answer it. When you get a call from security you want to answer it. We are a museum which holds a collection and the most important job for all museums in Ukraine is to protect the collection. This is very difficult because we were not prepared. There are no safe and prepared places in Ukraine to receive the collection. Museums are doing a lot and it cannot be discussed publicly where these collections are being safeguarded. Peter Bejger, for CJLPA : There is lots of information about this in the press; some people think that collections are safer abroad in other countries.[2] It is a delicate question. What are your thoughts about this? OOL : It is safer for certain objects, and it needs to be decided at the governmental level and not by separate organisations. You cannot move objects easily out of Ukraine, you need governmental decisions and permissions. Most museums cannot move their collections because there simply has been no time to prepare. We have a very tragic and bad situation in Mariupol,[3] and also in Kharkiv and Chernihiv. Many cultural institutions have been purposefully destroyed (fig. 3) and collections have been looted (for example, Arkhip Kuindzhi artworks were stolen) (fig. 4).[4] However, in Chernihiv, Russian troops have retreated. Furthermore, both Lviv and Chernivtsi are under threat but there are no Russian troops on the ground (they are targeted by long-range missiles), so it makes things different. Therefore, these institutions and their requirements need to be addressed differently. In some situations, it is wise to move a limited number of objects abroad. Fig 3. Shah Basit. Maria Prymachenko Museum in Ivankiv, Kyiv Oblast. Twitter post. 28 Feb 2022. Fig 4. Sunset on the Steppes (Arkhip Kuindzhi 1900, oil on canvas, 39.5 x 57.5cm). Fig 5. May that Nuclear War be Cursed! (Maria Prymachenko 1978, gouache on paper). Then you have the teams and the issues with people moving abroad. We need our people; we are being de-staffed. At the moment, we have connections with our staff, but the longer they stay abroad, the more they get immersed. It is very important to support programmes in Ukraine and it is difficult when the staff are not in Ukraine. However, there are exceptions. For example, our digital team is located outside of Ukraine and works well. An example of this is with the international book fairs. Our design team produces the designs for all the stands. CU: Do you think the COVID experience in some way prepared for this remote work? OOL : Yes, it has helped us cope with the situation right now because we learned how to work remotely and how to use technology to keep on working. We also learned that communication is key, and that we cannot rely on spontaneous communication as one does in an office. Also, Ukraine is a country with very good internet connections, and the Internet has not been down since the invasion, except for the occupied areas like Bucha, Irpin, and Mariupol. That is also why the press knows so much about what is going on in Ukraine. This also supports us! CU: When war began, as the director of the Arsenal, what was the first thing you did? OOL : On 24 February, our first action was to inform our partners abroad. I woke up at 5:30 a.m. My husband first told my daughter the war had started. When you hear these words, you don’t believe it. You think this must be a mistake. It is macabre. At 8:00 a.m. I met with my team, and we drafted an appeal to explain the situation to our partners, especially addressing book and literature circles which are a main component of our programme, in particular the International Book Arsenal Festival ,[5] a large literature and book festival. This was our first step. This festival was scheduled for May. Of course, we had to redirect our work to let people know, to explain what is happening in Ukraine, and to explain our point of view, especially why Ukraine does not want to be part of Russia, and why Ukrainians are not Russian (as Putin put it). Therefore, we focused on our presence at international book festivals…we started with Bologna, Tbilisi, London, and Paris.[6] Fig 6. International Book Arsenal Festival 2021. © Oleksandr Popenko. Fig 7. President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky with First Lady of Ukraine Olena Zelenska and Olesya Ostrovska-Liuta at the International Book Arsenal Festival 2021. © Oleksandr Popenko. In addition to the book fairs, the team is working with contemporary art and putting together art exhibitions outside of Ukraine. At the moment, the head of exhibitions fled to Paris with her teenage son. We have put together an exhibition which is at the Ukrainian Cultural Centre in Paris and another exhibition will be in Treviso.[7] In addition to the book fairs and art exhibitions, we are also creating an archive of artworks being produced in Ukraine during war. It is called ‘Ukraine Ablaze’.[8] This has a special meaning because it refers to [Oleksandr] Dovzhenko’s film Ukraine in Flames (1943).[9] We have also co-founded an art fund which deals with the consequences of the Russian invasion. It is the Ukrainian Emergency Art Fund and raises funds to purchase Ukrainian art and support curators, art writers, art research, and much more through fundraising activities.[10] As I said, Mystetskyi Arsenal has several programmes, but our programme has had to drastically change because of the war. We even have a legal department to assist us. CU: Who funds Mystetskyi Arsenal now? OOL : We still receive basic funding but have just had severe financial cuts and we do not know how we will succeed. CU: Due to the war, what are your thoughts on decolonisation and art and how has this been addressed by you as Director of the Mystetskyi Arsenal? OOL : First of all, Russian imperialism is something that is not unknown to Ukrainians. But there is a blind spot by other countries. Russian politics and policies here are seen as neo-colonial. Ukrainians are very sensitive to these narratives via Russian media and culture. PB: Do you feel perhaps it is difficult to explain to Westerners, that is, to those who live in a post-modern society, decolonisation in Ukraine or Russian imperialism? They come from a different historical and cultural experience. How can you address these blind spots to western audiences? OOL : It depends. When you look from Ukraine, especially from Kyiv, and see for example statements and declarations made from the German political arena, it is shocking. It is like there is no amount of reality that can convince a German politician. There is a discussion in Ukraine, which I think is a good argument, but you might find this controversial. What is the reason why Western, especially European countries (it is different in America), refuse to notice the imperial nature of the Russian discourse? Also, why do they often not notice other cultures apart from Russia in these regions? Why is that? A hypothesis arose that this has something to do with all the imperialisms in the world as well. Empires speaking to empires, important capitals speaking to other important capitals. Even at these meetings those other important capitals, for example the Russian capital, have legitimate spheres of interest. What are legitimate spheres of interest? It means that another capital has the right to define other nations’ invasion choices. Why is it possible that a Western capital or nation is even capable of accepting this idea of legitimate spheres of interests? How could people accept that Russia has the right to define Ukraine’s future? One of the explanations is connected to the parallel imperialism still present in other countries. PB: Do you think this is a hangover nostalgia (among the Left) for the USSR? Perhaps it is a modernisation project and has been affected by this view, which is present in Soviet art and transposed in current discourses? O: The Soviet Union was definitely a modernisation project, which means modernisation is not always a good thing and can be a means of tolerating oppression. How do you measure good and evil? Was the Soviet Union good only because it opposed an evil side in the capitalist world? Is it enough to challenge the capitalist world to be good, no matter how many atrocities you bring with yourself? In our part of the world the answer is no. It is not enough. It can bring a greater evil. When your life is threatened, you might become melodramatic. Fig 8. Andriy Sahaidovsky. Scenery. Welcome! Exhibition (18.09.2020—24.01.2021 Mystetskyi Arsenal) © Oleksandr Popenko. PB: Germany has a huge role in contemporary art, with their museums, fairs, and curators, but what do you think about the French, Italians, and other Europeans? OOL : Regarding Germany, there is a gap, luckily, between politicians and professionals. Professionals are much more supportive and there is a feeling that the understanding is deeper, and the public is much more sympathetic to Ukraine. I am not saying Germany is bad. We also have to state we are very grateful for the reception to Ukrainian refugees. We could not have imagined Ukrainians crossing borders in huge numbers without passports or COVID restrictions, and with free transportation. This is great and should not be underestimated. This is very important to point out. We should not underestimate these efforts. Regarding the political discourse, what is most striking to Ukrainians are the Germans and the French. Consider when [French president] Macron stated that events in Bucha might not qualify as genocide and in the end Ukrainians and Russians are brotherly nations.[11] This sounds very alarming in Ukraine. First of all, this ‘brotherly nation’ is of course an imperial trope. This trope tells you that no one should interfere with those relations because they are a kind of family relations so let them decide by themselves because they are a ‘brotherly’ family. There is this family lexis, and this form of speaking camouflages international aggression and deprives Ukrainians of agency. If they are ‘brothers’, then they have no political agency to make their own political choices. Therefore, when a Ukrainian hears a French president state this, it sounds quite colonial as well. Then the question arises, why would a French president take such a colonial position? That is really alarming in Ukraine. We heard nothing like this from the British. I have the feeling the British and American are the most realistic. They understand what is going on. When it comes to southern Europe, there is a different history of relationships. The latest story with the Vatican and Rome [Pope Francis arranged a Ukrainian and Russian woman to carry the cross together during a Good Friday procession] was received very poorly.[12] All the international steps towards reconciliation are perceived as harming the victim and inflicting more suffering on Ukrainians. The time for reconciliation between Ukrainians and Russians has not yet come. Russians have to first analyse their own political reality and their actions towards Ukrainians. CU: Do you have any professional relations with Russian artists or Russian Institutes? OOL : No one has reached out to us as an institution. CU: With the war going on, the spotlight is now on Ukrainian art. Please comment on how Ukrainian art has changed during these last two months. First of all, what is Ukrainian Art? OOL : Anything produced in Ukraine now or anything where an artist defines himself/herself as a Ukrainian artist. That would probably be my explanation of Ukrainian art. CU: Do we need to re-examine and critically discuss the way art history defines and establishes Ukrainian-born or artists of Ukrainian descent as Russian? Let us consider, for example, Kazimir Malevich, Ivan Aivazovsky, Ilya Repin, Volodymyr Borovykovsky, David Burliuk, Aleksandra Ekster, or even Andy Warhol (a Carpatho-Rusyn). What does this say about art history and its practice? OOL : This is a huge question, and a complex discussion is ahead of us. How do you define a Polish or even Russian artist today? At the moment, here is my own definition today, and it might change over time: a Ukrainian artist is any artist that made an impact on the Ukrainian art scene or was either produced in Ukraine or by individuals who identify themselves as Ukrainian artists. In this way, Malevich would also be Ukrainian because he was teaching in the Kyiv Academy. He was one of the founders of the Academy and he was an important cultural figure in Kyiv life. Therefore, he is a Ukrainian artist but also belongs to other communities and societies. Fig 9. Red Figure (Kazimir Malevich 1928, oil on canvas, 30 x 23.5cm). Kazimir Malevich taught at the Kyiv Art Institute (1928 – 1930) when this painting was created. We are discussing this because Putin and the Russians put forward this question, not only whether Ukraine is a political entity, but do Ukrainians exist? Since Putin put this question forward—by the way, Ukrainians thought this question was long resolved—he made it into a huge issue, and therefore we speak about it. Thus, his text is genocidal in nature because what he is saying is Ukrainians do not exist. There is no such thing as Ukraine. Although I exist as a physical reality, his answers are Bucha, Irpin, and Borodianka.[13] Those people, for him, should not exist physically. This is unexpected to anyone who knows about Ukrainian culture and history. As for the question, are Ukrainians different from Russians? There are two different issues, in my opinion. Are Ukrainians different from Russians? The answer is yes, yes, and yes. Secondly, this question in itself is disgraceful. However, if you speak about Kyivan Rus', it is a medieval period that is neither Russian nor Ukrainian. It is like equating the Holy Roman Empire to being German. PB: What is going to happen with the Arsenal Book Fair going forward? OOL : It will not happen in May. It all depends on the war, and it is too early to say anything. We will have to do other things. We are developing a programme to connect Ukrainians and international publishers because the international scene is very interested in connecting with Ukrainian writers. We are working with the Frankfurt Book Fair, which is the most important global book fair. We are not able to do any cultural activities in Ukraine because this is not possible for security reasons. We cannot have a mass public event, even in Lviv. It’s too dangerous. It is difficult to have a steady workflow because of sirens and you have to change your work schedule because of that. Kyiv is waking up at the moment, even hairdressers are starting to work…which is very exotic these days. The shops and markets are starting to function as well as the cafes…but there are no cultural or conference-related types of activities. We would love it, but it is just not possible. CU: You are speaking at the Venice Biennale, can you tell us a bit about it? OOL : There are two separate Ukrainian projects at the Biennale, the Ukrainian Pavilion[14] and the Pinchuk project.[15] It is a parallel programme, and Pinchuk’s projects are always well known. The Ukrainian Pavilion is organised by three curators and the artist Pavlo Makov. Makov stayed in Kharkiv, even under the shelling. Regarding the curators, one of them is a young man (he was originally not allowed to travel due to the war but was given special permission) and one of the females just gave birth in a bomb shelter in Western Ukraine. Their work routine was extremely complicated. It will be a miracle that it is even there. Fig 10. Fountain of Exhaustion (Pavlo Makov 2022). Image and description courtesy of @ukrainianpavillioninvenice on Instagram. CU: Why is Ukrainian art significant to other cultures? OOL : One thing, but it is so reactive, is because Ukrainian culture understands the nuances of Russian culture and Russian imperialism and can translate it to others. But isn’t this a minor role, to be a translator? It is still part of colonialism…I feel uneasy about this. CU: Perhaps Ukrainian artists represent values, integrity, and a morality which many in the West have lost. What do you stand for? Ukrainians are posing tough questions such as the purpose of NATO, the meaning of the United Nations, and so forth. OOL : I agree, Ukraine is forcing people and societies to change their views. Artists such as Alevtina Kakhidze[16] especially at the moment makes things uncomfortable for Westerners, with their previous views. They make people re-examine fundamentals, what people were there in Kyivan Rus' for example. In a sense Ukrainian art is a game changer, it challenges us. Here is some small, good news. The sirens have stopped. CU: Do you contemplate leaving Ukraine? OOL : No. First of all, I am the director of Arsenal which means I am in charge, and I cannot leave. Legally I can, but morally no. PB: How many staff are you? OOL : We had eighty people in our pre-war regular staff. We are a large institution by square metres but are compact by the number of people. In Ukraine, there are around sixty. All the museum directors are still in Kyiv, but some people have moved to other cities, and a few are outside Ukraine, but not many. PB: Do you have any concluding thoughts on what is to be done during this period? What is the moral imperative of artists right now in Ukraine? OOL : It is important to pose questions, to try to be uncomfortable, to try to reflect on what is going on, to try to describe your experience…it is an extreme experience. How can you describe this other than through art? We will only see what the strategies are sometime later when we view it retrospectively. Some artists are trying to cope with reality through their art. Art is also about providing a voice, so many of them are voicing things, or example Alevtina. She says I am an artist, and I can ask unpleasant and uneasy questions to anyone. She challenges assumptions even for her western interlocutor, who does not want to change his/her lens. Alevtina has a house in Kyiv, was very close to the front line, and spends most of the time in her basement with her dogs. The dogs were anxious and afraid; she spent most of her time in the basement because this was a space where her dogs were their calmest. In her art, she draws all her impressions, thoughts, feelings…she writes questions and thoughts on her drawings in English. She said there are so many mistakes (in the grammar), but they are authentic, but I don’t think about correct expression. I just want to say something despite the ability to operate the language. It is not the translation made by a good translator, it is what I do, what I think, and she thinks about certain interlocutors, and she speaks to outsiders…Alevtina is powerful, her art is honest, and it is blunt. Fig 11. The Degree of Fault of Every Citizen of the Russian Federation (Alevtina Kakhidze 24.02.2022, ink and coloured marker on paper) © Alevtina Kakhidze. This interview was conducted by Constance Uzwyshyn and Peter Bejger. Constance Uzwyshyn is an expert on Ukrainian contemporary art. She founded Ukraine’s first foreign-owned professional art gallery, the ARTEast Gallery, in Kyiv. Having written a masters dissertation entitled The Emergence of the Ukrainian Contemporary Art Market , she is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge researching Ukrainian contemporary art. She is also CJLPA 2’s Executive Editor and the Ukrainian Institute of London’s Creative Industries Advisor. Peter Bejger is an editor, filmmaker, and writer based in San Francisco. He was a Fulbright Research Scholar in Ukraine, where he wrote and produced a documentary film on Secession-era architecture of the city of Lviv. Previously, he lived in Kyiv for several years, where he worked as a journalist, media consultant, and cultural critic. [1] Vladimir Putin, ‘On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians’ ( President of Russian Federation , 12 July 2021) < http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181 > accessed 12 March 2022. [2] Hannah McGivern, ‘French Museums Rally to Protect Art Collections in Ukraine with Truckload of Emergency Supplies’ ( The Art Newspaper , 25 March 2022) < https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2022/03/25/french-museums-ukraine-emergency-supplies > accessed 26 March 2022. [3] Pjotr Sauer, ‘Ukraine Accuses Russian Forces of Seizing 2,000 Artworks in Mariupol’ The Guardian (London, 29 April 2022) < https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/29/ukraine-accuses-russian-forces-of-seizing-2000-artworks-in-mariupol > accessed 29 April 2022. [4]Sophia Kishkovsky, ‘Mariupol Museum Dedicated to 19th Century Artist Arkhip Kuindzhi Destroyed by Airstrike, According to Local Media’ ( The Art Newspaper , 23 March 2022) < https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2022/03/23/mariupol-museum-dedicated-to-19th-century-artist-arkhip-kuindzhi-destroyed-by-airstrike-according-to-local-media > accessed 24 March 2022; Alex Greenberger, ‘Paintings by Maria Prymachenko Burn as Ukrainian History Museum Weathers Destruction’ ( ARTnews , 28 February 2022) < https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/maria-prymachenko-paintings-ivankiv-museum-destroyed-1234620348/ > accessed 12 March 2022; Jeffrey Gettleman and Oleksandr Chubko, ‘Ukraine says Russia Looted Ancient Gold Artifacts from a Museum’ The New York Times (New York, 30 April 2022) < https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/30/world/europe/ukraine-scythia-gold-museum-russia.html accessed > 1 May 2022. [5] For more information on the International Book Arsenal Festival see < https://artarsenal.in.ua/en/book-arsenal/ > accessed 16 May 2022. [6] ‘Book Arsenal Will not Take Place in May 2022’ < https://artarsenal.in.ua/en/povidomlennya/book-arsenal-will-not-take-place-in-may-2022/ > accessed 4 May 2022. [7] ‘Ukraine: Short Stories. Contemporary Artists from Ukraine. Works from the Imago Mundi Collection’ ( Fondazione Imago Mundi ) < https://fondazioneimagomundi.org/en/progetti/exhibitions/ukraine-short-stories-2/ > accessed 9 May 2022. [8] ‘Ukraine Ablaze; Project by the Laboratory of Contemporary Art’ < https://artarsenal.in.ua/en/povidomlennya/the-ukraine-ablaze-project-by-the-laboratory-of-contemporary-art/ > accessed 7 May 2022. [9] Alexander Dovzhenko and Yuliya Solntseva. ‘ Ukraine in Flames (1943)’ ( YouTube , 24 June 2015) < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmkpOqoNZSY > accessed 4 May 2022. [10] ‘Ukrainian Emergency Art Fund’ < https://artarsenal.in.ua/en/povidomlennya/ukrainian-emergency-art-fund-report-on-the-month-of-work/ > accessed 27 March 2022. [11] Reuters, ‘French President Macron says Killings in Bucha were ‘very probably’ War Crimes’ ( Euronews , 7 April 2022). < https://www.euronews.com/2022/04/07/uk-ukraine-crisis-france-macron > accessed 2 May 2022; Shweta Sharma, ‘Poland hits out at Macron after Massacre in Bucha: ‘Nobody Negotiated with Hitler’’ Independent (5 April 2022). < https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/poland-macron-hitler-bucha-killings-b2051006.html > 2 May 2022. [12] Cindy Wooden, ‘A Ukrainian and a Russian were Invited to Lead the Vatican’s Via Crucis. Ukraine wants Pope Francis to Reconsider’ America (New York, 12 April 2022) < https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2022/04/12/ukraine-russia-crucis-242811 > accessed 12 April 2022. [13] ‘Bucha Massacre, Nightmares of Irpin and Hostomel’ (6 April 2022) < https://war.ukraine.ua/crimes/the-timeline-of-tragedy-bucha-massacre-nightmares-of-irpin-and-hostomel/ > accessed 7 April 2022. [14] ‘Ukrainian Pavilion at the 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia’ < https://ukrainianpavilion.org/ > accessed 24 April 2022. [15] ‘This is Ukraine: Defending Freedom @Venice 2022’ < https://new.pinchukartcentre.org/thisisukraine-en > accessed 24 April 2022. [16] See < http://www.alevtinakakhidze.com/ > accessed 9 May 2022.

Modern-day Singapore prides itself as a ‘global city’ with a commendable level of economic stability as a result of its sustained cosmopolitanism. Having rapidly developed over a time when the differences between nations are increasingly valued, the city-state’s cosmopolitan disposition has led many to question the existence of a nation-specific identity. The government’s—more specifically, the People’s Action Party (PAP) that has led a supermajority government since Singapore’s independence—forceful hand in crafting the nation’s ‘global city’ identity has led many to perceive said identity to be artificial if not ill-defined. In this article, I delineate the steps undertaken by the PAP (concerning race and language) that lead to the existing global impression of Singapore before examining the approaches taken by state institutions to musically portray the cosmopolis. Race in the ‘Global City’ Singapore’s experience of numerous periods of economic and cultural reinvention precedes the proclamation of its statehood on August 9, 1965. These reinventions were mandated by its obsession ‘to become and remain a successful city-state and global city’.[1] Singapore today continues to be described as a ‘Global City’ or ‘International City’. In fact, the terms were ‘used regularly throughout the development plans of the State of Singapore, and in numerous planning documents produced for it’.[2] Singapore’s association with the ‘global’ and ‘international’ leaves many to ponder about what is to be considered its ‘local’ or ‘national’. Due to its central location in Southeast Asia, Singapore has served perennially as a hub for trade and commerce; it thrived as a cosmopolitan seaport that facilitated trade between Europe and East Asia as a British colony and is today a common midpoint for travel between Europe or Africa to Asia-Pacific as evidenced by its international passenger traffic. The settlement in Singapore of international travellers over time has engendered a multicultural and multiracial population on the island. This multiculturalism—and the determination to maintain it—has proven to be advantageous in ensuring Singapore’s economic success and plays a significant role in the genesis of Singapore’s cultural identity. It is important to note that Singapore’s ‘state creation preceded the process of nation building’ as a result of its unanticipated separation from Malaysia.[3] Contrasting with the common narrative of state independence succeeding an intensifying nationalist sentiment amongst its people, Singapore’s independence was not founded on such convictions. There was therefore an absence of a well-defined national identity at the onset of statehood. As a small island that lacks a resource-rich hinterland, Singapore’s state-creation process fixated on discovering the ways in which the state could generate and assure itself of an economic capital. The concern for its economy was characteristic of the inhabitants of the island, whom Sir Stamford Raffles—a British statesman often regarded as the founder of modern Singapore—described as having embodied a ‘“spirit of enterprise and freedom” which distinguished it from the rest of Asia’.[4] Singapore’s state-creation process was prioritised over nation-building, thus delaying the creation of a cultural capital. That is not to say, however, that the developments of the two capitals are distinct from one another. In recent years, the conception of Singapore’s cultural products has reflected a consideration for economic gains (as we shall see below). Apart from its people’s enterprising spirit, more pertinent to this study of identity is Singaporeans’ seemingly intrinsic belief in multiracialism. Raffles argued that the people of Singapore were ‘characterised by [their] diversity, but also the absence of prejudice’.[5] This statement highlights the past people’s cosmopolitan outlook of Singapore. Prior to its independence, Singapore was part of the Straits Settlements, themselves a part of the wider British Malaya. In a bid to maintain their rule over British Malaya, the British instigated a form of colonial nationalism in the region that raised the status of Malay culture, recognising the significance of the Malay population and providing them with a slight sense of autonomy.[6] Schools that instructed in the Malay language were favoured and received more support and funding from the British government than schools that instructed in other languages (such as English or Mandarin Chinese). This privileging of the Malay language and culture—according the Malay population with a sense of superiority over those of other races—displeased the Chinese-majority population in Singapore.[7] The resultant racial tension persisted within the region even after Malaysia gained its independence from the British in 1963, eventually triggering the race riots of 1964 in Singapore. Singapore’s intolerance of the existing cultural and racial hierarchy and Malaysia’s fear that a ‘merger with Singapore would lead to an overall Chinese majority that would threaten the privileges of indigenous Malays’ led to Singapore’s secession from Malaysia in 1965.[8] Negotiating Singapore’s multicultural and multiracial population proved to be a matter of great importance upon the nascency of the State as then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew ‘asked rhetorically, “How were we to create a nation out of a polyglot collection of migrants from China, India, Indonesia, and several other parts of Asia?”’.[9] To establish social connections between such disparate communities that was crucial to citizenship (and the forming of a coherent nation) was the primary concern of Lee and his government (led by the PAP). They dealt first with the fundamental issue of the nation’s lingua franca (or ‘working language’) by seeking a linguistic middle ground between its various racial communities. Its previous disputes with Malaysia had dismissed the Malay language as a contender, and while the Chinese now formed the racial majority in Singapore, their native language was not favoured as Lee had also aimed to ‘disassociate Singapore’s largely ethnic Chinese population from communist China’.[10] The decision was made to refer to the British, whose vernacular was already familiar to the population in Singapore as a result of its colonisation. The English language served as a racially neutral communicative tool upon the departure of the British as it was not inherently associated to a racial majority in Singapore. A proficient level of English is continually stressed in Singapore, especially since it holds the status today as the world’s lingua franca. In a speech given at the launch of a book series titled Grammar Matters (2000) produced to aid English-learning, then Minister for Education Teo Chee Hean highlighted the accessibility that English is able to provide to its citizens: Singapore has four official languages: Malay, Tamil, Chinese and English, reflecting our ethnic diversity and our history. Our mother tongues give us access to our diverse cultures, values and roots, while English is our working language. Using English as the common language for administration and education has helped Singaporeans from all walks of life understand one another and live together harmoniously. Equally importantly, proficiency in the English language has also provided Singaporeans with a medium to communicate with others around the world—for business and trade, in academia, in international fora, for travel and leisure, over the Internet. It has given Singaporeans a key advantage—global literacy—so that we can directly communicate and convey our views to others in many settings around the world.[11] Teo noted that English was not only able to facilitate communication within Singapore’s borders but also beyond on an international level. Alluding to Singapore’s economy-centred disposition, Teo also argued that mastery of English would enable Singaporeans to achieve the ‘global literacy’ essential to the nation’s economic development. With the understanding that one’s language is a strong signifier of one’s racial identity, the explication of language-learning in Singapore above highlights the government’s aspirations for racial equality. English remains today as the state’s de facto official language and language of business and administration. By proclaiming Malay, Tamil, and Chinese as the other official languages (despite the disparity in numbers of the racial communities who speak them), the Singapore government grants ‘equal status to the cultures and ethnic identities of the various “races”’, and prompts a racially unbiased society in Singapore.[12] This belief is instilled in citizens through the daily recitation of the National Pledge—that includes the lines, ‘pledge ourselves as one united people, regardless of race, language, or religion’—during their years in school.[13] Singapore’s penchant for racial equality stems from the issues encountered as a state of Malaysia (as highlighted above), and its societal structure as a British colony which senior diplomat Tommy Koh highlights to be ‘both racist and hierarchical’.[14] To inhibit the development of a racial hierarchy within a society, Koh explains that one needs to ‘treat [their] minorities as equals’, as demonstrated in Singapore.[15] Singapore’s racial demographics are managed by the state through the Chinese-Malay-Indian-Other (CMIO) model. This four-race model obligates Singaporeans to identify themselves as part of one category in relation to the others. Through administering this model, the government homogenises each category and erects racial boundaries ‘in an attempt to erase hybridity’.[16] To be categorised into one of the four racial groups is a significant part of forming one’s own Singaporean identity, as Eve Hoon explains: The coexistence of race and national identity was represented in the hyphenated identity model of ‘nation–race’, where Singaporeans were asked to identify as Singaporean–Chinese, or Singaporean–Indian, Singaporean–Malay or Singaporean–Other. Race was therefore foundational to the national identity of a Singaporean, almost serving as a prerequisite.[17] The ascriptive nature of the CMIO model is exploited in many areas of management in Singapore, ranging from housing where there was ‘a quota for each racial group in every block of flats’;[18] to education where students were taught Mandarin, Malay, or Tamil as their ‘mother tongue’ if they were Chinese, Malay, or Indian respectively while a choice is given to those categorised as ‘Other’; and to Singapore’s racialised public holidays, shown in the table below.[19] (Note that two days are associated with each race to ensure an equal distribution.)[20] As a result of these patent racial demarcations in the lives of Singaporeans, a notion of ethnic absolutism is passively developed within Singaporeans who become acutely perceptive of the nuances of the different racial factions.[21] In opposition to encouraging cultural integration often anticipated within the population of cosmopolises like Singapore, the government has instead made more distinct the racial boundaries between its people.[22] To further strengthen Singapore’s fundamental pillar of multiracialism, a curriculum known as ‘National Education’ is embedded within its education system. Students are taught of the racial conflicts in Singapore’s history—which include the race-related Maria Hertogh riots of 1950 and the racial riots of 1964—in order to comprehend the fragility of inter-racial relationships and to deter racial tensions and its lamentable consequences. Additionally, public discourse concerning racial differences is sanctioned as taboo by the government, thus further mitigating the recurrence of the disabling events in Singapore’s history.[23] Clash of Identities: Singaporeans vs Singapore Government In comparison with its achievements in other areas of Singaporean society, the government’s work as ‘architect of nationalism and national identity’ has been more contentious.[24] The national identity defined by the government centres around the state’s obsession with economic success, rather than the more problematic promotion of an ethnic identity.[25] Policies are constantly changing to encourage economic growth, which results in a continual construction and reconstruction of the Singaporean identity.[26] When Singapore experienced a labour shortage in the 1990s, the government acted upon this deficiency by attempting through several means to make Singapore a favourable place for foreigners to settle and work. First, Singapore’s foreign policy was amended, simplifying the immigration process.[27] Second, the government flagged the CMIO model in order to dismiss potential race-related concerns arising from integration into Singaporean society. Singaporeans are reminded of the all-encompassing ‘O’ of the CMIO model ‘to encourage Singaporeans to welcome immigrants of all ethnic backgrounds into Singapore’. Likewise, foreigners are led to view Singapore as an accommodating and cosmopolitan country with the ability to ‘incorporate all immigrants into [its] existing [CMIO] model’.[28] Some have termed the ‘O’ a ‘catch-all residual category’ due to the convenience it has provided to immigration.[29] The cosmopolitanism offered by the CMIO model and its connection to economic progress therefore constitutes the government’s notion of ‘Singaporean’. These efforts proved to be successful as the ‘O’ category saw an increase of approximately 100,000 individuals between 1990 and 2013.[30] The influx of immigrants led Singaporeans to question the relationship between their national identity and the race-managing CMIO model. Does the cosmopolitanism propagated by the government characterise what the people view as ‘Singaporean’? To the government, the ‘Singaporean’ is a cosmopolite who is inducted to the CMIO model and seeks economic progress. Singaporeans, on the other hand, regard the Singaporean identity as one that accounts for more than a racial identity represented by the CMIO model. The rejection of the convenient incorporation of new citizens into the CMIO model has shown that, to Singaporeans, the Singaporean identity is not simply defined by one’s race (or even language or religion) but by one’s experience of growing up and living in a society shaped by the CMIO model which has attuned individuals to the practices and tendencies of those in a racial category that is different to their own. To Singaporeans, falling into one category of the CMIO model—as immigrants do—may allow one to attain Singapore citizenship but is insufficient to allow one to claim oneself as ‘Singaporean’. Thus, a dispute between the government and the people’s notion of ‘Singaporean’ is established. While the government regards all citizens as Singaporeans, Singaporeans perceive themselves more exclusively as members of an imagined community—to use Benedict Anderson’s term—bound together by the experience of the Singaporean way of life.[31] The discord between the government and the people’s notion of ‘Singaporean’ is highlighted in the arts, which were employed to attract capable foreigners—Westerners, in particular—to join Singapore’s workforce. State-funded arts companies (or those with aspirations of state-funding) tend not to be overtly culture-specific in order to cater to what is anticipated to be a cosmopolitan audience. Melissa Wong cites the Singapore Repertory Theatre (SRT) as an example; the SRT’s tagline in 2010 was ‘World Theatre with an Asian Spirit’, which demonstrated that a distinct idea of ‘Singaporean-ness’ in the arts needs to be substituted for one that is less specific in order to create a cosmopolitan image of Singapore. This falls in line with the government’s view of ‘Singaporean’ and of Singapore as a cosmopolis. While the tagline is no longer in use by the company today, its inclination for global connections is hinted at still by the company’s mission, which states that the SRT seeks to collaborate ‘with the best talent in the world’.[32] A Linguistic Analogy Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has noted that ‘Singapore is not a melting pot but a society where each race is encouraged to preserve its unique culture and traditions, and appreciate and respect those of others’.[33] The Singapore government’s attempts to keep the categories of the CMIO model distinct and prevent a coalescence of said categories is illustrated by their management of languages in the nation. A bilingualism policy put in place in 1959 mandates that all Singaporeans have knowledge of two languages—English and a ‘mother tongue’.[34] Aside from being a key marker of one’s racial identity, the ability to read, write, and converse in one’s mother tongue arguably strengthens one’s allegiance with their CMIO category. In 1979, the Speak Mandarin Campaign was initiated by the government to organise the linguistically heterogeneous Chinese population in Singapore. The goal of the campaign was to encourage ‘all Singaporean Chinese to embrace the use of Mandarin and enjoy an appreciation of the Chinese language and culture’ and to discourage the use of Chinese dialects.[35] The government recognised that an absolute Mandarin-speaking Chinese population would eradicate the need for the teaching of dialects in addition to the bilingual education system. In a speech marking a re-launch of the campaign in 1986, then Deputy Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong dissuaded the use of dialects by branding them as a ‘learning burden’.[36] By encouraging the use of Standard Mandarin as the sole Chinese language amongst Singapore’s ethnic Chinese population, the government has further defined the Singaporean Chinese identity. While there have not been extensive campaigns for the Malay or Tamil languages, the Malay Language Council and Tamil Language Council (established in 1981 and 2000 respectively) organise events to encourage the continual use of Standard Malay and Standard Tamil amongst the respective racial communities.[37] In spite of the government’s attempts to keep the racial identities distinct and separate, a coalescence of these identity markers has proven to be inevitable—especially considering the close quarters in which people of different races inhabit. This coalescence manifests itself through an English-based creole language known as ‘Singlish’ which is widely spoken and understood by Singaporeans today. Singlish, while English-based, is characterised by words originating in Hokkien, Cantonese, Teochew, Malay, Tamil, and other common languages used in Singapore. Also part of its features are words created from a blend of languages; for example, ‘agaration’—which means an estimation—is an anglicised form of the Malay ‘agak-agak’ which refers to the act of estimating. Teo attributes the emergence of Singlish to the first-generation English speakers who are more in touch with their mother tongues: ‘The syntax, grammar, expressions, pronunciation and rhythms of their own mother tongues come more naturally to them. These creep into the English they use’.[38] As Singlish is unintelligible to non-Singaporeans (and is thus nation-specific) and is believed to reduce Singaporeans’ competence in Standard English, it was viewed by the government as detrimental to Singapore’s cosmopolitan image and economic wellbeing.[39] In light of these potentially threatening outcomes, the government initiated the Speak Good English Movement in 2000 to discourage the use of Singlish and stress the importance of English to inhabitants of a ‘global city’. As part of the campaign, the Ministry of Education revised the English Language syllabus used in schools with a stronger focus on grammar and presentation skills; more debates and essay competitions were organised; and new English-learning aids were published.[40] Similar to the treatment of Chinese dialects, Singlish was viewed askance by former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew who termed it a ‘handicap’ that ‘[the government] must not wish on Singaporeans’.[41] Whilst some Singaporeans believe that Singlish is integral to the Singaporean identity—arguing that ‘it is a true reflection of Singapore’s multiculturalism’[42]—it is seen by the government as a peril to its cosmopolitan vision of Singapore. The government’s pushback on Singlish evidenced their resistance towards Singaporeans’ ideal of a culturally homogenous national identity. Music in Singapore Similar to many aspects of Singaporean life, art in Singapore is subjected to the authoritative though pragmatic governance of the People’s Action Party. The government frequently argued in the early years of independence that the economically focused people of Singapore lacked ‘social graces and refinement’, qualities that could be inculcated with art.[43] The civilising ability of the arts was also recently highlighted by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, who cautioned against building a Singapore with ‘a first-world economy but a third-rate society, with a people who are well off but uncouth’.[44] The state’s intention to induct the arts into its nation-building process is evidenced in the early years of the state’s independence as then Minister of State for Culture Lee Khoon Choy proclaimed at the opening of an art exhibition at the National Theatre in 1966 that ‘The days of Art for Art’s sake are over. Artists should play an integral part in our effort to build a multi-racial, multi-lingual, and multi-religious society where every citizen has a place under the sun’.[45] More than a decade later, the relationship between the arts and the state is highlighted again in former Finance Minister Hon Sui Sen’s speech at the opening of the Third Singapore Arts Festival on December 10, 1980: While it may sound romantic for artists to starve and work in their garrets, the output of such artists without patronage must be abysmally low. A Michelangelo could not have given of his best without the beneficence of a Pope Sixtus with a Sistine Chapel to be decorated: Neither could other artists of the Renaissance have done their work without the patronage of princes whose vanity must be flattered or wealth displayed.[46] Hon emphasised the working relationship between artists and patrons in Renaissance Europe and likened the state and its government to the latter. It was expected that artists would consider the patron’s (i.e., the state’s) interests when creating art. The arts were to serve a civilising role in the building of a society that is desirable to the government. This role involved instilling a unique sense of identity and belonging in Singapore citizens, which was crucial to retaining the state’s human resources following the economic crisis in the 1980s (which led to the emigration of many). In music, ethnic community songs and National Day Parade theme songs (NDP songs) were created to aid the imposition of the government’s sociological ideologies. Ethnic Community Songs Along with their enterprising spirit, the settlers of pre-independence Singapore brought to the island the songs of their diverse cultures, which are categorised into the definitive ‘C’, ‘M’, and ‘I’ of the CMIO model. In an attempt to create a shared entity amongst its people post-independence, the government appropriated these songs by changing its lyrics to suit a Singaporean context. In the early 1980s, these songs were recorded by celebrities and promoted widely to the nation as ‘national folk songs’ through television and radio and were made even more accessible with musical scores and records sold at a low price.[47] A disregard for the act of appropriation is blatantly expressed by former Senior Minister of State Lee Khoon Choy: Every tune is international. Melody is international. There is nothing wrong in putting new words to suit it to local conditions. You can choose any tune in the world, from any nation, but if you put new words to it, then you can sing it as your own.[48] Aside from the abovementioned efforts to popularise these ‘national folk songs’, a ‘quiet campaign’ known as Operation Singalong was introduced to foster a habit of communal singing amongst the population, which the government saw ‘as an important way for Singaporeans to develop a sense of belonging to the nation and solidarity’.[49] These songs are incorporated into a mass singing segment in the National Day Parade which is broadcasted nationwide every year. Lee’s statement proved to be unconvincing as the campaign was received poorly, with the population lamenting the disingenuity of the songs in reflecting Singaporean culture. Operation Singalong was eventually ‘quietly shelved and forgotten’.[50] While the songs were not well-received, the campaign was successful in popularising communal singing, a practice to be exploited later with the NDP songs. In response to the inauthenticity of the pre-existing ethnic community songs, numerous songs of a similar style were composed and added to the repertoire by local composers since the 1980s. Together with NDP songs, ethnic community songs are taught in schools every year in the build-up to the celebration of National Day on August 9. National Day Parade and Theme Songs The poor reception of the early ethnic community songs prompted the government to develop an alternative medium with which the population could better identify. The government employed advertising agency McCann-Erickson to produce National Day Parade theme songs in the hope of inculcating a sense of belonging to a unified community striving towards achieving prosperity and progress for the nation. The first of such songs was ‘Stand Up for Singapore’ composed in 1984 by Hugh Harrison. In contrast with ethnic community songs, the style of ‘Stand Up for Singapore’ was more akin to that of modern pop songs and appealed particularly to the younger generation. The production of the song (and its accompanying music video that was broadcasted on state media) was of a higher quality, thus augmenting its attractiveness.[51] The song’s success was perpetuated with further commissions from Harrison in 1986 (‘Count on Me, Singapore’) and 1987 (‘We Are Singapore’). Aloysius Ho notes that cassette tape sales of NDP songs saw a significant increase in those two years, reaching 73,000 in 1986 and 105,000 in 1987.[52] The popularity of these early NDP songs developed the medium into ‘fertile ideological sites for the PAP government’s many fantasies’.[53] The purpose of the early NDP songs was to strengthen the people’s community consciousness by evoking a sense of pride and joy in past achievements. This is illustrated in the opening lines of ‘We are Singapore’, which goes: ‘There was a time when people said that Singapore won’t make it / But we did / There was a time when troubles seemed too much for us to take / But we did’;[54] and in ‘One People’: ‘We’ve built a nation with our hands / The toil of people from a dozen lands / Strangers when we first began now we’re Singaporean’.[55] In addition to encouraging a unified community in Singapore, the songs often implore Singaporeans to ensure the state’s continued success, as evinced in the lyrics for ‘Stand Up for Singapore’: ‘Believe in yourself, you’ve got something to share / So show us all you really care / Be prepared to give a little more’.[56] In the late 1990s, the NDP songs were reinvented; an alternative narrative that connoted place identity emerged. Contrary to the chest thumping quality of the earlier style, the reinvented songs adopted ‘a softer and more sentimental musical style’.[57] This change in musical style catered to the refined taste of the population in the new millennium as the newspapers described: ‘the recent repertoire…is ostensibly more melodic, sophisticated and attuned to popular culture than the previous decades’ “Count on Me, Singapore” and “We Are Singapore”’.[58] The modified goal of establishing communal identity to a personal place identity warranted the recording of these songs by solo local artists in place of choruses (as before). Similarly, these songs were widely broadcasted through state media in the build-up to National Day.[59] Apart from the explicit titles, the lyrics of the songs reveal the objective of fostering place identity as demonstrated in ‘Home’: ‘Whenever I am feeling low / I look around me and I know / There’s a place that will stay within me / Wherever I may choose to go’;[60] and ‘My Island Home’: ‘My island home / Wherever I may be / I never will forget her / Nor will she forget me’.[61] The sentimental style of the music (with its moderate tempo and lush orchestration), through which these texts are delivered, effectively instigates nostalgia and tugs at the heartstrings of singers and listeners. The invented tradition of singing a repertoire of NDP songs en masse at National Day Parades—a result of Operation Singalong —is still observed today. The song composed for a specific year is featured ‘as the centrepiece of the parade’s grand finale, effectuating the climax of a “secular and ritual landscape spectacle”’.[62] In addition to their function within the nation, NDP songs were created to improve the cultural image of Singapore as perceived by other countries and contribute to a hitherto scant musical heritage. The embarrassing state of Singapore’s culture was alluded to by former Senior Minister of State Lee Khoon Choy who expressed that ‘very often, Singapore delegates abroad are hard put to present a song’, and that at such events when it comes Singapore’s turn—there’s no song. It is a disgrace to Singapore’s cultural prestige and image. They say Singaporeans cannot sing—Singaporeans only know how to make money. They don’t care for culture, they’re only materialistic. And that’s bad![63] Despite a reinforced legitimacy of NDP songs as a symbol of national identity (with local composers and artists assuming the responsibility of composition and production), the production of numerous parodies in recent years reveal the apprehension and criticism with which Singaporeans today consume NDP songs.[64] Case Study One: Singapore Armed Forces Band Military Tattoo The Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) Band is the musical arm of the Singapore military that provides musical support for state and military events. Besides its engagements with internal events, the SAF Band participates in international events organised overseas. Past participants include the Sweden International Tattoo 2013, the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo 2014, and the 2017 Virginia International Tattoo. These tattoo performances are aural and visual spectacles incorporating music, dance, and rifle drills by the SAF Band, SAF Music and Drama Company, and the Silent Precision Drill Squad (SPDS) respectively. As a representative of Singapore on the international stage, the SAF Band is responsible for presenting the Singaporean identity through its performances. To do so, the SAF Band consistently adopts a performance format which has been applied to their performances at the events listed above. Due to this consistency, this study will take the performance at the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo 2014 as an exemplar of the SAF’s approach to performing ‘Singapore’. The performance can be divided into six parts with a short pause marking the end of each part. While there is no pause between the first and second parts, a transition is made with a distinct change in artistic material.[65] The parts are distinguished with musical and visual markers which are clearly inspired by Singapore’s racial CMIO model. The ‘O’ of CMIO is assumed by the music and culture of the event’s host country—in this case, Scotland. Below is a table plotted with timestamps of the performance and parts defined by its associated race and percentage in length in relation to the entire performance. [66] The performance begins with an introduction constructed with themes and motifs from several NDP songs (including ‘We Are Singapore’, ‘Count on Me, Singapore’, and ‘Where I Belong’) and marches of the SAF (‘Tentera Singapura’ and ‘Bandstand’). A brief transition—in the form of a key change—is made before the part marked ‘Indian’. This part is characterised by its compound metre and offbeat accents—rhythmic devices typical of Indian music. The Malay part begins with ‘Di Tanjong Katong’, an ethnic-Malay community song, performed by a saxophone quintet. A jovial section follows with ‘Bengawan Solo’, another ethnic-Malay community song of Indonesian origins, before the section returns to and closes with ‘Di Tanjong Katong’. A solo on the Chinese flute begins the Chinese part. It is joined first by Chinese drums then by the full band. This part is also characterised by a pentatonic melody, an accompanying ribbon dance, and the band members’ drill display executed with handheld fans. In a similar fashion, a tin whistle playing the melody of ‘Wild Mountain Thyme’ marks the start of the Scottish part. This follows with band members singing the song in two-part harmony and with minimal chordal accompaniment. The finale begins with the ascending motif of ‘Wild Mountain Thyme’ in the melodic instruments which then morphs into the melodic lines preceding the chorus of ‘Count on Me, Singapore’. The song continues with interjections of the iconic fanfares from the Singapore national anthem ‘Majulah Singapura’ before the performance concludes with a mace throw by the drum major and a pyrotechnic display by the SPDS. The well-defined parts of this performance correlate to Singapore’s profoundly distinct racial communities that resulted from the government’s efforts (as previously explored). By displaying all the different parts in one performance, the SAF Band aims to illustrate Singapore as a country where different racial communities coexist and form a part of the Singaporean identity. The rather insignificant differences between the durations of each part of the performance is intentionally contrasted with Singapore’s racial demographics (shown in the graph below), manifesting the nation’s constant concern with equal representation of its majority races.[67] More interesting yet is the substitution of ‘Other’ with ‘Scottish’ in the performance. The ill-defined ‘O’ of CMIO has provided the convenience of adapting it to the culture of the host country. Apart from garnering cheers from the audience—potentially due to their familiarity with the musical content of the ‘Other’ part—the SAF Band’s incorporation of artistic symbols of an external culture into their performance demonstrates the adaptability and accommodating quality of the Singaporean identity and society. With the Scottish part incorporated, the performance communicates a message of inclusivity to its audience (who are presumably of the majority race in the host country) and paints a cosmopolitan image of Singapore. Additionally, it may be observed from an abstraction of the grand scheme that neither the ensemble of a military band nor the tradition of tattoo performance is an artistic attribute of the main cultures in Singapore; thus, the SAF Band’s engagement with the medium itself highlights a considerable level of cosmopolitanism. Aside from the music, Singapore’s generic Asian flavour is evoked through the dancers’ oriental costumes and dance while the SPDS characterised Singapore’s orderliness through its performance of discipline and skill.[68] As this was an overseas performance presumably intended for a foreign audience, the SAF Band was granted liberty to illustrate a more idealised image of Singapore than an authentic one. Case Study Two: Truly, SSO (2019) by Singapore Symphony Orchestra Formed in 1978, the Singapore Symphony Orchestra (SSO) is Singapore’s civic orchestra. In addition to providing public audiences with the experience of classical music performances, the SSO has recorded several albums and premiered the works of local composers over the years.[69] In 2018 and 2019, the SSO performed concerts of Singaporean music as part of the nation’s celebration of National Day. In the latter year, an album of Singaporean music titled Truly, SSO was produced as part of the National Day celebrations. Several tracks on Truly, SSO can be characterised by the melange of musical styles and influences—in contrast with the performance of the SAF Band, these pieces do not overtly illustrate the compartmentalised racial factions of Singapore. This is prevalent in ‘Symphonic Suite on a Set of Local Tunes’ (2004) and ‘Kampong Overture’ (2019) by Singaporean composers Kelly Tang and Lee Jinjun respectively. Unlike its stance on the mixing of languages (that resulted in Singlish), the Singapore government assumed a less belligerent position towards the fusion of musical styles. While the reason for this remains unclear, a strong case could be made with the justification that music, compared to language and its immediacy in interpersonal communication, has a weaker influence on the state’s economic development; thus, there is no obligation for a universally recognisable style. Moreover, Truly, SSO was targeted at Singaporeans experiencing a period of reflection through national celebrations. Cultural Medallion recipient Kelly Tang is a composer known for incorporating Singaporean folk songs into his work.[70] In addition to folk songs, Tang’s compositions are influenced by jazz and classical music amongst other styles. Several works that testify to Tang’s penchant for such fusions include ‘Tian Mi Mi’ (which combines the melody of Indonesian folk song ‘Dayung Sampan’ and the theme music of The Simpsons ) and an arrangement of Michael Jackson’s ‘She’s Out of My Life’ in the style of a mediaeval motet.[71] ‘Symphonic Suite on a Set of Local Tunes’ is a symphonic medley of two NDP songs and two Malay community songs. The work’s brief introduction is clearly inspired by that of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, with instruments playing only the interval of a perfect fifth. After a sentimental statement of the melodies of ‘Bunga Sayang’ and ‘Home’, the work assumes the style of a concert march with the melodic content of ‘Chan Mali Chan’. The sentimental tone returns with a luscious rendition of ‘Bunga Sayang’ which is then followed by an orchestral fanfare. The piece concludes with a grand and martial delivery of ‘Together’. Apart from the work’s symphonic character, reviewer Chang Tou Liang also notes ‘clever cameos’ of Elmer Bernstein’s music for The Magnificent Seven (1960).[72] While the songs incorporated were executed in isolation, the mixing of musical styles was pervasive throughout the work. This piece’s integration of styles is comparable to Singaporeans’ national identity with its integration of cultures. An allusion to the symphonic idiom is apparent from the title of ‘Kampong Overture’ which utilises the melody of three Malay community songs. It is safe to conclude that Lee’s use of folk songs is intended to typically produce a work that is nation specific as he cites the compositional ethics of nationalist composer Antonín Dvořák in his notes for ‘Kampong Overture’: Czech composer Dvořák was famous for melding folk elements into the symphonic form, creating music that sounds nostalgic and genuine, qualities that made him one of the most popular folk-inspired composers of the 19th century. Kampong Overture takes a page from Dvorák by using three Malay folk tunes, Geylang Sipaku Geylang , Lengkang Kangkung [sic] and Suriram , and weaving them into a Romantic-styled symphonic overture.[73] In addition to the work’s character (that is reminiscent of Dvořák’s Slavonic Dances ), its melody quotes the ‘Largo’ of Dvořák’s New World Symphony.[74] Another piece recorded on Truly, SSO worth highlighting is Tang’s ‘Montage: Concerto for Jazz Piano & Orchestra’ which was commissioned and originally performed by the Singapore Chinese Orchestra in 2010. Besides a melodic resemblance to the theme music of Japanese animation, Tang claims ‘Chinese tonal elements’, ‘Baroque and Jazz harmonies’, ‘Jamaican Calypso music’, and George Gershwin as inspirations for ‘Montage’.[75] This outcome of composing with such a myriad of influences can be likened to the linguistic amalgamation that is Singlish. The two works from Truly, SSO examined highlight the diversity of cultures and musical styles that exists in Singapore from which local composers take inspiration. Singapore’s cosmopolitan setting has resulted in the conflation of musical styles that can truly be described as unique to the nation. The existence of this musical identity is underscored by Chang who writes in his review of the National Day Concert in 2018 (where Tang’s work was performed along with others of a similar style) that the concert ‘merely scratched the surface of Singaporean music’.[76] Conclusion In today’s globalised world, some embrace the emergence of global citizenship and identity while others fear the loss of their heritage-claiming national identity.[77] Much like its architectural landscape, Singapore’s cultural identity is one that has been inorganically constructed. At the crux of this identity is an observance of racial equality by levelling the dominance of the racial groups despite the differences in population numbers. To do this, the government meticulously defined the characteristics of the nation’s ethnic Chinese, Malay, and Indian communities, which include the most common language, religion, and holidays observed by each racial community. A nebulous ‘Other’ category was added to account for the remaining population which proved more difficult to define. The resulting CMIO racial model is implemented to all areas of livelihood regulated by the government. In times of labour shortage, the CMIO model was flagged to portray Singapore as an accommodating nation ready to welcome all of any race to join its workforce and provide for its economic development. This is facilitated conveniently by the inclusive yet ambiguous ‘O’ category into which most immigrants fall. The influx of immigrants led Singaporeans to question their communal identity and conclude it to be different from that conceived by the government. This polarity is observed from the people’s embrace of the nation-specific vernacular of ‘Singlish’ and the government’s argument that it corrupts Singapore’s cosmopolitan image. Upon realising that Singapore had no music to call its own, the Singapore government took several actions to address this deficiency. Folk songs of external origins were appropriated and promoted through Operation Singalong . Due to its limited success, these folk songs were replaced with commissioned National Day Parade theme songs that varied in style from the anthemic to the sentimental. The NDP songs aimed to foster a sense of community and motivate citizens to contribute to the State’s economic growth in the early years of its inception but changed to that of establishing place identity in recent decades. On the international stage, the Singapore Armed Forces Band assumes the responsibility of projecting Singapore’s CMIO model by incorporating ethnic community songs into the racially marked parts (and NDP songs into the frame) of its performances. The ‘Other’ part incorporates material from the music of the performance’s host country, demonstrating Singapore’s cosmopolitanism and illustrating Ulrich Beck’s statement that ‘cosmopolitans are people who can “internalise the otherness of others”’.[78] Locally, the Singapore Symphony Orchestra performs the work of local composers that take inspiration from a myriad of sources (ranging from ethnic community songs and NDP songs to the canonical works of jazz and classical music) as part of national celebrations. Referring to the polarity between the government and the people’s notion of the Singaporean identity, I have shown through the case studies that the SAF Band abides by the government’s idealised cosmopolitan image of Singapore while the works in Truly, SSO reflect an integration of styles and cultures which is an attribute of the people’s definition of ‘Singaporean’. Nicholas Ong Nicholas Ong is a music graduate of the Universities of Nottingham and Oxford where he undertook research projects on the topics of nationalism, Singapore, music criticism, and nineteenth-century Russia. In October 2022, Nicholas will commence doctoral work on Russian critic-composer Valentina Serova at the University of Cambridge. Prior to his studies, Nicholas completed national service as a military musician in the Singapore Armed Forces Band. [1] Derek Heng, ‘Chapter 3—Casting Singapore’s History in the Longue Durée’ in Karl Hack and Jean-Louis Margolin, with Karine Delaye (eds), Singapore from Temasek to the 21st Century: Reinventing the Global City (NUS Press 2010) 76. [2] Nathalie Fau, ‘Chapter 4—Singapore’s Strategy of Regionalisation’ in Hack and Margolin (n 1) 55. [3] Quoted in Eve Hoon, ‘The (In)Significant Foreign Other: A case study on the limits and conditions of Singapore-style cosmopolitanism’ (BA Archaeology and Anthropology diss., University College London 2014) 6. [4] Christina Skott, ‘Chapter 7—Imagined Centrality: Sir Stamford Raffles and the Birth of Modern Singapore’ in Hack and Margolin (n 1) 161–62. [5] ibid. [6] Siew-Min Sai, ‘Educating multicultural citizens: Colonial nationalism, imperial citizenship and education in late colonial Singapore’ (2013) 44 Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 49. [7] ibid 55. [8] Hoon (n 3) 10. [9] Anthony Reid, ‘Chapter 2—Singapore between Cosmopolis and Nation’ in Hack and Margolin (n 1) 50. [10] Melissa Wan-Sin Wong, ‘Negotiating Class, Taste, and Culture via the Arts Scene in Singapore: Postcolonial or Cosmopolitan Global?’ (2012) 29 Asian Theatre Journal 233, 247. [11] Ministry of Information and the Arts, ‘Speech by RAdm Teo Chee Hean, Minister for Education and Second Minister for Defence at the launch of Grammar Matters , at Nanyang Girls’ High School Auditorium on 31 Mar 2000 @ 2.30 PM’, press release, 31 March 2000 < https://www.nas.gov.sg/archivesonline/data/pdfdoc/2000033101/tch20000331b.pdf >. [12] Quoted in Selvaraj Velayutham, ‘Everyday Racism in Singapore’ in Selvaraj Velayutham and Amanda Wise (eds), Proceedings of the Everyday Multiculturalism Conference of the CRSI (Centre for Research on Social Inclusion 2007) 3. [13] ‘National Pledge’, National Heritage Board accessed 11 April 2020. [14] Neil MacGregor, ‘Singapore’ ( As Others See Us , 2 September 2019) at 41:35. [15] ibid. [16] Chua Beng-Huat, ‘Culture, Multiracialism, and National Identity in Singapore’ in Kuan-Hsing Chen (ed), Trajectories: Inter-Asia Cultural Studies (Routledge 1998) 186. [17] Hoon (n 3) 11. [18] ibid. [19] Chua (n 16) 190. [20] Public holidays listed are ones observed in 2020. See ‘Public holidays’, Ministry of Manpower accessed 11 April 2020. [21] Ien Ang and Jon Stratton, ‘The Singapore Way of Multiculturalism: Western Concepts/Asian Cultures’ (2018) 33 Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia, S61, S78; Vicente Chua Reyes, ‘Issues of Citizenship, National Identity and Political Socialization in Singapore: Implications to the Singapore Education System’ (2013) 1 Studies of Changing Societies 37, 39. [22] Hoon (n 3) 12. [23] Velayutham (n 12) 2–4; Chua (n 16) 192. [24] Kirsten Han, ‘One Singapore?: Nationalism and identity in Singapore’s mainstream and alternative media’ (MA Journalism, Media, and Communication diss., Cardiff University 2013) 1. [25] Quoted in Hoon (n 3) 9. [26] Han (n 24) 1. [27] Hoon (n 3) 17–18. [28] ibid. [29] Quoted in ibid. [30] ibid. [31] Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (Verso 2016). [32] ‘About Us’, Singapore Repertory Theatre, accessed 14 April 2020. [33] Nur Asyikin Mohamad Salleh, ‘Singaporean identity is unique: PM’, Straits Times (Singapore, 20 May 2017) . [34] Leonard Lim and Mathew Mathews, ‘Emerging sense of S’porean identity independent of ethnic heritage’, Straits Times (Singapore, 15 November 2017) . [35] ‘National Language Campaigns’, National Heritage Board, accessed 16 April 2020. [36] Lionel Wee, ‘“Burdens” and “handicaps” in Singapore's language policy: on the limits of language management’ (2010) 9 Language Policy 97, 99. [37] ‘National Language Campaigns’, National Heritage Board. [38] Ministry of Information and the Arts (n 11). [39] Wee (n 36) 102. [40] Ministry of Information and the Arts (n 11). [41] Wee (n 36) 99. [42] ‘Searching for the Singaporean Identity’(2019) The Alum NUS 116 accessed 16 April 2020. [43] Terence Chong, ‘The State and the New Society: The Role of the Arts in Singapore Nation-building’ (2010) 34 Asian Studies Review 131, 134. [44] Quoted in ‘Singapore’s approach to diversity has created a distinctive identity across ethnic groups: PM Lee Hsien Loong’, Straits Times (Singapore, 20 May 2017) . [45] Quoted in Chong (n 43) 132. [46] Quoted in ibid 139. [47] Aloysius Ho, ‘The Invention of Tradition: Nationalist Songs and Nation-Building in Singapore’ (BA History thesis, National University of Singapore 2016) 14. [48] Quoted in ibid 13. [49] Stephanie Ho, ‘National Day songs’ < https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/infopedia/articles/SIP_2015-03-11_165927.html > accessed 26 April 2020. [50] Ho (n 47) 16. [51] ibid 30. [52] ibid 32. [53] Chong (n 43) 136–137. [54] ‘We Are Singapore’, National Library Board, Singapore accessed 27 April 2020. [55] ‘One People, One Nation, One Singapore’, National Library Board, Singapore accessed 27 April 2020. [56] ‘Stand Up for Singapore’, National Library Board, Singapore accessed 27 April 2020. [57] Ho (n 47) 43. [58] Quoted in ibid. [59] Examples of such songs include ‘Home’ (1998), ‘Where I Belong’ (2001), and ‘There’s No Place I’d Rather Be’ (2007). [60] ‘Home’, National Library Board, Singapore accessed 27 April 2020. [61] ‘Kaira Gong: My Island Home Lyrics’ accessed 27 April 2020. [62] Ho (n 47) 24. [63] Quoted in Edna Lim, ‘One People, One Nation, One Singapore’ in Edna Lim, Celluloid Singapore: Cinema, Performance and the National (Edinburgh University Press 2018) 132. [64] For an example, see SGAG, NDP 2018 Theme Song Parody [Unofficial Music Video] | SGAG (8 August 2018) . [65] This analysis is based on the performance dated August 24, 2017, uploaded online (performance starts at 00:35). See Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo, Singapore Armed Forces Central Band @ Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo 2014 (12 September 2014) . [66] As pauses are filled with applause, timestamps are not definitive but close estimates. Percentages are rounded to the closest whole number. [67] ‘What are the racial proportions among Singapore citizens?’, Gov.sg accessed 29 April 2020. [68] The SPDS is regarded as an embodiment of Singaporean efficiency and conscientiousness, having been described once in an NDP souvenir program that it emphasised ‘skill, precision and alertness’, and the ‘qualities for a nation of excellence’. See Lim (n 63) 131. [69] Jan Yap, ‘Singapore Symphony Orchestra’ accessed 28 April 2020. [70] The Cultural Medallion is regarded as the most prestigious award in the arts in Singapore and is conferred to those distinguished by their achievement of artistic excellence. [71] Venessa Lee, ‘Karung guni composer’, Straits Times (Singapore, 17 August 2015) . [72] Chang Tou Liang, ‘Something for everyone in concert of Singaporean music’, Straits Times (Singapore, 14 August 2018) . [73] Lee Jinjun, ‘SSO National Day Concert’, programme notes for Kampong Overture , Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Joshua Tan (Esplanade Concert Hall, Singapore, 10 August 2019) 40. [74] Chang Tou Liang, ‘SSO National Day Concert examines what is Singaporean music’ Straits Times (Singapore, 11 August 2019) . [75] Kelly Tang, ‘SSO National Day Concert’, programme notes for MONTAGE: Concerto for Jazz Piano & Orchestra , Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Joshua Tan (Esplanade Concert Hall, Singapore, 10 August 2019) 36. [76] Emphasis added; Chang (n 74). [77] Jayson Beaster-Jones, ‘Globalization’ ( Grove Music Online ) accessed 29 February 2020. [78] Quoted in Luke Lu, ‘Singapore and the cosmopolitan ideal’, TODAY (18 March 2014) .

I: Introduction Armed conflict changes everything.[1] It is the ultimate human-induced crisis that has devastating consequences for the environment.[2] A report by the Conflict and Environment Observatory has identified how armed conflict affects the environment before, during, and after its conclusion.[3] For example, ‘the environmental impacts of wars start long before they do’, given that building and sustaining military forces requires vast quantities of resources.[4] A study done by Lancaster University shows that the United States’ military is one of the largest polluters in history emitting more carbon dioxide than most countries.[5] Indeed, as war commences, the means and methods of armed conflict, such as the targeting of industrial, oil, and energy facilities and other scorched earth tactics, cause many different forms of environmental harm that can scar a landscape and damage ecosystems for years after a conflict has ended.[6] The toll taken on the environment fuels a vicious cycle of conflict. A report by the International Committee of the Red Cross (‘ICRC’) has identified the interconnectedness of climate change and armed conflict, in that the effects of armed conflict contribute to climate change, with climate change, in turn, fuelling further conflict.[7] This is particularly problematic given that the latest instalment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report sets out in clear terms that humanity is at a crossroads in that the decisions made now affect whether or not a liveable future can be secured.[8] As such, it is of critical importance that a concrete set of rules are imposed at the international level to prohibit environmental damage above a certain threshold and hold those responsible for such damage accountable. This can be achieved through a review of the body of law known as International Humanitarian Law (‘IHL’). IHL seeks to restrict the means and methods of armed conflict through ‘treaties and customs that limit the use of violence in armed conflict and protect civilians and persons who are no longer participating in hostilities’.[9] However, IHL’s anthropocentric focus has stunted the development of thorough and coherent laws for the protection of the environment during armed conflict, and what has been achieved has been criticised as ineffective.[10] This article aims to highlight the ways in which IHL fails to protect the environment during armed conflict adequately. Firstly, this article shall look at how the means and methods of armed conflict affect the environment, both directly and indirectly. Secondly, it will provide a detailed analysis of current IHL provisions for the protection of the environment. Thirdly, the article shall look at potential future developments in the law, such as the creation of a new treaty on environmental protection during armed conflict, as well as the wider use of demilitarised zones. Before these themes are discussed, this article shall look at historical attitudes towards environmental damage during armed conflict. Historical Attitudes When you besiege a city for a long time, making war against it in order to take it, you shall not destroy its trees by wielding an axe against them. You may eat from them, but you shall not cut them down.[11] Wartime damage to the environment has a history as long as humankind itself, dating back to when homo sapiens first began to organise into groups.[12] From the Peloponnesian Wars, when the Spartans laid waste to Athenian fields, to modern-era conflicts, such as the burning of Romanian oil fields by the Allies during World War II, the environment has been a ‘silent victim’ of armed conflict.[13] The origin of the protection of the environment during armed conflict arguably has its roots in the religion-based morals of Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions.[14] The above quotation, taken from the book of Deuteronomy, is often cited as an early source for restrictions on environmental damage during wartime and may even be an early iteration of the prohibition of the ‘wanton’ destruction principle,[15] as laid out in the recent Customary International Humanitarian Law Study published by the ICRC.[16] Indeed, in Islam, the First Caliph, Abu Bakr al-Saddiq, is recorded as having instructed his military commander on the rules of war: ‘stop, O people, that I may give you the rules on the battlefield…do not cut down fruitful trees; do not slaughter the enemy’s sheep, cows or camels…do not burn date palms, or inundate them’.[17] However, attempts to reduce environmental harm during armed conflict based on religious, moral, and philosophical grounds, such as the view that the environment should be protected during the war due to its inherent worth, have been pushed aside in favour of an anthropocentric approach. [18] This approach enables us to do with plants as we ‘please’ and with animals as we ‘desire’, given that the natural environment is viewed simply as a raw material to be manipulated at will for the satisfaction of human beings.[19] This is reflected in the Judeo-Christian tradition, which states, ‘go out and subdue the earth’.[20] The latter view is one propounded by the founder of the Just War principles, Saint Thomas Aquinas, and has proven to be the ‘philosophical justification for the human-centred orientation of the international statutes currently offering protection to the environment in times of armed conflict’.[21] This explains why war-waging parties turn a blind eye to the harm done to the environment during armed conflict. However, it was not until the morally reproachable tactics of the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War that the history of the relationship between warfare and the environment took a turn, and concrete legal, environmental protections were introduced. II: How the Means and Methods of Armed Conflict affect the Environment Public awareness of the effects of armed conflict on the environment first became manifest during the Vietnam War,[22] which is notorious for the disastrous environmental impact of the United States’ counterinsurgency warfare.[23] This can be seen in the U.S. army’s bombing campaign that left ‘moonlike craters’ in the landscape and the bulldozing of 325,000 hectares of forest, decimating the country’s rich flora and fauna.[24] However, the most disastrous environmental impact of the Vietnam War was the use of herbicides as part of Operation Ranch Hand. This was an ‘aggressive’ programme of chemical warfare, which involved the U.S army spraying approximately 4.5 million hectares of Vietnamese land with herbicides containing the deadly chemical dioxin.[25] The environmental warfare tactics deployed by the U.S. ‘spawned condemnation across civil society’[26] and prompted the international community to address environmental protection during armed conflict. The results were twofold: the Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Uses of Environmental Modification Techniques (‘ENMOD’)[27] and the inclusion of environmental protections, namely Articles 35(3) and 55, in the Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I) 1977 (‘API’).[28] However, ENMOD and API were far less ambitious results than what the legal and scientific communities advocated for, and it was not long after their creation that the adequacy and usefulness of the two conventions were called into question following the Gulf War 1990-1991.[29] Even though there has not been a return to the scale of the environmental warfare tactics seen during the Vietnam War, modern conflicts continue to have far-reaching effects extending beyond that of human suffering, often causing serious damage to the environment. Unfortunately, the environment is always a victim of armed conflict due to the basic nature of the means and methods of warfare.[30] Indeed, one study indicates that over 90% of the major armed conflicts between 1950 and 2000 took place in countries containing biodiversity hotspots.[31] Environmental damage during wartime occurs both directly and indirectly and may have transboundary and long-lasting effects, persisting for decades after the conflict has ended.[32] The UNGA recognised the ‘dire effects’ that certain means and methods of warfare have had on the environment in the wake of recent conflicts causing environmental damage and depletion, reinforcing the urgency of these issues at the highest level.[33] Direct Effects Environmental damage and degradation occurs as a direct consequence of military operations, not only intentionally but also as unintended ‘collateral’ damage.[34] Take, for example, the Gulf War 1990-1991, which was an armed campaign waged by a US-led coalition of states in response to Iraq’s invasion and annexation of Kuwait.[35] It was during this conflict, only fourteen years after the creation of API and ENMOD, that the world once again witnessed the use of ecological warfare as Saddam Hussein weaponised oil.[36] This conflict clearly illustrated how the ‘intentional use of the environment as a means of warfare…may cause severe damage in the form of marine, terrestrial and aerial contamination’.[37] The Gulf War was the first conflict after the 1970s that brought international attention to the effects that armed conflict has on the environment.[38] During this conflict, the retreating Iraqi army set aflame 613 out of Kuwait’s 810 oil wells, burning an estimated one billion gallons of oil.[39] This generated a Florida-sized plume of toxic smoke that hung over Kuwait, drifting into neighbouring countries. It is estimated that these fumes contributed 2% of global carbon emissions in 1991.[40] On top of this, the wells that did not ignite instead gushed oil into the vulnerable desert landscape creating vast ‘oil lakes’ up to 10km wide and 13cm deep.[41] It is estimated that 5% of Kuwaiti territory became covered in a thick ‘tarcrete’ as the oil dried, killing flora and fauna, as well as permanently degrading the soil.[42] The smoke and oil spills had a catastrophic impact on wildlife: 22-50% of the bird population in Kuwait was killed, the habitat of a population of endangered sea turtles was destroyed, causing unknown numbers to die, and acid rain significantly raised the pH levels in freshwater inlets killing vast numbers of fish, and further threatened the endangered dugong species.[43] However, the environmental damage inflicted by the Iraqi army did not end there. At the conclusion of the first Gulf War, with Iraq’s defeat, a number of minority Shia groups rebelled against the Baathist regime. One such group was the Ma’dan people. The Ma’dan have a rich and ancient culture associated with the Mesopotamian Marshland, which was also used as a safe haven for groups opposed to the government due to its inaccessible and isolated canals and islands.[44] As part of the Iraqi army’s counterinsurgency campaign against groups such as the Ma’dan, the Mesopotamian Marshes were drained in what the UN has called an ‘ecological catastrophe’ on a par with deforestation in the Amazon.[45] In addition to placing the 5000-year-old culture of these ancient people in ‘serious jeopardy of coming to an abrupt end’, the impact on the area’s wildlife has been devastating.[46] A key site for migratory birds travelling from Siberia, the marshlands’ disappearance placed 40 species of waterfowl at risk and caused serious reductions in their numbers.[47] Further, species of fish and mammals unique to the marshes are believed to be extinct, including the smooth-coated otter and the babel fish, with endangered birds, such as the Purple Heron, suffering a 50% mortality rate.[48] The environmental modification by the Baathist regime to achieve near-total erasure of this marshland also impacted the weather and climate of the country. With the marshland no longer there to act as a buffer zone against desert winds, they now blow ‘unhindered’ at temperatures over 40 degrees Celsius, damaging and eroding arable land on a permanent basis.[49] At the conclusion of the Gulf War, Iraq formally accepted its state responsibility for ‘any direct loss, damage, including environmental damage and the depletion of natural resources, or injury to foreign Governments, nationals and corporations, as a result of Iraq’s unlawful invasion and occupation of Kuwait’.[50] The United Nations Compensation Commission was charged with monitoring and assessing the impacts of the Gulf War on the environment and public health in ‘victim countries’.[51] Consequently, a total of $243 million was awarded to the governments of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Jordan, and Syria in 2001.[52] A further $8.3 million was issued to six other governments for costs incurred assisting the Gulf countries in the abatement and prevention of environmental damage resulting from the conflict.[53] Despite the fact that environmental damage arising as a direct result of armed conflict can be severe, far-reaching, and long-lasting, such damage only represents the tip of the iceberg, with the vast majority of instances arising indirectly. Indirect Effects The indirect consequences of armed conflict on the natural environment can be as severe, if not more severe, than those directly resulting from a conflict.[54] Indeed, their more hidden nature makes them more subversive and difficult to tackle as they often arise from the complex circumstances of non-international armed conflicts (‘NIACs’). A key case study is that of the Democratic Republic of Congo (‘DRC’). In June 1960, the DRC gained its independence from Belgium;however, in its transition to independence, the country witnessed a period of political turmoil, which eventually erupted into brutal violence.[55] In 1965, a coup d’état led by Mobutu Sese Seko, which was supported by Belgium and the USA, saw three decades of ‘oppression, kleptocracy, and collapse of state institutions’.[56] This laid the groundwork for the two wars that followed in 1996 and 1998. The Second Congo War officially ended in 2003; however, the continued fragility of the state has allowed for continued violence in parts of the country, exacerbating the DRC’s effort to build a lasting peace.[57] The DRC’s almost chronic state of armed conflict, from 1996 onwards, has fuelled a melting pot of intersecting issues that contribute to severe environmental damage across the region. The DRC ranks fifth in the world for animal and plant biodiversity and has the highest levels of biodiversity on the continent of Africa.[58] However, the continuing conflict has resulted in three main areas of environmental damage: deforestation, harm to National Parks, and the exploitation of natural resources. Each shall be considered in turn: Deforestation Deforestation carried out by refugees in the DCR is an indirect effect of armed conflict, causing severe environmental damage. It is estimated that 2.4 million people have been made refugees by the conflict.[59] Fleeing from danger, refugees set up informal settlements that sprawl over the landscape, with 90% of these being unregulated, which means that they often spread uncontrollably over areas of rich biodiversity.[60] The consequence of human displacement on the environment is that the refugees cut down swathes of forest for fuel and housing at an unstoppable rate. For example, in just three days in 1994, Mount Goma was completely deforested by refugees who sought out wood to create shelter.[61] Needless to say, deforestation on this scale causes widespread habitat destruction and loss of biodiversity, as well as contributes to global warming, given the fact that the DRC’s rainforest is the largest in Africa.[62] National Parks The ongoing conflict in the DRC has had severe impacts on the country’s National Parks, particularly the heavily protected Virunga National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site. Home to countless unique species of wildlife, the Park’s integrity is under threat by armed groups that use the dense cover of the forest for shelter and to stay hidden. Its threatened status is confirmed by its placement on the list of World Heritage in Danger.[63] Armed groups, using automatic weapons, have been involved in large-scale poaching of the Park’s wildlife for ‘food purposes and for war-sustaining trade in ivory and bushmeat’.[64] This has had serious consequences for wildlife, as seen by the hippopotamus population in the DRC, which is now on the brink of extinction.[65] Poaching also has an economic incentive as a means by which armed groups fuel their military campaigns. For example, the Lord’s Resistance Army ran the ivory trade in the Congo’s Garamba National Park for years to fund its campaigns.[66] Further, the Park is home to mountain gorillas that are targeted by armed groups, such as the Rugendo family of gorillas that was slaughtered in 2007. Under international law, mountain gorillas are protected by instruments such as the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (also known as ‘CITES’)[67] and the Agreement on the Conservation of Gorillas and Their Habitats .[68] Despite the fact that conservation efforts have increased the number of mountain gorillas in the DRC, they still face constant danger. Indeed, the motivation for armed groups to kill the gorillas in the Park is simple: ‘kill the gorillas, and there will no longer be a reason to protect the Park’.[69] Without protection from park rangers, Virunga would be open to the pillage of its natural resources in order to fuel military activities. Exploitation of Natural Resources In recent years, concern has been raised by the UN about the role of natural resources in generating revenue for the instigation and continuation of armed conflicts.[70] This is particularly prevalent in the DRC, which contains, amongst many other valuable resources, 60-80% of the world’s coltan reserves. Coltan is used in the manufacture of electrical components of computers and mobile phones.[71] For $300 per pound, the Rwandan army and the Hutu militia monopolised the DRC’s coltan trade, selling it on to the USA in order to finance their military campaigns.[72] The 2010 Mapping Report on the DRC noted that it was at the start of the first war in 1996 that natural resource exploitation first became militarised.[73] This exploitation became increasingly attractive as the conflicts in the DRC changed shape and dragged on, not just for financing the campaigns of armed groups but also as a means of personal enrichment for political and military leaders. In this sense, natural resources became a driving force behind the war in the DRC.[74] The exploitation of natural resources in the DRC, enabled by political instability and lack of governance caused by years of conflict, has resulted in mass deforestation, and loss of wildlife and habitat. International corporations such as De Beers and Shell exacerbate this problem by engaging in the trade of ‘conflict resources’, such as diamonds, timber and oil, from war-torn countries like the DRC.[75] This unregulated and illegal pillage, enabled by conflict, causes a ‘chain of extinction’ threatening the existence of African wildlife.[76] Given that every component part of the environment is vulnerable during armed conflict, it is necessary to analyse the applicable law to determine whether IHL adequately protects the environment during wartime. III: Critical Analysis of Applicable Law Before 1976, the word ‘environment’ did not feature in any treaty on the law of war. It was not until the aftermath of the Vietnam War that ‘serious attempts were made to impose conventional law limits on the environmental damage resulting from hostilities’.[77] Arising from a surge of anti-war sentiment and with concern for the environment reaching a new high, API and ENMOD were adopted, setting codified standards for environmental protection during armed conflict. IHL provisions protect the environment during an armed conflict in two ways: direct protection by treaty and indirect protection by the general principles of IHL.[78] Direct Protection The direct protection of the environment during armed conflict is provided by two treaties, namely API and ENMOD. We shall look at each in turn before considering issues of conflict classification. API API was the first international treaty to provide direct protection of the environment during International Armed Conflicts (‘IACSs’), as outlined in Article 35(3) and Article 55. Article 35(3) prohibits means and methods of warfare that are intended to or may be expected to cause ‘widespread, long-term and severe damage to the environment’.[79] Article 55 repeats this prohibition and makes note that damage to the natural environment prejudices the health and survival of the human population.[80] Even though these two key Articles appear similar, they are not duplicates. The International Committee of the Red Cross’s (‘ICRC’) commentary to API explains the differing approaches of Articles 35(3) and 55.[81] Article 35(3) broaches the problem from the point of view of methods and means of warfare, reflecting principles of ‘Hague Law’, whereas Article 55 focuses on the survival and health of the population and creates a protected object, i.e., the environment, reflecting ‘Geneva Law’.[82] However, the effectiveness of Articles 35(3) and 55 is undermined by the number of States that remain non-parties to API, such as the USA, Israel, Pakistan, Iran, India, and Turkey. This is problematic given the military power and political influence of the likes of the USA, which has not ratified API because it is seen as ‘too broad’.[83] Further, the USA opposes the recognition of Articles 35(3) and 55 as international customary law, as stated in Rule 45 of the ICRC’s customary IHL study.[84] It is for this reason that McCoubrey contends that there should be new calls, preferably by the UNGA, to encourage non-parties to existing instruments, like API and II, to ratify these instruments as ‘the primary way forward’.[85] Furthermore, in the 2009 report, Protecting the Environment During Armed Conflict , the UN Environmental Programme (‘UNEP’) stated that Articles 35(3) and 55 do not adequately protect the environment during armed conflict due to the stringent and imprecise threshold required to demonstrate prohibited damage.[86] The problem with these key Articles is their ‘operative core’ that imposes a triple and cumulative standard of ‘widespread, long-term and severe’ that must be met before environmental damage is prohibited.[87] In both Articles, there is difficulty regarding the quantum of harm prohibited. The requirements of ‘widespread, long-term and severe’ are not defined by API, or anywhere else, resulting in an ‘elevated, uncertain and imprecise threshold that significantly narrows [the Articles’] scope of application’.[88]This is especially troublesome given that each individual requirement must be met in respect of the environmental damage to be prohibited. The publication of the ICRC’s 2020 updated Guidelines on the Protection of the Natural Environment in Armed Conflict (‘Guidelines’) offers some guidance on the interpretation of these Articles.[89] Rule 2 sets out detailed recommendations on how each component of the ‘widespread, long-term and severe’ requirement should be understood.[90] It states: ‘widespread’ should be understood as a scale of several hundred square kilometres; ‘long-term’ should take into account the duration of the indirect effects of the use of a given method or means of warfare; and ‘severe’ should constitute the disruption or damage to an ecosystem, with normal damage caused by troop movement and artillery fire in conventional warfare falling outside the scope of this prohibition.[91] However, these guidelines are non-binding and rely upon each State adopting the Guidelines at the national level. Given that certain States are yet to ratify API, such as the USA, Pakistan, Turkey, and Israel, the usefulness of these Guidelines is questionable.[92] From an environmental point of view, Articles 35(3) and 55 are excessively restrictive, rendering it nearly impossible for the extremely high threshold to be reached by conventional warfare. A potential justification for this high threshold is that States did not want to see typical battlefield damage covered.[93] However, it could be argued that not even the environmental damage of the Vietnam War would cross the threshold since nature has largely recovered, therefore failing the ‘long-term’ requirement. Finally, because of the provisions’ lack of practicability given the high threshold and absence of concrete meaning, it must be asked whether these provisions have ‘fallen into desuetude’, losing their binding force as a result of non-use for a sufficiently long time.[94] ENMOD ENMOD also provides direct protections to the environment, albeit from a different angle. ENMOD regulates the use of environmental modification techniques as a means to cause harm to the enemy during armed conflict. In Article 1(1), ENMOD specifically prohibits ‘environmental modification techniques having widespread, long-lasting or severe effects as a means of destruction’.[95] Unlike Articles 35(3) and 55 of API, the requirements to constitute prohibited environmental modification are linked by ‘or’, which results in a much lower threshold than API’s ‘and’. Additionally, the travaux of the UN Committee of the Conference of Disarmament, which established ENMOD, provides a working definition of ‘long-term’ as ‘lasting a period of months, or approximately a season’.[96] However, Article 1(1) is criticised as undercutting the ostensible purpose of ENMOD, namely, to prohibit the military or hostile use of ENMOD techniques.[97] Indeed, during its drafting, many diplomats and observers found the wording of Article 1(1) to be too ambiguous, leaving it unclear as to what exactly would be prohibited.[98] Others felt that Article 1(1) was entirely deceptive, given that the use of a threshold requirement might serve to legitimise ENMOD techniques so long as they do not cross the ‘widespread, long-term, or severe effects’ threshold.[99] Further, ENMOD is less practical than API in a case of armed conflict, given that it deals with the slightly sci-fi-like idea of ‘environmental changes produced by deliberate manipulation of natural processes’.[100] Unfortunately, ENMOD specifies the level of damage that is prohibited, whereas an outright ban on environmental modification, which has certain sinister apocalyptic overtones, would have sent a much stronger message to belligerent parties to an armed conflict. Issues of Conflict Classification IHL makes a distinction between the environmental protections during IACs, i.e., armed conflicts between two recognised States, and NIACs, which are intra-state conflicts between non-state armed groups and government forces. IACs benefit from a wide range of albeit inadequate protections, whereas the applicable rules regulating NIACs are limited and are not subject to the direct environmental protection provisions detailed in either API or ENMOD. Today, the overwhelming majority of armed conflicts are internal.[101] This means that the vast body of IHL is inapplicable or much more restrictive when applied to NIACs.[102] This is particularly problematic given that NIACs are closely connected to the environment, with recent studies showing that over the past 60 years, at least 40% of NIACs have been linked to natural resources and their exploitation.[103] Protocol II to the Geneva Conventions (APII), which regulates the protection of victims of non-international conflicts, does not make any reference to the environment.[104] The environment only receives protection indirectly as a cultural object or object indispensable to the civilian population’s survival, as well as where aspects of the environment hold dangerous forces such as dams.[105] Despite this, the International Law Commission’s Special Rapporteur has stated, ‘it is clear that fundamental principles of distinction and the principle of humanity… reflect customary law and are applicable in NIACs’.[106] When an attack occurs against the environment in a NIAC that does not correctly balance these IHL principles, it is clear that such an attack is prohibited.[107] However, these customary principles offer minimal environmental protection during armed conflict and are often displaced by anthropocentric motives. The ICRC Guidelines encourage States to apply the same degree of environmental protection to IACs and NIACs, encouraging each party to apply ‘all or part’ of IHL rules relating to the environment.[108] If this piece of guidance was widely disseminated and incorporated into State practice, it would be of great significance to the environment, given that ‘legal explanations of the classification of a conflict do not alter the damage wrought by conflict on the natural environment’.[109] Indirect Protection Indirect protection of the environment is provided by the general principles of IHL. The ICRC Guidelines state that the environment is generally recognised as a civilian in character.[110] This means that any part of the environment that is not a military objective is protected by the general principles of IHL that protect civilians and civilian objects and property, as well as those that limit the means and methods of armed conflict,[111] namely distinction, necessity and proportionality. These principles of customary international law[112] safeguard the environment in that they guard against wanton and excessive environmental damage in the absence of explicit provisions protecting it.[113] Distinction Returning to API, Article 48 on Basic Rules codifies the principle of distinction, stating that parties to a conflict must distinguish between civilians and combatants and between civilian objects and military objects.[114] Indeed, precaution requires decision-makers to refrain from indiscriminate acts.[115] Article 52 defines civilian objects negatively as objects that are not military objectives, i.e. ‘those objects which by their nature, location, purpose or use make an effective contribution to military action and whose total or partial destruction… in the circumstances ruling at the time, offers a definite military advantage’.[116] To this extent, the restrictive conditions of Articles 35 and 55 do not apply to the principle of distinction.[117] While Article 52 does not explicitly refer to the environment, Schmitt argues that this definition is broad in scope, applying to ‘all components of the environment – land, air, flora, fauna, atmosphere, high seas, etc. – that do not present an advantage… to a military operation’.[118] However, the indirect protection of the environment as a civilian object is a precarious one since elements of the environment are all too likely to become military objects. For example, the trees that provided cover for the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War meant that their defoliation was a legitimate military objective.[119] This reasoning allowed for the mass use of herbicides on vast swathes of forest. Articles 35 and 55 API could restrain such environmental destruction; however, this brings us full circle to the triple cumulative threshold problem. Necessity Necessity dictates that a military commander is only permitted to use the degree of force required to accomplish a military objective. For example, Article 23(g) of the Hague Convention contains certain provisions with substantive (albeit peripheral) impact on military operations affecting the environment.[120] It states that it is forbidden to destroy or seize enemy property unless it is demanded by the necessities of war.[121] Article 53 of the Fourth Geneva Convention echoes the above and protects property by reference to military necessity.[122] It states that any destruction of civilian property by an occupying power ‘is prohibited, except where such destruction is rendered absolutely necessary by military operations’.[123] Accordingly, breaches of this Article constitute ‘grave breaches’[124] whenever the damage is extensive, unjustified by military necessity, and carried out wantonly, thereby constituting a war crime under the Rome Statute.[125] There is support for the proposition that the burning of Kuwaiti oil wells during the Gulf War constituted a grave breach.[126] However, due to the subjective nature of military necessity, almost any environmentally harmful action can be given an acceptable justification.[127] Schmitt articulates this problem well, stating, absent any explicit treaty law, ‘is the law, therefore, nothing more than an articulation of that fighter pilot adage to ‘trust your gut?’ Or is it imbued with a meaning more distinct and developed, perhaps in the Martens Clause’s dictates of public conscience’.[128] The Marten’s Clause dictates that ‘until a more complete code of the laws of war is issued… populations and belligerents remain under the protection and empire of the principles of international law, as they result from the usages established between civilised nations, from the laws of humanity and the requirements of the public conscience’’’.[129] However, as with many other core themes of IHL, there is no one accepted interpretation of the Marten’s Clause.[130] It is likely that neither ‘trust your gut’ nor the Martens Clause realistically articulates how these decisions are made; rather, it is doubtful whether the environment enters the field of thought at all (save in cases of the famously vulnerable ecosystems such as the Arctic). If the killing of hundreds of civilians is enough to justify attacking a target, then it is unlikely that the environment will be considered. After all, the very name ‘International Humanitarian Law’ emphasises its anthropocentric focus. Proportionality Positive identification of a military objective triggers proportionality in that a military commander must consider the principle of humanitarian concern (‘the unwarranted destruction of life, land and property’[131]) and the doctrine of economy of forces (‘the minimum force needed to accomplish the military objective’[132]) before acting to achieve the objective. The ICJ hasheld that ‘States must take environmental considerations into account when assessing what is necessary and proportionate in the pursuit of legitimate objectives’.[133] Further, the destruction of the environment, as an end in itself, without consideration for the closely linked principles of necessity and proportionality, is a violation of international law.[134] Additionally, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, in the Tadić case, found that violations of customary IHL could be considered war crimes, and by extension, therefore, violations of customary IHL relating to the protection of the environment could also be considered as such.[135] This highlights that when aspects of the environment as civilian objects become military objectives, the attack must be weighed against the effect it will have on the environment.[136] Proportionality, like necessity, is ‘subjective and value based’, making it difficult to determine when a proportionate attack becomes disproportionate.[137] During armed conflict, determinations of proportionality are almost always self-serving. Indeed, where a military unit is at risk, a commander may use the prescriptive vagueness of proportionality to legitimise environmentally destructive actions. As Schmitt states, ‘given the nature of war and human motivations, legitimate doubt will be resolved in favour of destroying the environment to further the mission’.[138] The hard truth is that the brutality of war does not naturally lend itself to mercy towards the environment. This chapter has identified that IHL provisions on environmental protection are vague, ambiguous and abused to further anthropocentric motives and suggests that more must be done to secure the protection of the environment during armed conflict. IV: The Way Forward IHL on the protection of the environment in relation to armed conflict contains a significant number of gaps and deficiencies, which continue to allow the environment to be unjustifiably damaged. This section shall look at two possible solutions to better protect the environment during armed conflict, namely the potential for a new treaty and the use of demilitarised zones. New Treaty Schmitt states that ‘a convention on protecting the environment during armed conflict, assuming it was carefully drafted to avoid the pitfalls, would be responsive in placing Parties on notice of what is clearly expected of them’, as well as providing an effective basis for enforcement.[139] This approach was first advocated in response to the Gulf War when IHL’s environmental protections failed to regulate and prevent the environmental damage done by the Iraqi army. It was following this war that legal practitioners and environmentalists called for a fifth Geneva Convention to cater specifically for the protection of the environment during armed conflict.[140] Bothe notes that a solution to the deficiencies of IHL could involve the codification of the provisions of environmental protection during armed conflict into a ‘coherent and practical instrument that considers both IAC and NIAC’.[141] Indeed, a new treaty could model itself on the International Law Commission’s (‘ILC’) Draft Principles on the Protection of the Environment in Relation to Armed Conflicts , which would infuse IHL protections with an ecocentric quality . [142] These principles, which are due to be adopted on second reading by the UNGA later this year, approach the problem of environmental damage during armed conflict holistically with their scope applying to the protection of the environment before, during and after an armed conflict.[143] This mature view acknowledges that environmental destruction is a barrier to long-lasting peace, as the ‘destruction of the environment can remove natural resources which may have provided a potential platform for cooperation… [and] limit the possibility of enjoying natural features that cross-sectarian divides’.[144] Today, Schmitt argues that although a new treaty would be the ‘cleanest way to generate a fresh normative architecture… unfortunately, the time is not ripe for such an effort’.[145] This is especially true given that any effort to create binding law would likely fall victim to ‘politicisation and infighting’. [146] Indeed, Szasz believes a new treaty would be useless, something that would result in an unhelpful agreement resembling the lowest common denominator due to the need to achieve consensus.[147] To avoid the stillbirth of a new treaty, it is first necessary to clarify the existing IHL provisions relating to environmental protections. If these provisions were to be clarified, with the help of the aforementioned ICRC Guidelines, and developed from an ecocentric viewpoint, a new legal instrument might not be necessary.[148] Demilitarised and Protected Zones One way to mitigate the effects and reach of wartime environmental damage is to put in place concrete demilitarised zones, which would allow safe spaces for nature and civilians alike. This would be less confusing and complex than having wordy legal provisions regulating belligerents’ conduct. Further, discussions over clarifying or creating new laws are, arguably, too time-consuming when the environment is in urgent need of protection now. The UNEP Report highlights the need to grant place-based protection to areas of ecological importance and critical natural resources due to the fact that IHL does not go far enough to place these areas under protection during armed conflict.[149] UNEP proposes that at the outset of any conflict, these aspects of the environment should be ‘delineated and distinguished as demilitarised zones’, whereby parties to an armed conflict would be prohibited from conducting military operations there.[150] Indeed, there is evidence to show that demilitarised zones become havens for wildlife and ecological conservation. For example, wildlife is thriving in the demilitarised zone between North and South Korea, where endangered animals, such as the amur goral and Asiatic black bear, are making a comeback.[151] Even tigers, believed to be extinct along the peninsula, have been sighted.[152] Demilitarised zones are already provided for by Article 15 of the Geneva Convention IV,[153] as well as Articles 59 and 60 of API,[154] which specify that demilitarised zones are to be agreed upon by parties to the conflict. Despite this, belligerent parties rarely (if ever) agree upon demilitarised zones in order to protect the natural environment. Previous attempts at mandatorily establishing demilitarised zones through a new treaty had been advocated for by the IUCN.[155] However, the draft treaty failed since it did not have UNSC support due to the fact that States insist on their right to self-defence in every circumstance, no matter if demilitarised zones are compromised.[156] This was seen during the Bosnia-Herzegovina conflict, where the UNSC acknowledged the need to have designated ‘safe zones’ or demilitarised zones,[157] but the UN troops were unable (or unwilling) to enforce them with some of the worst atrocities taking place within them.[158] Despite this, there is hope for the future. The ILC’s Draft Principles, if adopted, would bolster environmental protection during armed conflict through demilitarised zones. Draft Principles 4 and 17 outline that States should designate areas of major environmental and cultural importance as protected zones protected against any attack, so long as they do not contain a military objective.[159] These principles are intended to apply to both IACs and NIACs, and make an interesting link between environmental and cultural importance, which highlights the significance of the environment for indigenous peoples, enabling a stronger case to be made for the cultural value of biodiversity.[160] In addition, the relatively new realm of International Environmental Law (‘IEL’) may be of some assistance to States in identifying and establishing demilitarised zones. For instance, the World Heritage Convention (‘WHC’)[161] establishes ‘area-based’ protection for natural and cultural heritage sites of ‘outstanding universal value’ [162] by obligating states to protect them ‘to the utmost of [their] own resources’.[163] For example, the WHC has played a significant role in protecting the DRC’s Virunga National Park. Congolese State authorities and the UN, as well as other NGOs operating in the area, have created a coalition of forces to ensure that basic protection of the Park is maintained by international law, even during armed conflicts.[164] Although it is uncertain whether the WHC applies during armed conflict, academics such as Hulme argue that it continues to apply, as the WHC seems to require its ‘continuation in conflict of a ‘protected area’ regime alongside IHL rules’.[165] The WHC could therefore complement the ILC’s Draft Principles and ‘set up systems of international cooperation and assistance to protect natural heritage areas’ during armed conflicts,[166] and its clear and concrete obligations could provide real guidance to military commanders on the battlefield.[167] However, there is a shortcoming with this approach. It is one thing for belligerent parties to agree to adhere to demilitarised zones during IACs; it is a different matter to secure such agreements from non-state armed groups during NIACs. This issue is sorely felt in other areas of IHL. Despite the increasing role of non-state armed groups in armed conflict, ‘IHL remains state-centric and provides limited opportunities for armed groups to comply with its provisions or engage in its development’.[168] Answering questions on how IHL could be developed to better protect the environment during armed conflict is not easy. However, hope may be garnered from the attempts of the ILC to seek more thorough, clear, and more easily enforceable protections for the environment, which apply to both IACs and NIACs. V: Conclusion This article has shown that armed conflict takes a significant toll on the environment and has demonstrated how environmental protection within IHL is inadequate in upholding minimum environmental safeguards during times of conflict. The failings of these provisions are compounded by the rapidly deteriorating climate crisis that is worsened by armed conflict; 12 out of the 20 countries most vulnerable to climate change are also sites of conflict.[169] Peter Maurer, President of the ICRC, states that all the present facts and statistics ‘attest to the maelstrom of stress that the environment endures during armed conflict’.[170] Although IHL provisions on the protection of the environment during armed conflict are flawed, ‘the sky is not falling’—yet.[171] As we have seen, some have argued that the time is not right for a new treaty given the lack of political will, but that does not prevent other advances from being made. IHL provisions should be clarified with the help of the ICRC’s Updated Guidelines and the ILC’s Draft Principles. In addition, States should urgently be encouraged to identify and establish demilitarised zones in areas of environmental importance, as well as those containing natural resources. These measures are essential if the international community is to ensure the future viability of the environment for generations to come. After all, if we continue to destroy the environment needlessly, whether it be in peacetime or wartime, ‘we will not thrive or even survive’.[172] Lydia Millar Lydia Millar is a Master’s student studying law at Queen’s University Belfast. Lydia is passionate about environmental law and animal rights and has contributed to published articles on ‘Ecocide’. Alongside her studies, she produces podcasts on environmental law and policy for the ‘LawPod’, a podcast series that is run by Queen’s University’s School of Law. [1] Ángela María Amaya Arias et al, Witnessing the Environmental Impacts of War: Environmental Case Studies from Conflicts around the World (PAX, 2020). [2] ibid. [3] CEOBs, ‘How Does War Damage the Environment?’ (4 June 2020) < https://ceobs.org/how-does-war-damage-the-environment/ > accessed 10 April 2021. [4] ibid. [5] Patrick Bigger, ‘The US Military Consumes More Hydrocarbons than Most Countries - With a Massive Hidden Impact on the Environment’ (Lancaster University, 20 June 2019) < https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/news/us-military-consumes-more-hydrocarbons-than-most-countries-with-a-massive-hidden-impact-on-the-climate > accessed 10 April 2021. [6] CEOBs (n 3). [7] ICRC, When Rain Turns to Dust: Understanding and Responding to the Combined Impact of Armed Conflict and the Climate and Environmental Crisis on People’s Lives (2020). [8] IPCC, Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability (Summary for Policymakers) (IPCC WG II 6th Assessment Report, 2022) 36. [9] Marco Sassòli and Antoine Bouvier, How Does Law Protect in War? Cases, Documents, and Teaching Materials on Contemporary Practice in International Humanitarian Law (2nd edn, International Committee of the Red Cross 2006) 81. [10] Rosemary Rayfuse, ‘War and the Environment: International Law and the Protection of the Environment in Relation to Armed Conflict – Introduction to the Special Issue’ (2013) 82 Nordic J Int’l L 1. [11] The Holy Bible , Deuteronomy: 19-20 (English Standard Version). [12] Margaret MacMillan, War: How Conflict Shaped Us (Profile Books, 2020) 5. [13] United Nations Environmental Programme, Protecting the Environment during Armed Conflict: An Inventory and Analysis of International Law (UNEP, 2009) 4. [14] Carson Thomas, ‘Advancing the Legal Protection of the Environment in Relation to Armed Conflict: Protocol I’s Threshold of Impermissible Environmental Damage and Alternatives’ (2013) Nordic J Int’l L 85. [15] ibid. [16] Jean-Marie Henckaerts et al., Customary International Humanitarian Law (ICRC and CUP 2005) Rule 44. [17] Heba Aly, ‘Islamic Law and Rules of War’ ( Middle East Eye , 12 February 2015) accessed 28 January 2021. [18] Gregory Reichberg and Henrik Syse, ‘Protecting the Natural Environment in Wartime: Ethical Considerations for the Just War Tradition’ (2000) 37 Journal of Peace Research 449, 445. [19] ibid. [20] The Bible (n 11) Genesis 1:28. [21] ibid 457. [22] UNEP (n 13) 8. [23] Eliana Custao, ‘From Ecocide to Voluntary Remediation Projects: Legal Responses to Environmental Warfare in Vietnam and the Spectre of Colonialism’ (2018) 19 Melb J Int’l L 494. [24] Jay Austin and Carl Bruch (eds) The Environmental Consequences of War: Legal Economic and Scientific Perspectives (Cambridge University Press 2000) 1, 48. [25] Trien T Nguyen, ‘Environmental Consequences of Dioxin from the War in Vietnam: What Has Been Done and What Else Could be Done?’ (2009) 66 Int’l J Environmental Studies 9. [26] Custao (n 23) 500. [27] The Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Uses of Environmental Modification Techniques, 1977. [28] Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I) 1977. [29] Custao (n 23) 501. [30] Siamak Khorram and X. Long Dai, ‘Environmental Impacts of the 1991 Persian Gulf War: A Remote Sensing Perspective’ (1999, Centre for Earth Observation, North Carolina State University) 2560. [31] Thor Hanson et al., ‘Warfare in Biodiversity hotspots’ (2009) 23 Conversation Biology 578. [32] UNEP (n 13) 4. [33] UNGA A/RES/47/37 (9th February 1993) UN Doc A/47/591. [34] Adrian Loets, ‘An Old Debate Revisited: Applicability of Environmental Treaties in Times of International Armed Conflict Pursuant to the International Law Commission’s ‘Draft Articles on the Effects of Armed Conflict on Treaties’’ (2012) 21(2) Review of European Community and International Law 127. [35] Karen Hulme, ‘Armed Conflict, Wanton Ecological Devastation and Scorched Earth Policies: How the 1990-1991 Gulf Conflict Revealed the Inadequacies of the Current Laws to Ensure Effective Protection and Preservation of the Natural Environment’ (1997) 2 Journal of Armed Conflict Law 45, 47. [36] ibid. [37] International Law and Policy Institute, Protection of the Natural Environment in Armed Conflict: An Empirical Study (2014) Report 12. [38] ibid 16. [39] Muhammad Sadiq, The Gulf War Aftermath: An Environmental Tragedy (Pulwer Academic Press 1993) 52. [40] Kris Hirschmann, The Kuwaiti Oil Fires (Facts on File Press 2005) 23. [41] Antoinette Mannion, ‘Environmental Impact of War and Terrorism’ (University of Reading Press 2003) Geographical Paper no. 169. [42] ibid. [43] John Loretz, ‘The Animal Victims of the Gulf War’ (1991) Physicians for Social Responsibility 34. [44] ILPI (n 37) 26. [45] UNEP, ‘UNEP Releases Report on the Demise of the Mesopotamian Marshes’ (Press Release, 13 August 2001) UNEP/98. [46] ibid. [47] ibid. [48] ibid. [49] Hassan Partow, The Mesopotamian Marshlands: Demise of an Ecosystem (Early Warning and Assessment Technical Report) (UNEP 2001) 10. [50] UNSC, Resolution 687 (3 April 1991) paras 16-19. [51] Peter Sand, ‘Compensation for Environmental Damage from the 1991 Gulf War. United Nations Activities: UNCC’ (2005) 35 Environmental Policy and Law Journal 244, 246. [52] ibid. [53] ibid. [54] Austin and Bruch (n 24) 362. [55] Gwinyayi Dzinesa and Joyce Laker, Post-Conflict Reconstruction in the DRC (2011) Centre for Conflict Resolution. [56] ibid. [57] ibid. [58] ILPI (n 37) 34. [59] UNEP, The DRC: Post-Conflict Environmental Assessment Synthesis for Policy Makers (2011) 26. [60] Asit Biswas and Cecilia Tortajada, ‘Environmental Impact of the Rwandan Refugees of Zaire’ (1996) 25(6) Ambio 405. [61] ibid. [62] UNEP (n 59) 36. [63] Guy Debonnet and Kes Hillman-Smith, ‘Supporting Protected Areas in a Time of Political Turmoil: The Case of World Heritage Sites in the DRC’ (2004) 14(1) Parks 9. [64] Britta Sjöstedt, ‘The Role of MEAs in Armed Conflict: ‘Greenkeeping’ in Virunga Park. Applying the UNESCO World Heritage Convention in the Armed Conflict of the DRC’ (2013) Nordic J’ Int’l Law 82, 132. [65] Christopher Day, ‘‘Survival Mode’: Rebel Resilience and the Lord’s Resistance Army’ (2019) 31 Terrorism and Political Violence 966. [66] ibid. [67] The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, 1963. [68] The Agreement on the Conservation of Gorillas and Their Habitats, 2007. [69] Sophia Benz and Judith Benz-Schwarzburg, ‘Great Apes and New Wars’ (2010) 12 Civil Wars 400. [70] International Law Commission, Second Report on Protection of the Environment in Relation to Armed Conflict by Marja Lehto, Special Rapporteur (UNGA, 2019) A/CN.4/728. [71] OHCHR, Report on the Mapping Exercise Documenting the Most Serious Violations of Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law Committed within the Territory of the DRC Between March 1993 and June 2003 (August 2010) 350. [72] ILPI (n 37) 36. [73] OHCHR (n 71). [74] ibid. [75] ILPI (n 37) 36. [76] Benz and Benz-Schwarzburg (n 69). [77] Michael Schmitt, ‘Humanitarian Law and the Environment’ (2000) 28 Denv J Int’l L& Pol’y 265, 267. [78] Michael Bothe et al., ‘International Law Protecting the Environment During Armed Conflict’ (2010) 92 International Review of the Red Cross 879, 6. [79] API (n 28) art 35. [80] ibid. art 55. [81] ICRC, Commentary on the Additional Protocols of 8 June 1977 to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 (Martinus Nijhoff / International Committee of the Red Cross 1987) 663. [82] Schmitt (n 77) 275. [83] ibid. 277. [84] Henckaerts et al. (n 16) Rule 45. [85] H McCoubrey, Environmental Protection in Armed Conflict: Present Provision and Future Needs (Manuscript, University of Nottingham, January 1994) 5-6. [86] UNEP (n 13) 4. [87] Thomas (n 14) 83. [88] Liesbeth Lijnzaad and Gerard J Tanja, ‘Protection of the Environment in times of Armed Conflict: The Iraq-Kuwait War’ (1993) 40 Netherlands Int’l L. Review 180. [89] ICRC, Guidelines on the Protection of the Natural Environment in Armed Conflict (2020). [90] ibid. rule 2. [91] ibid. [92] ICRC, ‘Treaties, States Parties and Commentaries’ < https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/applic/ihl/ihl.nsf/States.xsp?xp_viewStates=XPages_NORMStatesParties&xp_treatySelected=470 > accessed 3rd May 2021. [93] Karen Hulme, War Torn Environment: Interpreting the Legal Threshold (Martinus Nijhoff Publishers 2004) 79. [94] Bothe et al. (n 78) 576. [95] ENMOD (n 28) art 1(1). [96] UNCCD to the General Assembly, Official Records of the General Assembly, 31 Session, Supplement No. 27 (A/31/27). [97] Lawrence Juda, ‘Negotiating a Treaty on Environmental Modification Warfare: The Convention on Environmental Warfare and its Impact Upon Arms Control Negotiations’ (1978) 32 International Organisation 975, 980. [98] ibid. [99] ibid. [100] ENMOD (n 28) art 2. [101] Department of Peace and Conflict Research, ‘Uppsala University Conflict Data Programme’ (Uppsala University) < https://ucdp.uu.se > accessed 19 February 2021. [102] UNEP (n 13) 10. [103] ibid. [104] Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and Relating to the Protection of Victims of Non-International Armed Conflicts. [105] ibid. arts 14-16. [106] ILC, ‘Second Report on the Protection of the Environment in Relation to Armed Conflicts’ (28 May 2018) UN Doc A/CN.4/673. [107] Camilo Ramírez Gutiérrez and A Sebastian Saavedra Eslava, ‘Protection of the Natural Environment under IHL and International Criminal Law: The Case of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace in Colombia’ (2020) 25 UCLA J Int’l L Foreign Aff, 123, 137. [108] ICRC Guidelines (n 89) Recommendation 18. [109] ibid. [110] ICRC Guidelines (n 89) 46. [111] Michael Schmitt, ‘War and the Environment: Fault Lines in the Perspective Landscape’ (1999) 37 Völkerrechts Archives 32. [112] Henckaerts et al (n 16). [113] Michael Schmitt, ‘Green War: An Assessment of the Environmental Laws of Armed Conflict’ (1997) 22 Yale J Int’l L 56. [114] API (n 28) art 48. [115] ibid. art 57. [116] ibid. art 52. [117] Bothe et al (n 78) 576. [118] Schmitt (n 111) 35. [119] ibid. [120] Convention (IV) Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land and its Annex: Regulations concerning the Laws and Customs of War on Land, The Hague, 18 October 1907, Article 23(g). [121] ibid. [122] Thomas (n 14) 92. [123] Convention (IV) Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, Geneva, 12 August 1949, art 53. [124] ibid. art 147. [125] Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court 1998, art 8(2)(a)(iv). [126] Schmitt (n 87) 34. [127] Richard Falk, ‘The Inadequacy of the Existing Legal Approach to Environmental Protection in Wartime’ in Austin and Bruch (n 24) 144. [128] Schmitt (n 113) 56. [129] Vladimir Pustogarov, ‘Fyodor Fyodorovich Martens (1845-1909) – A Humanist of Modern Times’ (1996) 312 International Review of the Red Cross 300. [130] Rupert Ticehurst, ‘The Martens Clause and the Laws of Armed Conflict’ (1997) 317 International Review of the Red Cross accessed 27 May 2021. [131] Christopher Joyner and James Kirkhope, ‘The Persian Gulf War Oil Spill: Reassessing the Law of Environmental Protection and the Law of Armed Conflict’ (1992) 24 Case Western J Int’l L, 61. [132] Annotated Supplement to the Commander’s Handbook on the Law of Naval Operations, NWP 9 (REV.A)/FMFM 1-10 (1989) 6. [133] Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons, Advisory Opinion (1996) ICJ 679, 242. [134] US v List (1950) 11 TWC 759, 1253. [135] Prosecutor v Tadić , Decision on the Defence Motion for Interlocutory Appeal on Jurisdiction (International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, 2 October 1995) Case No.IT-94-1-AR72, 70. [136] Louise Doswald-Beck, ‘International humanitarian law and the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice on the legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons’ (1997) 316 Int’l Rev. Red Cross. [137] Michaela Halpern, ‘Protecting Vulnerable Environments in Armed Conflict: Deficiencies in IHL’ (2015) 51 Stan J Int’l L 119, 139. [138] Schmitt (n 111) 47. [139] Schmitt (n 113) 64. [140] Glen Plant, Environmental Protection and the Law of War: A ‘Fifth Geneva’ Convention on the Protection of the Environment in Time of Armed Conflict (Wiley-Blackwell 1991) 37. [141] UNEP (n 13) 28. [142] ILC, Protection of the Environment in Relation to Armed Conflicts: Text and Titles of the Draft Principles Provisionally Adopted by the Draft Committee on First Reading (UNGA, 6 June 2019) A/CN.4/L.937. [143] ibid. Draft Principle 1. [144] Rachel Killean, ‘From Ecocide to eco-sensitivity: ‘Greening’ reparations at the ICC’ (2021) 25 Int’l J Human Rights 323, 326. [145] Schmitt (n 113) 64. [146] ibid. 66. [147] Paul Szasz, ‘Comment: The Existing Legal Framework, Protecting the Environment During International Armed Conflict’ 69 Int’l Law Studies 278. [148] Halpern (n 137) 146. [149] UNEP (n 13) 20. [150] ibid. [151] Iain Watson, ‘Rethinking Peace Parks in Korea’ (2014) 26 Peace Review 102. [152] ibid. [153] Convention (IV) (n 122) art 15. [154] API (n 28) arts 59 and 60. [155] Draft Convention on the Prohibition of Hostile Military Action in Protected Areas 1995. [156] Wolfgang Burhenne, ‘The Prohibition of Hostile Military Action in Protected Areas’ (1997) 27 Environmental Policy and Law 373. [157] UNSC Resolution 844 (June 18, 1993) UN Doc. S/Res/844. [158] Burhenne (n 156). [159] ILC (n 142) Draft Principles 4 and 17. [160] Stavros Pantazopoulos, ‘Conflict and Conservation – The Promise and Perils of Protected Zones’ (Conflict and Environment Observatory, 8th October 2020) < https://ceobs.org/conflicts-and-conservation-the-promise-and-perils-of-protected-zones/ > accessed 30th March 2021. [161] The World Heritage Convention 1972. [162] ibid. art 11(2). [163] ibid. art 4. [164] Sjöstedt (n 64) 143. [165] Karen Hulme, ‘Armed Conflict and Biodiversity’ in Michael Bowman, Peter Davies, and Edward Goodwin (eds) Research Handbook on Biodiversity and Law (Elgar Publishing 2016) 245. [166] Pantozapoulos (n 160). [167] Alice Bunker, ‘Protection of the Environment during Armed Conflict: One Gulf, Two Wars’ (2004) 23 Review of Europeans Community and Int’l Environmental Law 201. [168] Orla Buckley, ‘Unregulated Armed Conflict: Non-State Armed Groups, IHL, and Violence in Western Sahara’ (2012) 37 North Carolina J Int’l L 793, 795. [169] ND-GAIN, ‘Country Index’ (July 2020, Uni of Notre Dame) < https://gain-new.crc.nd.edu/ > accessed 26 February 2021. [170] ICRC (n 89) 4. [171] Schmitt (n 81) 65. [172] UNEP, ‘Climate, Biodiversity Loss and Pollution: Alarming Report on Earth’s Triple Environmental Emergencies’ (YouTube, 18 February 2021) < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISNu8W4xig8 > accessed 10 April 2021.

Stephen Marche is a novelist, essayist and cultural commentator. He is the author of half a dozen books and has written opinion pieces and essays for The New Yorker , The New York Times , The Atlantic , Esquire , The Walrus and many others. CJLPA : Let’s begin by outlining the main premise of your latest book, The Next Civil War . Who did you have in mind when you were writing it and what was your initial interest in the topic? Stephen Marche : The subject of the book is the political leanings that are tending towards a disunion, a civil war in the United States, or the breakup of the United States in some form. I wrote it as a warning to Americans. It is not written out of contempt for America at all, in fact it’s written out of deep affection for and love of America. I feel that they are in quite a bit of danger and that they’ve accepted certain political realities as normal when they’re quite abnormal. I originally started writing it when a Canadian magazine sent me to Washington to cover the Trump inauguration in 2016. That had a real kind of ‘fall of Rome’ vibe. I was walking around with anarchists and then I came back from buying cigarettes and they had all been arrested. Then I was standing on top of a limousine and somebody lit the limousine on fire. The police were right down the knife edge between left and right groups, and they could barely keep the peace. After that experience, I decided to dedicate the next four or five years to trying to figure out how much danger America is actually in. And the book is my answer to that. CJLPA : You go through five dispatches in the book. Were there any outside of that which you considered writing about, or started writing about and decided not to continue with? SM : Electoral outcomes really didn’t make their way into the book; like what a challenged election would look like, what would happen if there was a contingent election, or no agreement on January 6th when they certified the election. I didn’t include that because I wanted to base the dispatches on solid information, for which I had excellent, well-established models—like environmental models or models of civil war. It’s very hard to find non-biased or non-political and non-agenda driven approaches to questions like those around contested or contingent elections. Some models are stronger than others; economic models are not really worth anything. Nobody knows what’s going to happen in the economy. We do know that by 2040, 50% of the American population will control 85% of the senate, and we do know that trust in institutions is in freefall. And the environmental models offer an incredible predictive capacity. I wanted to keep it on that level. People get really confused in America about the importance of elections, whereas I think the trends that are really shredding the United States are well below and well above who gets elected. People are worried if Trump gets elected. I’m not really worried about that because I think the problems are a lot deeper than that. CJLPA : There’s a prevailing idea that issues as deep-set as those that you discuss in your book can only be diagnosed from a safe objective distance. I’m wondering how your being a Canadian brought a unique perspective to these issues and allowed you to consider them in a different way. SM : We are very close to America. I’ve lived in America and I’ve worked in America. Most of my income has always come from American sources. I have family in America. But I’m not an American. I can go to America, and no one would know that I’m not an American, so that’s also extremely helpful as a researcher. Being a Canadian is the perfect amount of distance because you’re right there geographically and culturally. But you also know that healthcare systems do not have to be as they are in America; gun control does not have to be as it is. There are other options. The realities that you see in America are not normal. A huge problem in America is that the educated elites have really managed to convince themselves, and have been taught from a very young age, that their political institutions are the solution to history, whereas to me they are just one option among many. I think that’s the difference between myself and an American commentator, who on one hand really has to believe in their country, and on the other has been indoctrinated into believing that it is the greatest country in the world and an exception to history and so on. When of course there are no exceptions to history. CJLPA : I agree with your conclusion in the book that the hope for America lies with Americans, and that it is the fusion of opposites and the coming together of differing opinions that makes America so unique and allowed it to become what it is today. Great political thinkers like Hannah Arendt and Walter Benjamin view contrasting opinions as the highest good in politics. How do you think the University helps––or maybe doesn’t help––in creating a space for dissent? SM : From the outside it looks horrible. I don’t think anyone imagines that the university would be a place where you could openly explore ideas anymore. I would never have the inclination that if I really want to explore or open up ideas, I should make an appointment at a university and talk about it with some students. The university really isn’t the world. The humanities are falling apart, they cannot argue for a reason for their own existence. They get less powerful every year out of a willed powerlessness. And if you can’t make arguments for why you should exist you won’t exist. CJLPA : Where do you think that space of dissent could be or is? SM : My opinion generally is that these things go in cycles: political leanings, engagement, disengagement. There’s a great temptation whenever we’re in these situations to feel like we are in the ideology that’s going to survive forever. One of the things that worries me is that the right-wing backlash to that will be so horrible that it will be worse than what we have now. The heroes that I had were renaissance humanists; people like Arendt and Benjamin, who maintained their humanism in very dark periods. I really believe in cosmopolitan humanism as an intellectual approach to the world, and that’s the world that I want to be in. I don’t feel like that’s impossible at all. I feel like I can write and say what I want, and some people will hate me, and some people will like me, but I’m a journalist! You’re supposed to be hated, that’s part of the gig. I don’t really feel all that threatened by any of that. I feel like it’s important to keep your eye on the prize of what you want to do and who you want to be intellectually, and to not respond to trends that are based in fear. Fear is quite overblown on these matters. I’ve been attacked a lot, but I think we should expect to be attacked. Sharing an opinion of the world comes with a price. I feel like there is still room for humanism, probably as much as there ever has been because it’s never been very popular. Humanism is always under threat; it’s never been the successor ideology but it’s the one I have. It’s all that I care about and want to do. And I can do it. CJLPA : Since you’re a Shakespeare scholar and this is a British journal, is there any particular play, or even a scene, which you see as particularly illuminating to contemporary Canadian or American politics? SM : Coriolanus is a big one because it’s about patriotic elites who turn into a globalized fascist force, which you don’t have to look too far to find. Someone like Putin is very Shakespearean; people who manage to convince themselves of their own propaganda and become obsessed with their own rhythms of revenge, This is absolutely the Shakespearean mode. The parallels are not exact, but there are a whole host of plays which can be related to the ongoing conflict between the Ukraine and Russia, like Antony and Cleopatra or Coriolanus . Unfortunately, they are all tragedies. The tyrants of Richard III and Macbeth undoubtedly still apply. It’s amazing how these works remain so in tune with the psychological process behind tyrannical behaviour. Richard III is pretty damn close to Putin. I don’t think you’re going to find a better representation, except maybe Boris Godunov. This interview was conducted by Charlotte Friesen, an honours graduate from King’s College, Halifax, Nova Scotia. She wrote her thesis on early modern cookery manuscripts and cookbooks, and works as a bread baker when she’s not writing or reading.