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That I might be a part of this,
Ripple on water from a lonesome drip
A fallen tree that witnessed me,
Him alone, him and me.





And that life itself could not aspire,
To have someone be so admired,
I threw creation to my kin,
With a silence broken by a whispered wind.





All of this can be broken,
All of this can be broken,
Hold your devil by his spoke and spin him to the ground.


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(From Devil's Spoke [link] by Laura Marling)

(For your consideration, a version [link] with Mumford & Sons and Dharohar Project)

Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.</i>





Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'.
For the loser now
Will be later to win






For the times they are a-changin'.





(lyrics, of course, by Bob Dylan)

What an utter relief. I haven't been able to flee into a proper, deep, fairly old, Finnish forest for the entire summer but now I'll finally have the opportunity to revive from my torpor, at least for a few days before a painfully dear friend of mine might ascend on our reluctantly post-socialist country's soil late this week.

No features this time. Such would be a little irresponsible of me. I have some winter ones and some Aubrey Beardsley ones gently brewing, but I'm simply otherwise too concentrated to pay any analytic attention to art at this very moment. I've packed my tent, my sleeping bag, the necessary knives, a compass and some simple things that will do. The area I'm heading to is one of the few areas away from the Russian border that's had a semi-permanent pack of wolves living within it, which, admittedly, is a little bit romantic to a person who's spent a lot of time in forests but has never been associated with people, who keep animals and, accordingly, bear grudge against wolves and wolverines. Wolf packs without established leaders avoid humans, anyhow.

Check her [link] out, if you're into the art of traditional drawing. At best, Hiiliorava has one of the most naturally intuitive pure lines that I've ever seen. She's been prospectively uploading material, apparently some of which will later be replaced with higher resolution images. I know that there exist some impressive visual contemplation by her.

Radio silence.





A tilted book.

Without any supporting reason, life is sometimes just pretty damn good.


***





I found a little plot of land
In the garden of Eden
It was dirt, and dirt is all the same





I tilled it with my two hands
And I called it my very own
There was no one to dispute my claim





Well, you'd be shocked at the state of things
The whole place had just cleared right out
It was hotter than hell, so I laid me by a spring
For a spell as naked as a trout





The wandering eye that I have caught
Is as hot as a wandering sun
But I will want for nothing more, in my garden
Start again, in my hardening to every heart but one





Meet me in the garden of Eden
Bring a friend
We are gonna have ourselves a time
We are gonna have a garden party
It's on me, no, sirree, it's my dime





We broke our hearts in the war between
St. George and the dragon
But both, in equal part are welcome to come along
I'm inviting everyone





Farewell to loves that I have known
Even muddiest waters run
Tell me, what is meant by sin, or none in a garden
Seceded from the union in the year of A.D. 1





The unending amends you've made
Are enough for one life
Be done
I believe in innocence, little darling
Start again
I believe in everyone
I believe, regardless
I believe in everyone




(Lyrics by Joanna Newsom - '81 from the album Have One on Me (2010) - recommended through and through )

That was plenty of anger -- frustration. Enough of it. These days, things, they burn. Though the sky was bright and puddles covered with a lace of thin, silvery ice, when I was out cycling this morning, yesterday the Eyjafjallajökull ashes [link] bent the broken skies into a confused sulphuric yellow. Acidic rain. Struggling frost. Embers like us.

Anger ----------------------------------- Frustration




Anger ----------------------------------- Frustration




Anger ----------------------------------- Frustration




Anger ----------------------------------- Frustration



Until you're not certain anymore


What a loss

Good International Women's Day, everyone!

I can't believe how little explicitly feminist art there is to be found in dA! - and even the existing ones tend towards the second wave over everything else.

When, for instance, I search "feminismi" ("feminism" in Finnish), there isn't a single piece to be found. "Guerrilla girls" only returns a handful of references to the feminist act. Where has all the politics gone?

Of course the more subtle, biographic and fantastic, relations are available in abundance.

A home is a fleeting thing.





The desire for one makes us swarm restlessly.


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There is no returning to a home already once discovered. A homecoming is a self-archival search.





When we return home, what we do is similar to looking at an old photograph. Possibly the only kind there is.





The home itself remains one step ahead.





Perhaps a home could be found in motion? As a horizon to fix eyes on.





Yet in our memories that too becomes a place, anchored in familiar compositions, and, again, place-making playfully skips ahead of us.

Aagh. Such a hurry. I just write to assure that I'll be responding to notes and other unfinished exchanges as soon as I've worked my way through an urgent set of 900 pages, and have my new lease orderly signed. That'd be either on Tuesday or on Wednesday, depending on my state of consciousness. I'll be attending!

Thanks for all the faves and other interest that you people have been showing!

I wonder about it.






:thumb93123493:
:thumb130574419:







I wonder about it. Spiralling. Ripe. Quivering. Incarcerated.

Surprising. Savage. Chic. Libidinous. Blasphemous. Shivering.

Earthy. Peachy. Synthetic. Awkward. Sublime. Anomalous.

Playful. Tranquil. Inquisitive. Shocked. Microbiological.

Flooding. Gentle. Aware. Sterile. Unwashed. Mortal. Raw.

Debauchery. Encompassing. Exhausted. Choking. Greedy.

Eccentric. Reproductive. Derailed. Awkward. Philistine.

Trembling. Bibliophilic. Bright. Crisp. Honest. Evasive.

Caring. Connected. Passing. There.

Malum in se, 'Free sketch for Iohannis', by Silvereyed [link]


I've had the great pleasure to have Silvereyed create an independent vision partly based on an old painting concept of mine. She was offering free drawings, so I suggested an old, unfinished, frozen painting project of mine.

I always had in mind a painting of a pretty but not excessively romanticised or melodramatic young redhead woman, probably of a Celtic ethnos, with some tranquil sadness about her. She'd be my attempt at Pre-Raphaelite style, though I know my tendency to make constant movements towards expressionism, to appease my other sensibilities. Anyway, she'd be tied to a stake, possibly with some other prospective victims visible at the background. Officials and soldiers of the shire would be about, arranging the purgatory under bright and windy skies, in a crisp, late morning. To my knowledge Tennyson never had an urge to tie his dames to stakes, so I'd just have to imagine it all by myself (why does it always come down to this... ).

Malum in se, evil in itself, my scenario was about the women, who have fallen victims to the brutality of Christian or other religious witchcraft trials. The broader concept might well be about all religious, politico-ideological and institutional violence. Witchcraft is, anyway, harmless play in a world without either explicit or implied theism. No semantics is organically dangerous, though there is some interesting conceptual history to this. For the sake of everyone's sanity, I'll keep it to myself.

I felt that Silvereyed's stylistics (see, for example, Yelena [link]) might be very interesting in executing the scenario, and perhaps I might even find some new momentum with which to finish my own, already largely sketched piece. In fact the original is in another city at the moment, but I have two new preliminary conceptual doodles right next to me. One of the reasons why I never executed the piece was that I felt that I wasn't skilled enough. I still don't think I am, so it's likely that I will have to be patient in having a Malum in se of my own. It feels, though, as if this piece by another artist has bought me some legitimate time to get it done. It's important that the statement has finally been made.

Charmed.


***


P.S. When I last checked, there was still, unbelievably, one free drawing offer left in Silvereyed's journal [link] . If her visual style appeals to you as much as it does to me, go and have a look.

We're so ready in our individuality. As ready as a modern protagonist can be, thinking that we're already in the cage we wish to see ourselves in.


:thumb123557723:


Yet in putting the ready-made individuality in practice, we feel friction that wasn't part of the plan.





We become connected in surprising ways. We become disconnected in surprising ways.





Individuality. Dividuality. Resistance. [No trauma between resistance and redefinition.] Redefinition. Individuality.





We were mistaken, and we will continue to be. That's fine.

I mostly thoroughly resent the recent Terms of Service [link] changes, and in particular the Etiquette Policy [link] . It all comes down to issues that are very similar to what I've already elaborated [link] previously. In the same train of thought, I cringe at the fact that the service calls itself 'deviant'ART. How about compromiseART, consensusART or just general BNART, short for the brown-nosing that seems be guiding the recent developments. Truly, while language is a tricky thing, to turn 'deviance' from 'accepted norms' [link] into its considerably precise antonym of the tyranny of sensibilities of the many (protected and interpreted by the the few) is just so magic.

It's as magic as the idea of 'Asian rights' is magic for the idea of human rights. And that one really used to be something that made me believe in magic in the first place.


On Etiquette Policy

I already ranted on this matter behind the link to an old writing that I provided above. If the text on Etiquette Policy articulates rules, not just guidelines, such as...

We must insist that you refrain from comments which are racist, bigoted, or which otherwise offensively target a philosophy or religion.

...then I'd like to know what kind of conceptual groundwork the wording has eaten. How am I supposed take anything into ethical consideration if I'm only offered a set of hugely politically saturated, disputed concepts for guidance?

I understand the general ethics behind this insistence, but I cannot accept that such thing could ever be insisted upon. This is about the difference between morality and ethics. The former, in my world, does not belong to desirable human conduct. One can only express a plea, act as an example, and otherwise explicate the ways in which s/he is prepared to arbitrate on others by authority (the breaking point between democratic or interrelationship dialogue and violence).

Also, what is one supposed to make of offensively targeting certain ' philosophies'? If this is just to promote civil tones while discussing, it's all fine with me, but I really doubt that it's specifically these Enlightenment ideals that are being protected by the Terms. I'm all the way with Ronald Dworkin:

Even bigots and Holocaust deniers must have their say. [link]

That's the baseline. There are various good things, which should be respected by avoiding their regulation, and leaving individual conduct largely to personal ethics. Otherwise it doesn't make sense to speak of ethics whatsoever. Where's ' philosophy' if there is no dialogue? I know that there exist emergent racist and conservative right-wing movements, who abuse this liberal sentiment, but I really insist that to dump freedom of speech will not solve anything but rather inadvertently gives up liberal values - the ones, which might be worth politically fighting for.

I don't even need to start about nudity and underage nudity, and the damage that dA proposes to do to various artistic and high-cultural traditions in the area, as well as to the stakeholders of the actual crimes/discrimination. It's probably mostly reasonable that a photographer is asked to make sure that the subject agrees about public exhibition of his/her picture. It's reasonable for me. This may be a matter of debate, though, if the photographer and the subject disagree on the matter. There's nothing wrong with disagreement. What is important is that the issue is discussed thoroughly, if such thing is materially possible.

The point at which dA really goes with the warped flow is the issue of depiction of underage nudity when it's all about such work of fiction, the production of which has not involved any underage legal persons. This is the general tone in the discussion. It's classic to ask whether Nabokov's Lolita or Laughter in the Dark are child abuse? In my view Euro-America loses a great deal of its very best work in demonising artistic thought (and possibly also the idea of love). My point is, though, that this regulatory tradition undermines the social problems it tries to solve. In my earlier writing, I took up the example of artist Ulla Karttunen, whose work was supposed critically to address the issue child pornography. Works were removed from the exhibition, however, because they contained material that was considered as child pornographic in itself. The message is clearly that people are supposed to make ethical decisions without critically knowing about the matter at hand. The message is clearly also that real, living, breathing, acting people - victims and consumers - and the industry representatives behind the criminal activity don't matter. What matters is silence. This is what dA is doing as well.

The etiquette text is populated with similar examples about philosophy, politics and sexuality , which ultimately leave any issue in the jurisdiction of some random admin, whom I don't even know and whom I even cannot know, as the new Terms make sure that one may not communicate with any potentially involved people with some sort of guarantee about their position, qualifications and identity.

And, Helpdesks are reallyreally not places to deal with these kinds of rights and human rights issues. dA fails to communicate willingness to upgrade its responsibilities to meet its increasingly rigid regulatory framework/oligarchy.

Has anyone ever considered to move the servers under some more art-friendly legislation than that of the U.S.? Or if anyone knows of a competing, high-quality, social art network that manages to keep its focus sharply on artistic values, please make me aware of the option...


If There's Anything That's Good

To avoid giving an impression that I might get too sentimental (because these are serious issues for me in the long run), there is probably something good as well in the Terms of Service. If the articulations are actually to be enforced, then I do approve of the intent to address copyright infringement and submission of art that has not been reasonably strictly referenced to its artificers. Of course, I recognise the fact that there is always arbitration at the core of this kind of control and defining work: If one aspires to define an originator for a piece of work, one will at some point have to cut the unending trace of shared influences and materials. There is some discussion on a similar breaking news matter available here [link] . I bet that the increasingly elaborate global copyright regulation and IP have quite a few fans, who'd still, epistemologically speaking, agree with the general idea of Foucauldian, or loosely any post-structuralist, genealogy - there are no static origins. When you've put your finger on one, the only thing you've got is the finger. I don't land that far: I'm fine with the idea of 'origins' as long as all the general implications of any individual articulation of ownership for the individual's subject theory are then considered. To networks and back again.

Also anyhow, there seem to be some deviants with reasonably popular sites, who post work by various artists without referencing the material rigorously. 'High-level' corruption should be the first concern if the resources seem scarce. My view is that if dA's intent was to recognise and protect individual effort, then at the very least unreferenced work would not find its way to the almighty status of a Daily Deviation. It has not always been like that. This is a co-managerial issue, and has little to do with lay users. How complex can it be to regulate the few with self-professed regulatory aspirations? The administration must have guidelines among them on the minimum procedure by which works can be considered for community awards. This means leading by example.


The Core Idea

My romantic main point remains intact. There are conditions to democratisation of political space from unitedstateses and chinas (and finlands or EUs) to deviantARTs. All art submitted and produced under moderation and regulation is less art and less democratic, unless it goes guerrilla and civil disobedient.

Or, as quite a few deviants seem to make the point:



:thumb50804384:



***

I'll gradually go about cleaning and rationalising the text, as it's bound to be rife with typos.

I.

Some submissions to be updated:

I spent the late night twiddling with and tweaking new scans of some smaller specimen of my old work, until the machine choked - it didn't take much. As a result, at least 'A Woman and the Moon' will be updated once I decide whether to go sheepishly with the artistically dubious watermarking flow in the dA. I still haven't resolved what I should do with my slightly larger and less scanner-friendly corpus - they'd be in serious need of updating. Ancient hardware continues to hinder this tradionalist's input. It figures.

I also continue to have some new, unsubmitted scribblings, but they'll have to wait until I get my hands on a camera to have them mutilated in an orderly manner. Perhaps I should also probe my options when it comes to offering some of the better reproductions as prints.

[Edit. I now have my hands on a bargain second-hand camera (bugger the fact that one needs electricity to feed the laptop...). Next I need a new, gluttonous computer to be able to deal with all the monumentally proportioned pictures I will be taking. ]


II.

Trivia: Art reproductions in my work room:

"The Hireling Shepherd" (1851-52) by William Holman Hunt. I had this for many years in Scotland and has hanged around since.

"Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam" (1526) by Albrecht Dürer. I've spent quite a few entirely voluntary late hours in the library in the company of the both of them.

"St. Francis in the Desert" (c. 1480) by Giovanni Bellini. I don't identify with Christianity or any other institutional religiosity to the extent that it is possible to avoid it in a secular Lutheran country, but world religions are a treasury of appealing myths.

"Paradise" (1616), a beautiful old map from Gerardus Mercator's "Atlas Minor".


III.

To advertise something that does really not require my advertisement:

I feel kind of both emotionally and also otherwise intellectually thirsty. Promiscuous and clever stories about wolves and humans beings of any devisable gender really tickle my deviance the right way. I wish to share a couple of excerpts to make my point, or just to have something to write.






I.

Aino Kallas' wolves:

Today, I re-read one of the most hauntingly and heartbreakingly beautiful little stories ever written: Aino Kallas' early 20th century ballad 'The Wolf's Bride', a Christian-Pagan, mystical, proto-feminist werewolf story situated on the Saaremaa island in Estonia during the Swedish rule in the area. Regardless of its length, the short novel is a treasure of popular from the mid-17th century onwards Estonian folklore on wolves. The real enchantment of stories like this one or Polidori's 'Vampire' (or in fact the Italian folk tales rewritten by Calvino) is that they precede any strong literary genres and industrial entertainment, which have claimed the ownership of the manner in which characters such as vampires and werewolves are depicted. See it for yourselves in deviantART! - just type 'werewolf' or 'vampire' on the search line. But, oh, Aino:

"When the breath of a daemon smiteth a human, his heels no longer rest on the earth; as in a whirlwind his soul is tossed without cease; the warp of his soul burneth brightly, like a fire on which oil has been poured." - Aino Kallas, The Wolf's Bride (1930), transl. Alex Matson with Bryan Rhys

("Koska Daimonin henkäys ihmiseen tarttuu, eivät hänen kantapäänsä enää maankamaraan kajoa; niinkun tuuliaisessa hänen henkeään lennätetään lepoa vailla; hänen sielunsa kiudut kirkkaasti palavat, niinkuin öljyllä valeltu valkia." - Aino Kallas, Sudenmorsian (1928), orig.)






II.

Angela Carter's wolves:

Some longer time ago, I greedily consumed another graceful storybook - one that I frequently passed by in the library when I was child, never picking it up or anticipating the promiscuous beauty in it. In the opus, Carter's well-known 'The Bloody Chamber' there's a short story, in which the forceful, male, alpha any-wolf of fairytales since Aesop finds his equal in an emancipated Little Red Riding Hood; largely while narrowly avoiding his own submission and ridicule, and then only by giving up the binary that affirms his formative predatory masculinity. The story treads lightly over the villagers' concerns, too, and beyond the hunter's rifle that threatens to instill anew the challenged social order - as in the original storyline. The only promise of death, here, is per petite:

"What big teeth you have!
She saw how his jaw began to slaver and the room was full of the clamour of the forest's Liebestod but the wise child never flinched, even when he answered:
All the better to eat you with.
The girl burst out laughing; she knew she was nobody's meat. She laughed at him full in face, she ripped of his shirt from him and threw it into the fire, in the fiery wake of her own discarded clothing. The flames danced like dead souls on Walpurgisnacht and the old bones under the bed set up a terrible chattering but she did not pay them any heed." - Angela Carter, The Company of Wolves (1979)






III.

I peer in my drawer, perhaps in hope of encountering some aging wolves. Certain events tend to labour their kind. These ones were born of tiny sparks of pine bark, thoroughly scribbled with white chalk in the cobalt blue dark of a freezing New Year's night (the sacrifice was one of printed poetry ). Tomorrow has one more of those to offer.


(...)


There is no wolf in you to mention.

I've scarcely been confused for one

Within the cunning ones of my nights:

Elusive moonlight and seeping warmth.

Yet, for a dog-eared stranger,

I've learned my lessons well.



A winged beast on Bubastis' streets,

Sufficient for its own world and making,

It dreads ever-deeper motion in anticipation

Of a familiar, shard-ridden patch of land.



Does it matter? -

When crops burn in sudden winters,

Water in wells blossoms so deep;

Fragrant from strayed winter beasts.



Grief and hunger,

Drafty prisons,

Forlorn wilderness,

Once were a city.



There was a forest.

In the forest a wolf.

The dark season will be turning soon. Half of my acrylics have dried, there are no batteries in my friend's camera, my art and photographic archives died with a reasonably new portable HD, and there is no operational scanner within my reach. Not to mention that even the dysfunctional one is behind two locks, the key for the first on of which remains stubbornly missing. Ah well.

Consequntly, even though I have something little to submit, primarily in relation to Lechtonen's Fibaburn project, I will be waiting in hibernation.

While I lie down, I will observe an assorted pack of crusaders unclogging me. I wonder if this doesn't sound deviant.


***


"Amie, voilà, je reviens t'écrire
de notre nouvelle adresse du nord d'Helsinki
aux yeux d'un arche a chacune de mes nuits
tu sais que c'est pour elle que j'étais parti
son amour est pur comme le ciel d'Helsinki
et je l'aime comme on aime l'amour de sa vie"

(...)


(Mélanie Pain, Helsinki)

Neither anything high-brow to relate, nor much desire to do so.

I just wished to share the full moon slowly making its way past the window by my work space, a salad of prawns, eggs, various vegs, balsamico, garlic, herbs, forest honey, pepper and a splash of tequila, robust rye bread, real butter, and the candle light wavering on the walls.

Or a book of Blake, an almost finished new home-like space, the sea and the large passenger ships that drifted by earlier in the evening, a sunset like violent, crisp rust.

Having visited my stash of old items / old stash of items, I decided to take and lug away with me a few paintings of some ambiguous merit. My idea was to have more of my art around upon moving (supposedly) into a new flat some early time next year, and given also the fact that I don't seem to get anything ready these days.

I will upload the works shortly, though I feel uneasy about their sketchiness, and, on occasion, about the imagery they employ. They are openly mystical and not at all political. This makes them vulnerable to a politicising gaze. The works were drops in a vast open but hardly unlimited sea of searching for visual- mythical depictions for fleeting longings, and don't have it in them to stand alone or to defend against cultural critique. Not to mention personal critique.

I have felt unwilling to let my stubborn writing on art censorship to disappear from my dA front page, and haven't, consequently, updated my journal. It would also be far more interesting to play with dA and the journal, had I the privilege of a subscription. But that'll have to wait. Anyway, one should keep writing.

BTW. What is 'realism'? Not that I know. -->

When I visit the marvelous group GimmeFeedback and click through the most recent submissions, I often notice that 'realism' seems to be a quality that people frequently give a chase after their artistic ambitions. How to make x look more real? It always remains unclear, however, what precisely these people mean by this visual realist real. Given that realism does not in itself contain a reliable reference to a stable, linear, artistically achievable quality or form that can be put against a simple and permanent scale of physical and perceived reality, and given that there seem to be very little exchange on how perception actually works and varies, this really makes me wonder. What this really makes me wonder is whether it is not so that realism has, in these art-producing people's minds, stopped to refer to the supposedly loyally depicted, supra-art reality, and, rather, developed a symbolic language of its own. Certain techniques of gradient, and spots of lights that play on the viewer's intra-art lacking capacity to track the specific source of light and surfaces that reflect it, have become symbolic shortcuts to the sought after quality of real or real-like. How many deviants, who strive for realism search for the mark of their own perception (or someone else's perception) in their surroundings, thus courting the 'real', and how many simply interpret the stylistic trademarks of some other artists in the realist tradition? In this manner, if anywhere, then in realism, in some sense, the viewer's ignorance of the workings of his/her own perception is really a bliss.

The philosophy of visual realism, in my uneducated view, presupposes an increasing independence from variance in visual interpretation and language. At the same time the project of producing 'realistic' art seems to contradict its own virtue by relying in communication and community-based evaluation and symbolic learning of what makes art look 'real'. Far from being a sort of descriptive craft or science of art, the presence of tradition makes visual realism a process of illusionist trickery, and, thus, that of symbolism par excellence. A true realist must be a very lonely soul with no audience to communicate with.

More policies. I understand that people behind DeviantART – those who are not simply content providers but run the site – have to be cautious about the possibility of law suits in an increasingly neo-conservative global political climate with various groups and individuals getting hysterical (I suppose I mean to use this word) about issues such as child pornography and nudity. I'm talking about the above policy to ban photography that depicts nude persons of certain age.

That the fear of retribution is understandable does not make it desirable, and does not reduce the tragedy. I cannot help but think about Sally Mann's deeply resonating photography being seen by some insisting individuals as child pornography and as something to be condemned under these kinds of policies. It may be somewhat queer, but I find myself hoping that at least the DeviantART people who chose to support the new policy update are feeling victimised instead of pro-active about all this. What sort thinking does it take to prioritise a child-pornographic gaze over those of parents and the immensely varied aesthetic catalogues in world art and literature?

Very recently the police removed a work of art by a Finnish artist, Ulla Karttunen, from the gallery it was being exhibited in. The work contained child pornographic material. The artist herself emphasised that the work that was removed was a critical opening on the subject matter and against child pornography. Nevertheless, the actions of the police and many members of the audience (those that saw the work, and many who never did) ignored or made secondary this explicit intention of the artist. It was more important to remove the fetish (child pornographic material), which apparently carried in itself such essential meaning that no re-telling of the material, and no re-contextualisation of it, could remove. It was, clearly, similarly more important that the fetishised object should not be seen in any context than that critical conversation about the subject could benefit from (if not depend on) having the concrete matter at hand. How is one suppose to condemn anything without first critically assessing the situation? It clearly makes no difference that Ulla Karttunen is no consumer of child pornography as in relation to the function of the images as they were initially produced. Neither does she produce the images herself, nor promote or support their production. The fetish and the hysteria surrounding it have created too powerful a story for anyone to tell anything else about appearances that are also covered by them. This is exactly what I am afraid of; very much afraid of that a certain fetish is insisted upon so strongly that art itself, and the stories it weaves, are silenced to death. Ulla Karttunen has been sued over her use of the material.

In DeviantART, Sbaraci, as far as I have understood, is one of those, who have suffered from being true to her art. In her case it seems that the issue is about certain imagery being inappropriate for underaged eyes. Now, how many of you really lived in a non-nude, non-sexual and an entirely un-challenging Disney-world when you were children? How many of you who did not were traumatised? I certainly was not. Knowledge does not hurt, taboos and guilt do. And who is going to make accountable those, who support and keep renewing societies and sociality of guilt and sin? Censorship of nudity for pedagogical reasons sounds approximately as far-sighted as refusing same-sex adoption on the basis that their children will be bullied at the school. Please. Is such not a case of reacting to and preventing the bullying instead of showing that yeah, it's quirky alright, keep on good work, trash them? I'm going to get a brain-hemorrhage thinking about this.

I feel that by increasing policies to control certain appearances does more to embed and enhance the kind of imagination that it explicitly tries to combat. When opposing something such as child pornography or supporting something like gender equality, it would not be such a bad idea to keep one's eyes on the kind of activity that explicitly violates individual freedoms of women and children. Catalogues and imageries don't hurt. Living people do, and living people should not be treated as incapable of making their own decisions and accepting their consequences. Only the acts of violence by living individuals are and should be seen as un-excusable, while storytelling, however queer or honest, should not.

A story told about an item becomes a potential part of it. A story that may not be told takes away from all its potential relations; from all art, that is. In art, moral stories require a space in which references between various mindsets and ways of thinking can be drawn freely. A removed and censored element removes something from every other surface for artistic gaze. Policies for removal of certain visual elements may be necessary for the community's security. That does not, however, reduce the fact that every act of censorship, without exception, cripples. I'm not saying that people, including myself, should not create crippled art. We damn well do.