Heyoka Magazine:  Can you please tell me what inspired Victim  (Jesus Solider ) and  (Jesus HIV positive)?

Michael Dickinson:  I see Jesus as one of history's prize victims, anyway.  Unable to protest, after his death, this man who preached non-violence, equality and anti-capitalism was taken and used by the State as a tool to violently conquer in his name, and in that of their monarch, Defender of the Faith, waving a golden crucifix at the cowering poor.  What is a Christian?  "He that doeth the will of my father which is in heaven."  Bush does no such thing.  How is he a Christian?  The term needs to be defined.

 

Jesus of course would not be a fighting soldier in a war of violence, he'd be a conscientious objector, but he'd feel for the meek and poor in spirit, forced by the cruel and stupid to learn to kill their fellow man.

 

As for Jesus the AIDS victim - is it shocking because it suggests Jesus had unsafe sex or because he advertises the fact?  Whatever, he would sympathise with the victims - his fellow-man (mostly black and poor), who suffer from this modern plague, this new Black Death, and he would demand that medication to ease discomfort be available FREE to all its victims.  

HM:  You have named your new website 'YABANJI' which is a Turkish word and means 'Stranger/Foreigner/Outsider'.  What has living in Turkey during these Holy war times been like for you, being that 99% of the Turkish population is Moslem?

 

 

Victim

Victim

MD: Yeah, I'm a 'yabanji' - stranger/foreigner/outsider.  But there's a hell of a lot of us about!  I hope some day you'll join us, and the world ...

 

I'm a deist.  The old faiths are riddled with 'sacred' superstitious rubbish.  In this time of Cup fever, religious fanatics battle it out on the world pitch - and the ball they kick is God. 

 

Muslims are very hospitable people.  Kindness to strangers is recommended in the Koran.  As it is in the Bible.  "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."  That is/should be the golden law of every religion - and in fact, the law of the world.  Instead, look what a quagmire of hypocricy we live in!

HM: What happened to your other website entitled The Carnival of Chaos ?

MD: My other website 'Carnival of Chaos' (named after the description a Turkish art critic gave to a 2002 exhibition of my collages in Istanbul) was suddenly withdrawn (is that the right word?) by the host Tripod suddenly and without warning early in 2005.  It is suspected that this was done because someone complained about the last image posted on the site of  President George W Bush farting a missile out of his exposed ass, but no explanation was given by the company.  I'd been posting pictures since the 9/11 knee jerk, and had gained an audience.  I was amazed and delighted at the voices of support that were raised over the censorship.

 

HM: When you say join you and the world, do you mean the World Union of Deists?

MD:  No, sorry, no I was just rambling then, singing the last line of John Lennon's 'Imagine' - "I hope some day you'll join us and the world will live as one, " probably referring to the 2012 World Strike which I haven't mentioned yet.  (But I will.)

I didn't know there was a World Union of Deists.  Is it a good idea?  Sounds like it could end up as another religion, and we've got way too many of them already.  One God, one people - that's enough.  Brother and sister earthlings living in a just free and equal society.  Apart from being a deist, I'm also an anarchist, and I want to change the world.

HM: With Civilization, you have depicted a realistic New York City landscape/landfill with what appears to be a naked aborigine / pigmy/ indigenous person standing, holding a spear in the midst of the rubbish and sky scrapers.

What does this piece represent to you and can you please describe your creative process, in terms of materials you use, photographs, drawings, concepts etc.

Hot Stuff From Carnival of Chaos

Civilization

MD: I cried when I'd completed 'Civilization'; it seemed such a horrific image - the innocent noble savage from his felled forest home, confronting the 'civilization' that felled it - wasteful, greedy, corrupt, hypocritical, plastic and trashy, polluting the air and earth and sea; hurrying, hurrying hurrying - to destruction.

That was one that came together quite quickly.  First I found the native. He was standing still and calm watching a waterfall.  I took him away from it with my scissors, and remembered I had a skyline of New York picture. Modern/primitive facing each other.  But the gap in between them?  The rubbish of the throwaway Western consumerist society.  Found enough pictures from several different sources, cut them out and stuck them down.  The bodies are those of blacks washed up on a Miami beach.
 

 

My process of making pictures is a bit chaotic.  In my 'office' pages cut from old magazines lie all around on shelves, on the desk and on the floor. It's very mixed up, but I generally know where the politicians are.  I sift around, associating images with each other, trying things out, sometimes finding ideas for a different picture that I'll do later.  Images actually seem to make themselves - I'm just the guy who does the manual work, cutting, pasting and scanning.  But I guess I'm the one who makes the final decision on the finished collage.  I'm usually pleased with it, and hope that others might be able to interpret the picture in the same way as myself, or  find deeper levels of meaning that I hadn't noticed.
 

HM: What do you think this war in Iraq is about?

MD: It smells like petrol to this particular deist.  The big oil companies, Halliburton, Lockheed Martin, the big corporations who have spent so much getting the President elected, finally reap their rewards in the profits of war, businesses booming! Bush is an oil man himself.  But he 'ain't no Christian, no matter what he says.

YeeeHaaa From Carnival of Chaos

Best in show

HM: What inspired Best in Show?

MD: Do you mean what the picture implies, means to me? 

HM: Yes.

 

MD: I suppose the basic idea was that several world politicians have been depicted in cartoons as obedient sit-up-and-beg 'dogs' of Bush and Big Business America, (British Blair and the Japanese Prime Minister - particularly as Bush's 'poodles'.)  In my picture Turkey's Prime Minister has won the prize of most approved dog from among the others, not least for allowing the Americans to house 90 nuclear bombs on Turkish soil at their Air base in Incirlik, so conveniently close to the oil rich Middle East.

 

(By the way, in the original picture Bush was pinning a medal onto the pyjama jacket of a hospitalized American soldier wounded in Iraq.)

 

But if you're asking for the reason why I did the picture -   

Last year the Turkish Prime Minister sued a political cartoonist for depicting him as a cat tangled in a ball of wool in a daily newspaper, claiming he found the cartoon "deeply humiliating". The cartoonist was fined 3500 dollars on charges of 'assailing Erdogan's honor'.

 

To show solidarity with  a fellow cartoonist, the weekly satirical magazine 'Penguen' devoted a front cover to drawings of Erdogan with the body of a camel, a frog, a monkey, a snake, a duck and an elephant, under the title "The World of Tayyip".

 

 

The incensed Prime Minister retaliated by filing a new lawsuit against 'Penguen', claiming the pictures "attacked his individual rights" and demanding 30000 dollars in compensation for offending him.

 

I made the picture 'Best in Show' to protest Erdogan's despotic attempts to stifle free expression, and solidarity with artists who criticize him through their work. 

HM: What have been the repercussions of exhibiting this artwork Best in Show?  Why do you think this Turkish prime minister seems to be so sensitive about cartoonists and artists depicting him this way?

Torture chamber From Carnival of Chaos

AMERICAN DREAM

 

The story attracted wide media attention, appearing in several Turkish newspapers (which didn't show the offending image), and also in the international press (which did.)  So now millions of people have seen the picture.

As to why Mr Erdogan seems to be so sensitive about cartoonists and artists depicting him in animal form; he either -

 

a - considers himself above criticism

b - hates animals

c - has no sense of humour

d - understands the joke...

 

HM: How serious are these charges of insulting the dignity of the prime minister of Turkey?  

MD: Well, at present, under Turkish law, it is possible for someone found guilty of such a charge to face a custodial sentence of from 1 to 3 years incarceration in prison.  Serious enough.

 

 

 

HM: What has the press been like in Turkey, regarding this matter? 

MD: The Turkish press - reportage so far has been generally been objective; mentioning the facts of the case in a straightforward manner without comment (showing the picture is out of the question!)  But I must say that most of the journalists  I've met so far have been sympathetic, almost embarrassed that their country's laws should have such restrictions on freedom of expression.    

HM: I would think you would have the support of the international art world on this one. This reminds me of Salmon Rushdie with the fatwa placed on him. It is absurd.Do you think this incidence is going to affect your future art work?  In terms of self censorship I mean, second guessing your self. At what point do you draw the line and say this is enough. I mean I believe in freedom of expression but I also believe in freedom. Freedom to get up in the morning and not be behind bars in some kind of a Midnight Express filthy Turkish prison.

Despair From Carnival of Chaos

No Future  From Carnival of Chaos

 

MD: It is absurd.  But, hey, this is an absurd world.  George W. Bush is President of the United States, for example, instead of behind bars for corruption, deception, and crimes against humanity.

 

I don't think the ruckus caused by this incident is going to make me tone down my art work.  One of my reactions to the news of the court case was to make another much 'worse' collage of Bush and Erdogan (again as a dog), which I added to my website Yabanji. 

 

As I think I've already told you, my collages often just 'come' when I'm sifting and sorting (crawling and digging) through piles of images.  If it's 'right' and works for me, then I have to trust my decision and glue it down.  (The word 'inspiration' comes from the idea of being 'inspired' - breathed into by a spirit.  The word 'genius' means 'with a djinn (genie).)  Like 'Possessed" man!   Who am I to deny my spirits their expression?  Whatever - if I like it, it goes.  The last serious consequence of someone not liking one of my pictures was the closure of my 3-year-old website 'Carnival of Chaos'.  It was a shock and an annoyance, but I was at liberty to pick up the pieces and start again. 

 

The thought of being deprived of my liberty fills me with horror, but the idea curbing my imagination to avoid being impolite to politicians and avoid prison thereby, fills me with an even deeper horror.

 

Prisons are filthy places.  No-one wants to be there but the sick fascistic sadistic bullies, employed by the State, officially in charge of the keys, who love every minute of it.

 

But these couple of quotes inspire:

 

"Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison." - Thoreau.

 

"While there is a lower class I am in it, while there is a criminal element I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free." - Eugene Victor Debs.

 

Nobody is FREE at the moment anyway, but we're working on it - against all odds.          

To see more work visit http://yabanji.tripod.com