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The Google search that could have averted Khaled Sabsabi art disaster · The Front

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
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  Speaker 1: It's Thursday, February twenty seven. Back to back interest rate
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  Speaker 1: cards look a bit less likely. New numbers from the
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  Speaker 1: Australian Bureau of Statistics show the Reserve banks preferred underlying
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  Speaker 1: inflation gauge climbed two point eight percent over the twelve
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  Speaker 1: months to January, slightly up from the previous month. The
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  Speaker 1: United States is doubling down on tariffs and denting Australian
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  Speaker 1: hopes of an exemption from Donald Trump's twenty five percent
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  Speaker 1: hit on steel and aluminium. Treasury Secretary Scott Besson said
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  Speaker 1: tariffs are a crucial tool to reindustrialize America and generate
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  Speaker 1: government revenue. Those stories alive now at the Australian dot
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  Speaker 1: Com dot u artist Colored Subsabi signed a petition demand
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: in Israel be excluded from the twenty twenty four Venice BNALI.
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  Speaker 1: That's the revelation today in The Australian's margin call column,
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  Speaker 1: the same column that kicked off a stink that's seen
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  Speaker 1: Subsabi dumped as Australia's representative for the next BNALI in
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  Speaker 1: twenty twenty six, Creative Australia. The former Arts Council has
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  Speaker 1: admitted it had no idea about Subsabi's works depicting Hesbala
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: leader Hassan Nasralla and the nine to eleven terror attacks
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: before choosing him for the gig. Today, the agency's bosses
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  Speaker 1: get dragged over hot coals at Senate Estimates.
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  Speaker 2: I want to retraction from you.
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  Speaker 3: I have not broken the law.
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  Speaker 2: I listened to a very offensive tirade in silence. I'd
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  Speaker 2: ask for the same respect.
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  Speaker 1: If you're a politician interested in a spot of grandstanding,
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: there's no better place than a Senate Estimates committee.
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  Speaker 4: If you didn't offer your resignation the same.
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  Speaker 5: Minister, will you now apologize not just to me but
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  Speaker 5: to my staff and.
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  Speaker 4: Instead of being change, really to go down just you
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  Speaker 4: and answer the questions.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: At parliamentary committees. The police real anxious public servants and
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  Speaker 1: sometimes public figures.
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  Speaker 6: You're either going to have to believe me or call
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  Speaker 6: me a liar.
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  Speaker 1: That's the Late nine Network owner Kerry pack Up at
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: a nineteen ninety one committee appearance where he did a
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  Speaker 1: little grandstanding of his own.
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  Speaker 6: Now, of course I am minimizing my tax and if
• 2:32
  Speaker 6: anybody in this country doesn't minimize their tax. They want
• 2:36
  Speaker 6: their head room. Because I look at a government, I
• 2:38
  Speaker 6: can tell you you're not spending it that well that we
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  Speaker 6: should be donating.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: Extra parliamentary privilege applies, which means you can't be sued
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: for anything defametory you might like to say. And there
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: are extra points for sounding as outraged as possible.
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  Speaker 5: Of a Murdoch newspaper hack job and a conservative asking
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  Speaker 5: some questions in Senate question time. I'll tell you what.
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  Speaker 1: Here's Green's Senator Sarah Hanson Young with her dander up
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  Speaker 1: at a Senate Estimate's hearing on Tuesday night.
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  Speaker 3: I'll tell you what.
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  Speaker 1: I think.
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  Speaker 5: You have fundamentally undermined artistic policy in this country for
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  Speaker 5: a very long time, and people are very upset about it,
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  Speaker 5: very upset.
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  Speaker 1: The senator was busy ripping into Adrian Collette, the chief
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  Speaker 1: executive of an outfit called Creative Australia previously known as
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  Speaker 1: the Australia Council, and his board chair Robert Morgan.
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  Speaker 5: You went into panic mode and you pushed the button.
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  Speaker 4: That's not good enough.
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  Speaker 5: It's not good enough.
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  Speaker 1: That Murdoch newspaper hack job. She was talking about by
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  Speaker 1: the way was an item in our business column margin
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  Speaker 1: Call that's set off a massive kafuffle in the arts world.
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  Speaker 1: Everyone seems to be upset quick recap. Earlier in February,
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  Speaker 1: Creative Australia announced Australia's team at the Venice Bionari twenty
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  Speaker 1: twenty six would be artist Colored Subsabi and curator Michael
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: de Gastino. Business columnist Janni Bishan wrote an item about
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  Speaker 1: it in Margin Call on February eleven, headlined.
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  Speaker 4: Arts Council takes creative approach to racism.
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  Speaker 1: Yanni's item described Subsabi's history of creating works featuring.
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  Speaker 4: Questionable and ambiguous usage of Hassan Masrala, the dead Hesbala leader.
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  Speaker 4: We don't know exactly what Subsabi feels about Nostrala or
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  Speaker 4: his death, or what he meant by taking a bunch
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  Speaker 4: of beams and shining them out of Nostralla's face or
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  Speaker 4: painting him in watercolor, as he did for a separate exhibition,
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  Speaker 4: but we do know how Subsabi feels about Israel. He
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  Speaker 4: was one of several artists who boycotted the twenty twenty
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  Speaker 4: two Sydney Festival after its organizers committed the grievous sin
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  Speaker 4: of accepting twenty thousand dollars in funding from the Israeli
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  Speaker 4: embassy to pay for a production put on by an
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  Speaker 4: invited Israeli choreographer.
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  Speaker 1: Then a Liberal Senator Claire Chandler asked questions about it
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  Speaker 1: in Parliament.
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  Speaker 7: Mister Sabsabi has previously produced artwork promoting Osama bin Laden
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  Speaker 7: and a series of nine to eleven images of the
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  Speaker 7: aircraft hitting the twin Towers titled thank You very Much?
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  Speaker 7: Will the Abenezi government immediately reverse the decision for mister
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  Speaker 7: Sabsabi to represent Australia at the Venice Bienalis and.
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  Speaker 1: Then Creative Australia announced it would be dropping Subsabi and Dagostino.
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  Speaker 1: The pair released this statement, we.
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  Speaker 3: Are extremely hurt and disappointed. We intended to present a
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  Speaker 3: transformational work in Venice, an experience that would unite all
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  Speaker 3: audiences in an open and safe shared space.
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  Speaker 1: At Senate Estimates on Tuesday night, Adrian Collett said it
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  Speaker 1: wasn't the piece in the Australian, but in fact Senator
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  Speaker 1: Chandler's questions that made him call an urgent board meeting
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  Speaker 1: and proposed humping Subsabi and Degastino.
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  Speaker 2: We strive to uphold the power of art to unite
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  Speaker 2: and build understanding, but we cannot be blind to the
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  Speaker 2: very real risk that the choices we make can also
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  Speaker 2: have the potential to trigger to visitive narratives.
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  Speaker 1: Colletes seemed to be saying it wasn't that he had
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  Speaker 1: a view about Subsabi's art, but that he believed the
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  Speaker 1: controversy could blow up the whole organization.
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  Speaker 2: As public debate intensified and scrutiny was applied to some
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  Speaker 2: of the artists prior works, that became very quickly evident
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  Speaker 2: to the board that the organization was confronting significant risks
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  Speaker 2: to its Huger mission.
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  Speaker 1: There were two intriguing revelations in Collet's evidence under questioning
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  Speaker 1: from Hanson, Young and Chandler. First, Collette said he didn't
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  Speaker 1: know about the Hassan as rather work you until after
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  Speaker 1: he decided to appoint Subsabi as Australia's representative for Venice.
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  Speaker 2: I was made aware of you. Yeah, I've worked about
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  Speaker 2: the hospital leader about a day or two.
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  Speaker 1: Before the launch, So that's after the decision was made
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  Speaker 1: to appoint Subsabi, but before it had been publicly announced.
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  Speaker 1: In early February second. Collet didn't know about the other
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  Speaker 1: work with planes flying into buildings on September eleventh, two
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: thousand and one, and George W. Bush saying thank you
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  Speaker 1: very much, until Claire Chandler raised it in the Senate.
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  Speaker 1: Collet said he immediately rang board chair Robert Morgan, then
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  Speaker 1: called Minister Tony Burke.
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  Speaker 2: Well, I've described the image, I said, I think we
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  Speaker 2: have an issue here that the board needs to discuss,
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  Speaker 2: and so we got busy bringing the board together.
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  Speaker 1: He wanted to add it wasn't unusual to have no
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  Speaker 1: idea about an artist's prior works before a commission like this.
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  Speaker 2: Characteristically, we do not do searches of artists that catalog.
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  Speaker 2: We don't do that. We judged work in front of us,
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  Speaker 2: and it's potential to fulfill the brief that we are
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  Speaker 2: looking for. So I'm very confident saying there wasn't a
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  Speaker 2: far research of thirty years of artistic enterprise, thousands of
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  Speaker 2: images before we made the decision to appoint Karalied and Michael.
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  Speaker 1: Here's Joanni Bishan.
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  Speaker 4: Look. I think generally Adrian Collette presents as a person
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  Speaker 4: of very serious character. It's very clear that he takes
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  Speaker 4: his job extremely seriously and that he cares about the
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  Speaker 4: future of Australian art very much. I felt overall that
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  Speaker 4: he was doing his very best to try and defend
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  Speaker 4: what has been an indefensible series of steps that were
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  Speaker 4: taken by Creative Australia. I think what we didn't hear
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  Speaker 4: from Adrian Collette was a simple admission that this entire
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  Speaker 4: process could have been avoided by not selecting Colored Subsabi
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  Speaker 4: and Michael Degostino in the first place. But I think
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  Speaker 4: that's what they were thinking.
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  Speaker 3: On Google.
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  Speaker 1: I went back in time a little to see what
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  Speaker 1: the results would have been if I'd searched Colored Subsabi's
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  Speaker 1: name before February twenty twenty five, when this drama all started.
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  Speaker 1: The first result is a page from the Museum of
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  Speaker 1: Contemporary Art in Sydney which includes a biography of Subsabi.
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  Speaker 1: Click on that and you find this. We've used a
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  Speaker 1: voice actor to read it aloud.
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  Speaker 8: This is the case in his video work You two
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  Speaker 8: thousand and seven, for example, which formerly plays with a
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  Speaker 8: recording of a speech by Hesbala leader Hassan Nasralla following
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  Speaker 8: the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon after the two
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  Speaker 8: thousand and six Lebanon War.
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  Speaker 1: The second result I would have got on that Google
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  Speaker 1: search is Colored Subsabi's own website. Click on works and
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  Speaker 1: I find a page full of his artworks, including that
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  Speaker 1: two thousand and seven Hassan israela piece.
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  Speaker 5: You what Kranath wha karamana.
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  Speaker 1: And thank you very much. From two thousand and six.
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  Speaker 1: That's the one with planes flying into the twin towers
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  Speaker 1: and George W.
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  Speaker 4: Bush, thank you, thank you very much.
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  Speaker 1: Not hidden, not hard to find. If you were thinking
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  Speaker 1: about giving Colored Subsabia commission to say represent Australia at
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  Speaker 1: the Venice BNALI, these works were there to be found.
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  Speaker 4: Adrian Collette has learned the hard way that not googling
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  Speaker 4: someone can come back to bite you pretty hard, and
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  Speaker 4: that was the reason why he was grilled so hard
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  Speaker 4: at Senate Estimates on Tuesday night, and it's the reason
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  Speaker 4: why he's had to retract Karlte Subsabi and Michael Destino
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  Speaker 4: as the artist representatives to Venice. And at this stage
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  Speaker 4: we don't have replacements for those people. And it's really
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  Speaker 4: unclear what the Australian pavilion at the Venice b and
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  Speaker 4: l is even.
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  Speaker 1: Going to look like coming up Jewish and his Ali
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  Speaker 1: artists have found themselves being canceled ever since the Middle
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  Speaker 1: East conflict flared up in October twenty twenty three. So
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  Speaker 1: what's different about this colored Subzabi certainly hasn't been hiding
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  Speaker 1: his artworks. There's been no attempt to kind of scrub
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  Speaker 1: his website of things that might cause controversy. And he
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  Speaker 1: hasn't been shy about his opinions on other platforms either,
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  Speaker 1: has he?
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  Speaker 4: No, he hasn't. I mean, this is a guy who
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  Speaker 4: has joined petitions to, for example, boycott the Sydney Festival
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  Speaker 4: in twenty twenty two. And the reason why he and
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  Speaker 4: other artists wanted to boycott that festival was because the
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  Speaker 4: organizers dared to accept twenty thousand dollars in funding from
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  Speaker 4: the Israeli embassy. And the reason why they accepted that
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  Speaker 4: funding was because they wanted to host a production by
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  Speaker 4: the Israeli choreographer or Ab Navin, a renowned choreographer who
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  Speaker 4: was due to come to Sydney and give that performance,
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  Speaker 4: and so that was why they accepted the funding. But
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  Speaker 4: it wasn't good enough for a very large number of
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  Speaker 4: artists across Australia who decided that well, they were going
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  Speaker 4: to boycott the Sydney Festival on that basis. But now
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  Speaker 4: we also learn again through a very simple Google search,
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  Speaker 4: that Karlett Subsabi's name is also on another petition which
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  Speaker 4: he signed last year, and that was to see Israel
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  Speaker 4: band entirely from hosting a pavilion at the Venice Bnali.
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  Speaker 4: So this is someone who's unafraid about putting his name
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  Speaker 4: to petitions calling for the cancelation or deep platforming or
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  Speaker 4: boycotting of other artists, and yet here now he finds
• 12:36
  Speaker 4: himself in a slightly similar position.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, the outrage on behalf of Khaled Subsabi has been
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  Speaker 1: an expression in part of empathy for the humiliation that
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  Speaker 1: he's been through and no doubt this has been a
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  Speaker 1: horrible experience. But there's an idea out there that he's
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  Speaker 1: being canceled when nobody else has been canceled. What do
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  Speaker 1: you think about that?
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  Speaker 4: What it seems to me that in the art world,
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  Speaker 4: and a definitely not part of this world myself, but
• 13:02
  Speaker 4: it would seem to me that in the art world,
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  Speaker 4: cancelation and deplatforming and silencing is something that occurs with regularity.
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  Speaker 4: We've heard from commentators in our own newspaper and elsewhere,
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  Speaker 4: guys like Josh Davelstein who've written about how if you
• 13:17
  Speaker 4: don't subscribe to certain views, you might find yourself not
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  Speaker 4: being invited to certain parties or not being included in
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  Speaker 4: certain galleries. There are consequences basically for not towing the line.
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  Speaker 4: And in my own reporting on Creative Australia, I've attempted
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  Speaker 4: to tease out the kind of ideological alignments that you
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  Speaker 4: see at a place like Creative Australia, and I'm talking
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  Speaker 4: about artists who Creative Australia recruits to sit on panels
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  Speaker 4: that adjudicate other arts, adjudicate on taxpayer funding that may
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  Speaker 4: or may not go to other artists who are applying.
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  Speaker 4: And what we're seeing is that a high number of
• 13:54
  Speaker 4: these panelists share the same ideological view and that can
• 13:58
  Speaker 4: be sliced and diceed into anti colonial viewpoints, anti Australian viewpoints.
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  Speaker 4: They might also be anti Zionist or anti israel I think,
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  Speaker 4: all of which means that if you're coming to the
• 14:10
  Speaker 4: art world with a conservative approach and you don't hold
• 14:15
  Speaker 4: the viewpoints of your peers, especially some of those in
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  Speaker 4: positions of power, you might find yourself missing out on
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  Speaker 4: certain benefits and privileges.
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  Speaker 1: Or if you just happen to be Jewish. You know,
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: there's a WhatsApp group of Jewish creatives who found themselves doxed.
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  Speaker 1: There's artists such as Deborah Conway who say they have
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  Speaker 1: been deplatformed and denied opportunities. Just this week we've seen
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: in the Australian the revelation that the chair of the
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: Cydney Writers Festival has quit in frustration because she didn't
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  Speaker 1: feel that Jewish or Israeli voices were getting it fair
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  Speaker 1: perspective at her own festival. So why is it different
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: for someone like Colored Subsabi when he feels that he's
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  Speaker 1: been canceled.
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  Speaker 4: I think probably because it doesn't happened to improve often.
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  Speaker 4: And I think for Jewish artists of the kind that
• 15:04
  Speaker 4: you mentioned, this is part and parcel. This is the
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  Speaker 4: infected ideology that pervades artistic circles at play. It's the
• 15:12
  Speaker 4: reason why artists like Debrah Conway will have either her
• 15:16
  Speaker 4: shows canceled, or people turning up to protests, or people
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  Speaker 4: not turning up at all. This is how people express themselves.
• 15:22
  Speaker 4: In the artistic world, cancelation is a byproduct discrimination. These
• 15:28
  Speaker 4: are all byproducts of not towing the line and maintaining
• 15:32
  Speaker 4: a viewpoint that's fashionable or popular amongst people who are
• 15:36
  Speaker 4: influential in that sphere.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: Johnny Bishan is the editor of The Australian's column Margin
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: coll To read all Yonnie scoops, make sure you go
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: to the Australian dot com dot a u slash business