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Billboard ads, socks, plates, even kickboxing: are these really matters of artistic freedom? The boundary is more blurred than it seems. What is clear is that threats to creative expression rarely arrive in clean, visible lines. They move quietly. Under-reported incidents. Weak reporting systems. People in the field know the limits of numbers. They track trends, set
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Imagine a smart, cheeky report with a playful visual language. Nothing like the typical output of human-rights groups. But, its harmless-looking cover, belies its contents. Koalisi Seni, an Indonesian advocacy group for artistic freedom, has just released Cerita Lama Berulang Kembali (Same Old, Same Old). Inside: sixty cases of censorship, harassment, intimidation. The highest figure in a decade.
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Slovenian artist Maja Smrekar is suing the right-wing Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS), for misusing her work – a performance in which she breastfed her puppy – during a referendum campaign on pension reforms. In a video interview from her studio in Ljubljana, she speaks with Musa Igrek of Freemuse about how her performance on kinship and care, K-9_topology:
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“In 1955, a secret unit, the Information Research Department (IRD) of the UK Foreign Office (FO) began delivery of Bellman Books around the world. However, there is no detailed research on this book series. This chapter examines Bellman Books as a form of cultural diplomacy and shows how books promoted a favorable national image abroad; how the IRD arranged
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In Türkiye today, there is deep anxiety. The media is widely distrusted by many, while the political environment grows more oppressive for those who question the government. All of this has been unfolding against the backdrop of a troubled economy – after peaking at 85% in 2022, inflation fell to below 50% by October 2024,
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“Don’t mention the war,” warns a character in Nathan Englander’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, as she addresses her husband. But that didn’t stop him – just as it hasn’t stopped many artists worldwide creating work on the war on Gaza. In October, Englander’s play was staged at the intimate
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On Music Freedom Day we remember the long and fraught struggle of Kurdish musicians in Türkiye. For decades, Kurdish artistic expression was systematically suppressed under a national policy that enforced a singular Turkish identity. Music, literature, cinema, and theatre in Kurdish were banned, their existence relegated to underground spaces or exile. It was not until the
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Parvin Ardalan, born in Tehran to a Kurdish family, has spent decades at the forefront of Iran’s feminist movement. A journalist, writer, and activist, she co-founded the One Million Signatures Campaign in 2006, a daring initiative to challenge the country’s discriminatory laws against women. Her advocacy has come at a steep personal price—arrests, trials, and a travel
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What is freedom? What is democracy? What is communism? What happens to communists? These were pressing questions for the English-speaking world in the 1950s and provided the titles to a series of cheap but well-produced and striking books that are still to be found at reasonable prices in second-hand bookshops and on the shelves of
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Kuşağının üretken mimari fotoğrafçılarından Anthony Kersting (1916-2008) Türkiye, Mısır, Suriye, İran, Ürdün ve Irak’ın yanı sıra hemen hemen her Avrupa ülkesini ve Afrika’nın bir kısmını kareleyen bir isimdi. Fotoğrafları gezi rehberlerinden fotoğraf albümlerine uzanan bir mecrada yer edindi. 20. yüzyılda en çok seyahat eden fotoğrafçılar arasında anılan Kersting, bölgenin mimarisini ve insanlarını belgelemek için 1940’lar
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Musa Igrek 