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Sunday marked the fourth day that artist Peter Cloughs new solo show at Haul Gallery in Brooklyn was open to the public, and possibly the last. A powerful and engrossing exhibition of new videos filmed during a residency in the spacean unfinished basement beneath a beauty salon accessed from the sidewalk via a steep staircaseExaltation of the Porous Body continues Cloughs explorations of power, submission, architecture and embodiment. Its centrepiece is a 14-minute video calmly, hypnotically narrated by Clough in which he appears completely naked save a few accessories (including a leather hood) and confined in a dog cage.

Given the content, gallery co-directors Erin Davis and Max C. Lee had posted a content warning on the sign at the gallerys entrance, but that may be what ultimately drew the attention of a man claiming to be a representative of the buildings owner, who visited the space on Sunday (1 May).

I was told that they sent a photo of our signs warning viewers that there is sexual content to the landlord, and that the landlord was upset by that, Lee says. The next thing I know, theres a different guy and about seven [Fire Department of New York] crew members entering the basement and citing fire code violations. He continues, I explained that we can address those, and then the representative of the landlord was like, You are trespassing, Im calling the police.

Whether or not the New York Police Department was also summoned to the gallery is unclear, but after a conversation via FaceTime with a man said to be the buildings landlord, Lee, along with Davis and Clough, decided to close early. The gallery has remained closed to the public since.

This alleged act of censorship by a landlord operating through intimidation is complicated by the gallery's rental arrangement, the building owners anonymity and the lack of protections for commercial tenants in New York City. The building in Downtown Brooklyn where the gallery is located, 368 Livingston Street, is owned by Livingston Street Realty Associates, an entity registered as a limited partnership that thereby has minimal public reporting requirements and is very difficult to trace back to any specific individuals.

Nevertheless, Livingston Street Realty Associates and their lawyers are quite active in court. The company is currently suing three of its tenants in the building for at least $192,000 in unpaid rent, much of it accumulated since the onset of the pandemic. (While residential tenants in New York were, until recently, afforded some protections by way of Covid-19 relief, protections for small businesses started being rolled back in March 2021.)

Weve always been interested in showing in unconventional spaces, Davis says, noting that the gallery had signed a one-year agreement to sublet the basement space from another tenant in the building in February and that Livingston Street Realty Associates was aware that the gallery was operating out of the space. Were not lawyers, but were learning quickly.

"The basement cannot be used for commercial use and it violates the Certificate of Occupancy," says Jeremy J. Krantz, a lawyer at Smith & Krantz, who represents Livingston Street Realty Associates. He provided a copy of the fire department summons from the 1 May visit, addressed to the business owner who sublet the basement to Haul Gallery, which states that in order to remedy the situation it must "immediately cease any commercial use of [the] basement".

The gallerists and Clough believe the actions of the landlord and their representatives were entirely motivated by the content of the current exhibition, not any concerns about the fire code. Prior to the gallery moving in, a tattoo parlour operated out of the space without issue. But the precarity of the gallerys rental arrangement has left it in a vulnerable position with little recourse.

The selective enforcement of rules means spaces like this can operate at the margins, but also means they can easily be shut down or pushed out, says Clough, whose previous exhibition at Haul Gallery, HEAD in 2019, was similarly staged in an unconventional, unfinished basement space and was also very explicit (though differently so) but did not provoke censorship. For now, he, Davis and Lee are exploring ways to show the present exhibition and continue Hauls programming in a new location.

We were told to our faces that this shutdown is happening because of the content of the show, Lee says, and it was made clear to us that the landlord is not interested in negotiating or us staying there at all, so were moving forward.

The gallery's very identity was formed, in a sense, by a previous legal dispute. In 2019 the gallery, then known as Uhaul Gallery, changed its name to Haul Gallery after the truck rental company U-Haul threatened legal action.

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New York gallerists say landlord shut down their space to censor exhibition - Art Newspaper

Joy Behar was just a little too quick with a rare swear Wednesday for the censors delay.

The View crew was wrapping a segment about Twitter possibly bringing back Donald Trump when something hit the fan and whoever had their finger on the bleep button was a step slow. It wasnt clear how wide the FCC no-no word was broadcast, but it was clearly heard in realtime at TheWrap, and captured in the (NSFW!) video above.

He can say stupid things anywhere, Behar said, then adding over crosstalk: Yeah. Exactly. The previous tweets were all dumb shit!

The bleep or as it is these days, a block of silence hit the moment Behar bit down on the t. By the time the audio returned, Behar was already backtracking as her co-hosts realized what shed just said.

Behar may have been doing the math on what the folks at the FCC known to be sticky about the so-called seven dirty words will think of the escaped s-bomb.

I didnt say it, I didnt say it, she insisted, referring to the thing shed just said.

ABC did not immediately return messages left for comment Wednesday.

Andi Ortiz contributed to this story.

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Joy Behar S-Bomb Slips Past Censors on The View - TheWrap

What is Censorship?Censorship is the act of altering, adjusting, editing, or banning of media resulting from the presumption that its content is perceived to be objectionable, incendiary, illicit, or immoral by the presiding governmental body of a specific country or nation or a private institution. The ideology and methodology of Censorship varies greatly on both domestic and international levels, as well as public and private institutions. Governmental Censorship

Governmental Censorship takes place in the event that the content, subject matter, or intent latent within an individual form of media is considered to exist in contrast with preexisting statutory regulations and legislation. In many cases, the censorship of media will be analogous with corollary laws in existence. For example, in countries or nations in which specific actions or activities are prohibited, media containing that nature of presumed illegal subject matter may be subject to Censorship. However, the mere mention of such subject matter will not always result in censorship; the following methods of classification are typically enacted with regard to a governmentally-instituted statutory Censorship:Censorship within the Public SectorThe public sector is defined as any setting in which individuals of all ages inhabit that comply with legal statutes of accepted morality and proper behavior; this differs by locale the nature of the public sector is defined with regard to the nature of the respective form of media and its adherence to legislation:The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) sanctioned by the federal government of the United States in order to regulate the activity taking place in the public setting-based mediaCensorship and IntentWith regard to Censorship, intent is legally defined as the intended result for which one hopes as a result of their participation in the release or authorship of media; typically, proponents for individual censorship will be required to prove that the intent latent within the media in question was enacted knowingly and deliberately in any lack of adherence to legislationCensorship and Privacy

With Regard to censorship, privacy is a state in which an individual is free to act according to their respective discretion with regard to legal or lawful behavior; however, regardless of the private sector, the adherence to legislation and legality is requiredPrivate and Institutional Censorship

Private institutions retain the right to censor media which they may find objectionable; this is due to the fact that the participants in private or independent institutions are defined as willing participants. As a result, upon joining or participating in a private institution, the individuals concede to adhere to applicable regulations:

In many cases, the party responsible for an institutions funding may reserve the right to regulate the censorship of media undertakenThe modernization of censorship laws within the United States, the Federal Government will rarely call for specific, nationalized Censorship unless the content is agreed to be detrimental to the public wellbeing; in contrast, an interest group may choose to censor media that they feel may either deter or contradict their respective ideologies

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Understanding Censorship - Censorship - LAWS.com

Last summer, as protests gathered steam in Cuba, the internet shut down. The general consensus was that the government had instituted the blackout to smother protests. Whether it worked or not is still under question, but that hasnt stopped internet censorship from spreading and not just among undemocratic governments.

Even some of the purportedly freest countries on Earth are increasingly being tempted to use censorship, especially as a blunt tool for unplugging the internet for all. And increasingly, this is now giving way to the surgical precision of specialized, cheap, off-the-shelf products that can help trace and silence specific groups, messages, or individuals.

In this sense, Latin America is a perfect testing ground. Its a region where the majority of states are technically democracies, but where governments slip towards authoritarian methods to get things done from time to time. Governments are using facial recognition technology that disproportionately hurts Black citizens or spying on opposition journalists, sometimes with the broad support of their own citizens.

But, as a global investigation undertaken by Rest of World revealed this week, the silencing goes beyond disruptive internet kill switches or the infamous, and expensive, Pegasus software used for years by governments across the world and Latin America. Today, far more sophisticated and affordable tools exist. These include deep packet inspection, known as DPI, which allows data and the way it moves on the internet to be read by an outside entity.

These rather shady-sounding tools often have legal and legitimate uses, either because of security concerns or because they can help ameliorate the efficiency of traffic. Its what makes this sort of software so problematic; it is a neutral tool that could prevent child pornography or make your Netflix run faster. It can also shut down and silence a governments political opposition.

The concern around these tools also goes beyond the usual suspects (like Cuba or Venezuela). As digital censorship becomes more accessible, more seemingly benign democracies with easy access to this software and with legal measures to use them may be tempted to deploy them improperly. Over the past three years, Brazil, Cuba, Mexico, and Nicaragua have all passed laws that allow for digital censorship and surveillance in one form or another. It takes just one government official with an authoritarian bent to turn these systems into tools of censorship and repression.

It is not only the governed that are worried though. As government institutions like Mexicos Secretariat of the Economy to Argentinas Senate know, non-state actors are also showing how vulnerable even the most powerful states can be on the internet. In Brazil, a famous group of hackers worked their way into the Ministry of Healths website a number of times. The Brazilian government was lucky; the groups intent was simply to make a point about how vulnerable everybody really is on the internet:

This site remains absolutely shit and nothing has been done to correct it, the hackers wrote on the Ministry of Healths site.

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Censorship has never been so democratic - Rest of World

Silencing dissent has an ignoble and inglorious history reaching far back to ancient times. Socrates was made to pay the ultimate price for corrupting the minds of youth in fourth century BC Athens. According to the American Library Association (ALA) Office of Intellectual Freedom, there has been a 60% increase in book challenges in 2021 compared to 2020. The office tracked 729 challenges to library, school, and university materials in 2021, resulting in more than 1,597 individual book challenges or removals. According to the ALA most targeted books were by or about Black or LGBQ+ persons. Over the same period, a total of 26 states have banned books. Texas leads but sadly PA ranks second behind Texas in banned books 456 bans in 16 school districts.

In 1982, the Supreme Court provided clear guidance regarding censorship. It upheld First Amendment rights of students including the right to access information and ideas and affirmed that school boards cannot remove books simply because it or someone doesnt like its ideas, and, in this way, attempt to establish what is orthodox teaching. It also focused on the need for adherence to procedures to removing books. And to ensure First Amendment Rights, formal procedures have developed for parents and school boards to use when the need arises. Unfortunately, over the past year 98% of efforts to remove books violated these procedures.

It is of interest to note that authoritarian regimes tend to suppress politically unwelcome books while democratic countries are obsessed with problems of decency and immorality. (Harris, B; Banning Books: Media Law and Practice, June 1988.) While todays ban the books fever is as fierce and destructive as in years past, it is also cynically deceptive. Over the past year, book banning is characterized by an effort to stop students from learning while using the foil of restoring parental control.

Disruptions in the wake of the Trump administration, the arrival and lingering persistence of the pandemic together with cancelled school days, and heightened fears following the murder of George Floyd have all created a cauldron of bewilderment, belligerence, and violence. According to the Gettysburg Times, at a July 31, 2021, meeting of the Gettysburg Area School District Board, a member of a national organization known as Moms for Liberty accused the board of instructing students in CRT, i.e., Critical Race Theory. Republican Glenn Youngkin successfully used the foil of parental control to subvert instruction in CRT and won election as governor. Youngkins victory resonated widely among Republicans and resulted in calls by people like Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to create a Parents Bill of Rights. An examination of claims suggests that most people who try to ban books dont even read the literature they hope to ban (Banned Books, a Study of Censorship: Banned Books Literature and Digital Diversity, northeastern.edu). Importantly neither Virginia nor Pennsylvania mandate instruction in CRT!

The pandemic has been hard on teachers, school boards, and parents. Is it not time for all to take stock and refocus on the needs of our children? Recent polling shows that a vast majority of voters, Democrats (70%), Independents (58%), Republican (70%), oppose removing books from public libraries while 74% of polled parents express a high degree of confidence in the decisions made by school libraries (Hart Research Associates and North Star Opinion Research on behalf of the American Library Association). The recent uptake to ban or remove books from school libraries is the result of a small cohort of parents funded and supported by far-right organizations who are driven to full-throated public displays before school boards while bypassing the classroom teacher.

Teachers know how important parental involvement is and perhaps, if there were more systematic avenues for parents to become involved, we would not see a drop in public-school enrollment PA saw a drop of 5.3%. (Digest of Educational Statistics) Few if any schools provide funding for parental involvement strategies, leaving it up to individual teachers to carry the burden. At the same time, if parents would rely upon the proven goodwill of teachers and their commitment to their students, we would not be witnessing the very tragic loss of teachers across the country. In PA, there has been a 66% drop in new teaching certificates over the past 11 years. (Testimony by PA Deputy Sec. of Ed.)

No one suggests that engaging parents is an easy job, yet everyone knows how critical their involvement is for the academic success of their children. If parents had a better understanding of the challenges facing school administrators and teachers, fewer would listen to the far-right messaging. Our future and indeed the future of democracy depends upon success in our classrooms. If anger and belligerence are the only things we bring to school board meetings, our future is in question.

Tony McNevin is a member of the Democracy for America Education Task Force. He resides in Gettysburg.

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Censorship: The child of fear and the father of ignorance - Gettysburg Times