by tish
8:04am Tue Nov 13 '01 (Modified on 2:32pm Wed Nov 14 '01)
kali13@ziplip.com
http://houston.indymedia.org/
On Wednesday November 7th Terry Donaghoe, an FBI agent and Steven Smith, a Secret Service agent visited the "Secret Wars" exhibit at the Art Car Museum in Houston, Texas. Following is interviews with Donna who was working when the agents came and Tex who is a curator at the art car museum.
On Wednesday November 7th Terry Donaghoe, an FBI agent and Steven Smith, a Secret Service agent visited the "Secret Wars" exhibit at the Art Car Museum in Houston, Texas. (the FBI and Secret Service work together in the Joint Terrorism Task Force along with local law enforcement agencies, which is under the supervision of the Department of Public Saftey) The agents, who arrived just before 11 am, said that they were following up on reports of anti-American activities that were phoned in to the department and would like to see the show. Donna, who was opening the museum for the day escorted them through the exhibit and talked with them about the artwork. They came dressed in suits wearing American flags on their lapels. "I knew there was something wrong with them because they looked so perfect, not a hair out of place." Following is interviews with Donna and Tex who is a curator at the art car museum. The exhibit "Secret Wars" will run through December 21st, and you can go and see it at the Art Car Museum - 140 Heights blvd. Wednesday through Sunday 11-6.
Donna Huanca was working when the FBI arrived
"They got here early in the morning, about 10:30, I get here at ten, so I was alone, I felt weird, I saw them walking up here, at the door, I was sweeping, normally I would have let anyone come in, you know to look at the art, even if I wasn't done, you know, but I knew there was something wrong because they were so perfectly suited, so you know, like these robot actors, really bizarre. So I told them, we open at eleven, and they looked at each other, and said, 'we need to come in here and look at the show, we are from the FBI and the Secret Service', they showed me their badges. There were two guys, one of them was a younger, very intimidating, tall jock type guy was the secret service, and the older man was the FBI agent, perfect smiles. Their office is right around the corner. They said they had had several reports of anti-American activity going on at the museum and they were here to investigate that. I said what exactly is anti-American because the first amendment says we have the freedom of speech, and they said, no you are getting way ahead of yourself, we just want to see the show, we are just here to look at art. And I said well okay, so I was going to leave them alone, but then I decided that wasn't the right thing to do so I took them into the galleries and gave them some background information, they were basically asking me what my opinion was, if this is anti-American, and I said, no. If anything, it is an antiwar exhibit. He was bringing up ethical questions that I was answering in a way he didn't expect me to answer. It was a very scary experience to have them and show them text from the white house, press releases, the texts that are on the walls are not changed or made into anything that they are not, we took them straight from the CNN website. They are reality things that you have to seek out and look for. They were looking and reading noam chomsky's stuff to see a different perspective. I don't think they absorbed anything, I don't think they wanted to understand the work. They were identifying things they were familiar with, like one piece that has a fighter jet crash, and it is hanging off a tree with the Houston skyline burning and the composition focuses on the children, as they remain innocent victims in the middle of war, which was done during the gulf war, and it has George Bush senior in the belly of the beast and the devil is dancing around. They were pointing out things like that, 'that is George Bush in the stomach of the devil and that is an mc-whatever fighter jet'Š they were trying to get away from me, trying to do their own thing but I didn't let them, I just kept following them, trying to provoke questions out of them. And they were very concerned about whether or not they were under surveillance because of that installation we have in the middle (where you see the front door on a monitor) but it isn't recorded, and they kept asking if they were being recordedŠ I didn't look into their eyes too much because it scared me to see. They were so hard, so conservative.
All of this work is compilied for a reason, and it wasn't for the WTC attacks, and they were like, 'huh, that's ironic that this was planned months ago' and they asked when it had opened and wrote down dates. They are going to try to run through our records and see who is a threat. What our backgrounds are, they wanted me to give them Jim's phone number and address, but I wouldn't give it to them, I wouldn't give that to anyone, that is private, I was like, what are you going to do, go over there? And they wanted to know 'who are they, what do they do for a living, how is this funded'. I said why don't you just go to your office around the corner and look it up and they said 'well okay we'll do that then'. I was like you can find out for yourself, you are the FBI. They took all the propaganda from in there and, and the brochure with all the artists names on it. If they left with anything, I hope it was letting them know that we are not afraid of telling them anything because it is not that kind of establishment.
We are just exercising our freedom of speech, our freedom of expression, because that is what art is supposed to be, a part of history, you create history, because you know when you did a piece you were feeling this way because of these reasons. If you pay attention you would be very upset about what is going on but the problem is that everyone is so apathetic and doesn't really care and doesn't feel that this could hurt you specifically. I just know that I felt terror and that day I was very very scared. I was looking over my shoulder I was thinking what are they going to do to sabotage, because they were asking me about where I went to school, what I was doing, why I worked here, if my parents knew I worked here, it was really bizarre, like, oh ok, so you're an art major, did I have work in the show, no, I am not in the show, and when they left and this made me the most scared, they said 'good luck with further shows in this little museum and good luck with your studies in school.' ...They could underhandedly sabotage things because they don't think this is necessary.
I tried my best to be good, not good but open, because this is an open establishment, we are not trying to hide anything, we are just doing what their constitution says is expressing ourselves. By having this show, yeah, it is a little bit pushing the envelope, but it wasn't planned for the events of the world trade center, it was planned with people who are aware of what is going on in everyday life. The imf/world bank protests were going to go on, we had a banner outside and we had gotten some comments about that. It is for artists, by artistsŠ It isn't seen much in the public eye because it isn't happiness, but it is reality and reality is what hurts people, they cant believe that the democracy that we live in isn't really democratic.
I don't know how I handled it, I felt like I did a good thing by just being open and showing them around the museum, we never did talk about what to do if people like that came inŠ it really pushes the envelope to make you look inside yourself and see how strongly you believe what you are doing and what the messages that are being said here are. You know some people would be like, 'I don't want to be any part of this.' I feel like it is all a testŠ they cant shut us down because it is private funding and there is nothing that we are doing wrong, they might just try to underhandedly do things. I don't know if I am giving them too much credit or what, maybe they are really warm hearted people, but I don't think they like good souls to do their work. They came in here an automatically saw a breeding ground of radical thinking that doesn't getting any viewing anywhere else. They were interested in where we got our funding, how many people come in in a day, what the traffic was like, how did we advertise, why it was called the art car museum basically people came in to look at art cars which is kitsch symbol art which is great because the idea behind art cars is to take something so massed produced and make it your own and decorporateize it in a sense is what the basic soul and idea was, to celebrate something like that. Something that everyone can relate to. We had this show to talk about wars because they are going on all over and it is necessary to let people know about it. Democracy now was the only way to get news, the only media that was worth it, because of course television is, like channel eight, public television, it isn't even public, it is corporate. When you lose something like that there has to be another way to reach people.
That day I was trying to go about my normal life, I was going to band practice or whatever, I was looking over my shoulder, I was questing everything, I didn't know who to talk to this about, I didn't know what I could say, what was right for me to say. It was really scary because they came in here and after they left I was afraid, I was here alone, it was finally a relief when other people came. I feel like it is something that really can come and hurt any of us. It makes you question how far you will go to fight for what you believe is right, it would be so easy to just get out of it and be a hermit and go live in a cubicle but it is so much harder to do something you believe in. It made me think about how they are watching us now, because that is what they let us no, that they are watching us now."
Tex Kerschen, curator at the Art Car Museum
"When Donna first told me about it I called Jim, the director, and he said, 'This confirms what we thought about the FBI, they are going to move in as quickly as they can to investigate any kind of dissent. We should be very glad to see that we were right.'
My first reaction was that I was really unhappy to see them here, I was just hoping that we were a mad house full of paranoia, extreme dissent and skeptics. It is obviously really far out there for the FBI and secret service agents especially. Their job is like treasury notes and the president's lifeŠ. If they are casting that broad a net they are trawling that wide, they are going to pull in everything.
Jim has a theory which is the only way we can operate is so publicly, so openly, to be so above ground with everything that the government would really have to show its hand to act against us, because we are not hiding, there's nothing secretive about it, beyond the title of the exhibition.
Tish: What do you think about the charge of anti-American, do you think there is anything un-American going on here?
Tex: The anti-American charge is just a ruse to get people all charged up and hysterical. I don't even want to get into it. The show itself is ambiguous you know, it is a statement of intent from a number of artists of disparate origins and even the statements they make are almost more contemplative in a sense, even the more overtly political ones, the oil flag is still a contemplative point, what is the connection to the united states symbol, the American flag and its involvement overseas in various actions? As strident as it might seem to some rabid conservative neoMcCarthyite it is still a poetic statement.
The charge of being anti-American is laughable at this point, when we still believe in an open society, when we haven't seen anything that is physically contrary to this belief that we have all been raised in, that in the past sixty years the United States has become a free society where the freedom of speech is protected, but if they start sharpening their sites, if they start turning the screws on various progressive events, then the charge will be something much more worrisome."
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only.
[posted 11/20/01]
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