December 19, 2011 | By:

Banned on the Hill (and in Europe!)

Banned on the Hill (and in Europe!) from Franke James on Vimeo.

Is fear of the “Dirty Oil” label behind Canada’s tarring of Artist’s European tour?

What lengths will the Canadian Government go to ensure that oil from the Alberta Tar Sands is not labelled “dirty”?

Watch this video about Canadian artist Franke James, and how a dream opportunity — a 20-city European artshow to educate youth about climate change — faced behind-the-scenes interference by the Canadian Government.

November 24/11 statement by PEN Canada:

“The government of Canada has no right to determine what is an acceptable opinion for an individual citizen, on climate change or any matter of public interest,” said Charlie Foran, President of PEN Canada, “To do so is clearly not in the spirit of the Charter and the long history of freedom of expression in Canada.”

Greg Hollingshead, Chair of The Writers’ Union of Canada, “The right to freedom of expression includes freedom from official disapproval, including the sort of bureaucratic interference encountered by Franke James.”

Read more including the internal government documents released through an ATIP request.

http://www.frankejames.com/debate/?page_id=8202

Banned on the Hill (and in Europe!) by Franke James is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.Based on a work at www.frankejames.com. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at www.frankejames.com.

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12 years ago

Thanks for your support by sharing my Banned on the Hill video and my Fat Cat Canada visual essay! Your help is shining a bright light on the Conservative’s attempts to silence dissenting voices.
Good news! Today, my news was written up on Yahoo Canada Politics: A Canadian artist takes on the Harper government http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/canada-politics/canadian-artist-takes-harper-government-140304994.html
The Toronto Star featured it yesterday: Three women who fought back against the Conservatives http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/1103856–tim-harper-three-women-who-fought-back-against-the-conservatives#article
And Andrew Revkin who writes the New York Times Dot Earth interviewed me: Canada’s Approach to Inconvenient Art
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/16/canadas-approach-to-inconvenient-art/

Thank you!

Franke James

SoniaK
12 years ago

Franke, That is the most absolutely wonderful activism video I have ever seen! I love your pluck and your determination to unsettle and unseat the currently powerful. This is good stuff!
–and admirer in the country South of you

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