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Crisis at the ICA: Ekow Eshun’s Experiment in Deinstitutionalisation
Editorial content | Submitted by mute on Wednesday, 10 February, 2010 - 13:28
JJ Charlesworth Amidst a general acceptance of the cash crisis afflicting the ICA as an accident of the recession, and a rush into ‘hairshirt' institutional self-critique as a means to deflect real scrutiny, JJ Charlesworth uncovers a catalogue of avoidable mistakes and the free-market, lifestyle thinking behind them
In the last few weeks press reports have begun to appear regarding the growing financial crisis besetting London's Institute of Contemporary Arts. On the 22 January, the Guardian reported that ‘Staff members have been told that a financial deficit currently at around £600,000 might rise to £1.2m and if radical steps are not taken the ICA could be closed by May.' A week later, the Times quoted an ICA spokeswoman who confirmed as a ‘fair estimate' that ‘a third of its full-time staff of "around 60" would be in line for redundancy.'
Ekow Eshun, the ICA's artistic director since 2005, told the Guardian that the ICA's financial problems emerged as a result of a ‘perfect storm of events that all came together'. Income from fundraising, from trading income and from the ICA's film distribution arm, have ‘also suffered because of the recession.'
Image: Billy Childish at the Figures of Speech gala, 2009
So far, the mainstream press has accepted this rather glib account of inevitable woe caused by the recession. In the fatalistic and passive terms that currently dominate any discussion about the recession, there is apparently nothing that anyone can do about the ICA's financial troubles; the recession is seen as a force of nature, and everyone is quick to accept Eshun's catchy characterisation of the ICA's crisis as a ‘perfect storm'. So instead of asking how exactly the ICA has got into such a mess, mainstream press coverage has typically discovered another opportunity to beat-up on the ICA, and to carp about whether the ICA should be left to fail; ‘should we let the ICA die?' was the Times' dismissive headline.
That so little interest has been paid to the precise circumstances of the ICA's troubles is disturbing. Merely accepting that ‘the recession is to blame' leaves bigger questions unanswered both about the ICA's artistic and financial governance over the last five years, but also of broader issues of state funding policy towards private sector involvement in the financing of arts organisations, while making no one accountable for the roots of these failures. A closer look at the recent history of the ICA suggests a number of serious issues that have consequences not only for the future of the organisation itself, but also for the broader sector of state funded arts organisations.
In October 2009, Arts Council England awarded the ICA £1.2 million over two years from its Sustain emergency budget, ear-marked for arts organisations suffering from the effects of the recession. This is the second largest of the grants made from the fund (only the Yorkshire Sculpture Park has been granted more). As part of this emergency package a consultant, ex-curator David Thorp, had been hired to conduct an organisational review of the ICA's activities and structures. On 10 December 2009 staff were called to a meeting with Eshun and members of the ICA's governing council, including chairman Alan Yentob. In minutes of that meeting seen by the Guardian and by Mute, staff were told about the need to slash the £2.5 million salary budget by £1m, and drastically reduce the ICA's programming, particularly the cinema's programme. An organisational restructure outline also seen by Mute proposes closing the ICA to the public two days a week. According to Eshun, the proposed new programme would operate only in the lower exhibitions gallery.
In what was clearly a heated and bad tempered debate, Eshun and Yentob continually insisted that the cash crisis was down to ‘shortcomings' in the Development department, the bookshop and ICA films. Clearly defensive, Eshun argued that it was not always easy to make correct estimates, but that while this could be seen to be a result of decisions made by Eshun and Guy Perricone (Eshun's managing director, an ex-banker who finally resigned in October 2009, having been appointed shortly after Eshun in August 2005) there were ‘structural problems' that needed addressing. Remarkably, Eshun concluded that he was the best person to take the ICA ‘into the future'.
But the assertion that the ICA's financial difficulties are uniquely a product of the current recession does not seem to be supported by a review of the organisation's published finances in the years prior to the recession, and during the boom years of Eshun's tenure, since his appointment in May 2005. The ICA's accounts are publicly available through the Charities Commission. What they reveal is an organisation which, while faring relatively well from its programming income, became dangerously dependent on a high-risk strategy of developing what turned out to be volatile and unpredictable income from sponsorship deals. A later decision to remove entrance fees was to prove similarly damaging.
Under Eshun, the ICA went from an income of just over £3.75 million in 2005 to just over £5 million by 2008. The ICA's Arts Council grant might have increased by £70,000 between 2006 and 2008, but the most significant change was in the generation of sponsorship income. In 2006 total sponsorship amounted to £306,000. In 2007 this leapt to £970,000. (It was also in early 2007 that the ICA sold off its Picasso mural to the Wellcome Trust for £250,000.) And in 2008 the ICA made £756,000 in sponsorship.
Image: The man with the plan. Ekow Eshun at the AmbITion roadshow, Sadler’s Wells Theatre, 16th July, 2009
Such large increases were achieved by a new sponsorship led policy, hiring new development and marketing staff tasked with developing high profile sponsorship events that prioritised the ICA ‘brand' as a whole, rather than supporting any individual programming department. Not surprisingly, the ICA's wage bill in the period ballooned, from £1.75 million in 2005 to £2.5 million in 2008, although the ICA's accounts report an increase in average staff headcount of only 13. The number of staff paid more than £50,000 rose from three to ten in that period.
If the ICA was riding high on the sponsorship gravy train, more non-programming staff and bigger salaries for those at the top, this was based on marketing projects increasingly untethered from the ICA's core programme content, but instead plugged in to a newer, ‘hipper' notion of the ICA as an arbiter of contemporary cool, all the while attempting to harness the spend power of celebrity, and the success-by-association of a heightened media profile. Instead of raising income for the projects of particular departments - Cinema, Exhibitions, Live and Media Arts, and Talks - all energies became focused on ‘general projects' drawing big cheques from big corporates. In 2007, a Sony PSP hook-up generated £95,000, a deal with 3G mobile netted £150,000, and the Sony Ericsson backed image anthology and contest All Tomorrow's Pictures earned the ICA £228,000. By 2007, ICA Development had initiated the annual celeb-driven charity auction gala night Figures of Speech. The 2008 edition, attended by such art world luminaries as Nigella Lawson, Tom Dixon and Elle McPherson, rang up £126,000 in the process.
Such sponsorship arrangements are inherently fast burning and short term. Particularly alarming, in this regard, has been the involvement of a more unstable variety of business partners for the ICA's sponsorship projects, and the closeness of those businesses to the ICA's governing council. In 2008 and 2009, the Figures of Speech gala was sponsored by troubled voicemail-to-text message dotcom startup SpinVox. In 2008, SpinVox paid £128,000 for its association with the gala night. While no figures are yet published for the March 2009 edition (also in association with SpinVox), press details released by the ICA record auction results of £86,000, but refer to a headline figure of £180,000 raised by the event, suggesting a similar involvement by SpinVox.
By summer 2009, the £100 million start-up had run out of cash. In December, it was sold to American speech-recognition company Nuance for £64 million. SpinVox's vice-president for consumer business is James Scroggs. Scroggs was also listed as one of the board of directors of the ICA company, appointed in September 2006.
Equally unfortunate was the sponsorship involvement of GuestInvest, the buy-to-let hotel property investor (slogan: ‘earn money while others sleep') which had paid £88,000 for a project called ICA TV: London Now, branded ICA video content for hotel TVs. GuestInvest went into administration in October 2008. Its CEO was Johnny Sandelson, who was also a member of the ruling council of the ICA and one of the directors, appointed in October 2007, and who resigned in October 2008. GuestInvest still owes the ICA £33,000.
There are other mistakes not due to the recession. The incautious decision, in September 2008, not long before the Lehman Brothers collapse and the start of the credit crunch proper, to abolish the day membership fee put a further squeeze on income. Sources suggest that the abolition of day membership may have accounted for at least £120,000 in lost revenue to the ICA. And with the abolition of the day-membership, annual membership subscriptions are reported to have declined significantly during 2009.
The picture that emerges is of an organisation in which costs inflated against projected income, based on a marketing model framed by increasingly unrealistic income projections, which left the ICA more exposed to the peculiarly erratic and hard to sustain income streams derived from the marketing budgets of big corporates, the quickly exhausted favour of professional contacts among directors, and the fickle interest of celebrity benefactors. Quite how exposed the ICA became by early 2009 is not clear, but the general experience of the marketing and advertising staff, especially those dealing with brand sponsorship, suggests that many marketing budgets evaporated as brands panicked as the credit crunch hit in earnest in late 2008. But already in early 2008, Mark Sladen, director of exhibitions, was reportedly furious at the Development department's failure to secure any substantial sponsorship for the sixtieth anniversary exhibitions programme ‘Nought to Sixty', which ran from May to October 2008. The season culminated with a 60th anniversary auction of work. But with the credit crunch, the game was already over and the auction raised £673,000, failing to realise the £1.3m the ICA had hoped for. Public commitments that revenue from the ICA auction should help establish a commissioning fund for emerging artists were quietly shelved, the proceeds instead directed into the ICA's general funds. Between deluded projections of high-risk income and the undermining of core revenue streams, it may have been a ‘perfect storm', but someone was sailing the ship towards it.
But like Gordon Brown's attitude to his handling of the British economy prior to the recession, Eshun seems convinced that he bears no responsibility for the ICA's recent trajectory, nor its media-dazzled artistic policy, and is now the best person to come to its rescue. Indeed, it seems that for Eshun, Yentob and perhaps secretly even the Arts Council, the financial crisis at the ICA offers an ideal opportunity to spin the current troubles into a story of renewal, with Eshun at the helm. After all, one of the criticisms regularly levelled at the ICA by hostile critics is that the institution is ‘no longer relevant'.
Eshun is the ICA's own best critic, of course. At the 10 December meeting, he repeated his mantra that ‘all multi-arts spaces are re-thinking what they need to do. The post-war modernist presentation of art is no longer relevant and the ICA needs a vision for what this means.'
Eshun's ‘vision' has been long in coming. In a ‘vision' document circulated in Spring 2009, Eshun wrote that a key challenge for the ICA was how it might ‘update the traditional model of the arts centre with its silo-like programming structure.' The new vision was to be one of fluidity, flexibility, spontaneity and itinerant programming, taking its cue from the model of biennials, fairs and festivals, each of which offered ‘a more fluid and decentred model of arts presentation with a focus on new commissions.' The ICA could ‘occasionally work in a similar spirit, reconfiguring ourselves as a sometime festival, a freeform space of artistic exploration dedicated to articulating a particular mood or movement.'
But what does updating the ‘silo-like' programming structure of the arts centre and seeking a ‘more fluid and decentred model of arts presentation' actually mean in practice? One might argue that Eshun's antagonism towards the ‘post-war modernist art centre' would seem to run contrary to the ICA's 1947 founding charitable objects:
Of course, a set of artistic designations as antique as these needs periodic updating; nor does it prescribe the form or structure an organisation should take to deliver such a programme. But Eshun's fascination with the temporary, the flexible and the decentred, of a cultural outlook in which nothing is permanent, was translated into a managerial policy of wearing down the ‘silo-like' departmental programming structure of the organisation, at the cost of a loss of curatorial expertise. In October 2008, Eshun decided to abolish the ICA's Live and Media Arts department, a decision which drew acrimonious responses by practitioners in the live and media arts community. And with the resignation of the Talks department in December 2009, increasingly, the responsibility for any original programming fell to exhibitions, the only programming department to have enjoyed any significant budget increase under Eshun's directorship.
Image: Hot Chip 'Shake a Fist' at the cruel fates at the All Tomorrow's Pictures party, ICA, May 2007
There is of course another term to describe the process occurring in this new ‘decentred' art centre. It is ‘de-skilling'. The vision of a fluid, flexible, temporary institution is, ironically, entirely concomitant with a general trend towards bureaucratisation and the abolition of expertise in organisational structures that mediate between cultural practitioners and arts policy. This has been vividly evident in the changes in arts funding bodies in recent years. For example, the removal of art-form specific advisory panels was an early innovation at Arts Council England under New Labour. A similar process destroyed the British Council's artistic departments in late 2007, when it disbanded its film, drama, dance, literature, design and visual arts departments, amalgamating them into a single ‘arts team', organised around bizarre management aphorisms such as ‘Progressive Facilitation', ‘Market Intelligence Network', ‘Knowledge Transfer Function' and ‘Modern Pioneer'. In both organisations, the political instinct has been bureaucratic; to withdraw authority and independence from staff appointed for their knowledge of a particular field of artistic practice, in order to better administer whatever policy imperative happens to be coming from central government.
But the hostility of bureaucrats to independent cultural expertise can also be mapped onto the apparently cutting-edge curatorial privileging of flexible, ad hoc programming, and both have the same useful managerial outcomes: fewer staff and more precarious, temporary employment contracts. The disdain for expertise within arts policy thinking also reflects a cynical lack of commitment to the independence of cultural forms, a trivialising indifference to the value those forms have achieved, and an obsession with the mobile tastes of ‘the public' as the final arbiter of cultural value. In Eshun's hyperventilating vision document he asks which ‘faces should most accurately represent the ICA now?' He concludes:
With a rate of artistic redundancy as fast as this, you don't need curatorial expertise, or an opinion regarding what art is worth supporting and championing - you just need Simon Cowell.
Such abdication of curatorial authority to the audience presupposes that what the audience wants is merely what the institution should do. It does not acknowledge that a presenting institution such as the ICA might have a relationship to communities of artistic practice that have distinct cultural and organisational histories, and their own attendant audiences. Such distinctions cannot simply be wished away by a bit of re-imagineering of a cultural mission statement. If the artistic relevance of the ICA has reputedly dwindled during Eshun's tenure, it perhaps has something to do with how an emptied-out model of audience feedback and ‘early-adopter' trend-following became a substitute for agenda-setting, or a critical vision of the current state of art and culture, or real artistic-curatorial relationships with different artistic and cultural communities.
This is not an argument against ‘cross-disciplinarity', but it is an argument for the fact that ‘cross-disciplinarity' requires the reality of a disciplinary base for practice in the first instance. Forms of artistic creativity are not in constant flux or transformation (though they do change historically) but coalesce into sustained practices and communities of artists and audiences. This is not an outdated ‘mode' of the ‘post-war modernist art centre', but a recognition that a venue may play host to multiple artistic cultures and communities, which it is not wholly instrumental in generating and sustaining. By contrast, the tendency to abolish programming departments rids an organisation of staff with expertise and commitment to particular fields of activity. It is a move which denies the autonomy of different artistic fields as they already exist outside of the institution, and turns the institution's role from that of forum and enabler for those communities, to a regulator of which artistic practice gains visibility. In other words, it reduces the claim that communities of artistic practitioners can make on cultural institutions, and elevates the institution's arbitrary power over artists by distancing itself from already present communities of practice.
Eshun's blithe comment at the time the closure of the Live and Media Arts department - that new media-based arts practice ‘lacks cultural urgency' - is indicative of this confusion between fluid, non-disciplinary notions of curatorial agency, trend-setter indifference to anything that is not ‘now' and the bureaucratic tendency to withdraw from contacts with practitioners. It wasn't that there wasn't a lively culture of artistic work being done in live and media arts at the time, but simply that a cultural director had passed judgement that it was no longer relevant. But such an approach is not surprising; Eshun's previous jobs were as editor of the now defunct Arena, the men's style magazine, and before that assistant editor of the equally defunct The Face. Observing, selecting, picking-and-mixing, schmoozing the culture in the name of what's cool one moment and not cool the next, are the necessary attributes of mass-media cultural commentators and style arbiters. But they comprise an outlook at odds with negotiating a more complex relationship between artists and the support an institution can bring. The ‘flexible institution' is in fact one detached from any relationship of commitment to the art-form communities it has a mission, in part, to represent.
Image: Natasha Plowright, Alan Yentob and Graham Norton at the Figures of Speech Gala, ICA, February 2008
There is another twist to the ICA's current crisis. Prior to the staff meeting of 10 December, the exhibitions department had organised a day-long meeting of invited artists and curators, to discuss a proposed emergency programme project with the working title of the The Reading Group:
The Reading Group, declared a draft outline of the project, is ‘designed to create a space where artists, writers, thinkers and others can come together, share research and work collaboratively, taking the model of The Reading Group as an ideal for temporary communal investigation.'
With the ICA facing one of the most serious financial crises in its 63-year existence, its programme for the next year appears to be a radical-sounding ‘experiment in de-institutionalisation', with radical artists and academics co-opted to provide content on a shoestring budget. For fans of grotesque irony The Reading Group outline is unmatched reading; couched in the contemporary terminology of anti-capitalism and art-institutional critique, The Reading Group is slated to address several themes, including ‘What work can we do?' (investigating ‘alternative ways of thinking about production and labour'), and ‘How can we act collectively?' (exploring ‘the role of institutions such as the ICA in enabling communal action.') A wish list of cutting-edge artists and academics including Antonio Negri, Hito Steyerl and Eyal Weizman suggests the tenor of the programme.
The Reading Group meeting was attended by a number of curators from European institutions, among them Amsterdam's De Appel, Barcelona's MACBA and Antwerp's Objectif. As one London attendee put it, the general tone of the meeting was always to see questions of financial crisis as an opportunity for a radicalised programme and an opportunity to get ‘back to basics'.
Such ‘hairshirt radicalism' is common to the confused cultural response to the broader economic crisis. So much of the ‘critical' art world has spent the last decade decrying the market boom that it now seems to see the recession as a sort of degraded Marxian ‘comeuppance' for the apparent excesses of western consumer capitalism. Because of the general distaste with which ‘commodity' art has been held during the boom, it seems those practices which spent the boom decrying the venality of market-driven art, might now be eagerly co-opted as useful filler for institutions no longer able to sustain more costly public programmes. Talk is cheap after all, as are galleries full of tables and chairs, stuff to read and endless discussions to be had about radical projects, conducted by unpaid artists. But as The Reading Group attendee suggested, the only radical discussion not on the table was the only one worth having - how did we get here?
But the crisis at the ICA should be a banal one - it is about dumb financial issues, even dumber management and a precarious and delusional faith in the frothy economics of the boom-time ‘creative industries'. Pretending that it is, now, a crisis in the ideological and cultural form of the institution is to provide cultural bureaucrats at ACE and the DCMS with the mission statement to justify the down-sizing and overhaul of all other cultural institutions that run into trouble, while diverting the discussion from the broader politics of the recession. The governing council of the ICA is apparently ‘100% behind' Eshun. The Arts Council appears to support the current situation, declaring that it accepts
The final decision on the release of the second half of the Sustain grant falls to the national council of ACE, though ACE strenuously insists that Eshun's membership of the national council will have no bearing on the decision.
But what of the staff of the ICA who stand to lose most in this debacle? Do they support Eshun? In early February, the staff council called a vote of no confidence in Eshun, but in a bizarre twist, the staff were called to vote on whether the vote of no confidence should be counted. The ICA denies that a vote of no confidence has taken place. Five years, it seems, is not long enough for Eshun's first ‘experiment in de-institutionalisation'.
JJ Charlesworth <jjcharlesworth AT artreview.com> is a freelance critic and associate editor of ArtReview magazine
Liked this article? Support Mute by SUBSCRIBING or with a DONATION subject: Arts funding | Financial Crisis | Institutional Critique
right of reply
well, ICA, just 'reply' by way of the comment facility! Thank goodness for JJ
Thank goodness for JJ Charlesworth. It's the most insightful piece of coverage I've read so far. I'm flabbergasted that the national newspapers accept the glib excuses of Eshun without question. Seriously there needs to be an investigation into Eshun's management (or lack of management) of the ICA. It's a great institution ruined by one man's hubris and ACE's complicity. non-accident waiting to happen
This was always going to happen, a combination of short sighted decision making, a gamble on programme and departmental changes and employing a magazine editor with no experience of an managing Arts Centre, let alone one which already had a volatile history. Useful information for tmy
Useful information for tmy research, thanks. loi scellier Response to the ICA's criticism of subjectivity
The next print issue of Mute is with the designer right now, but please feel free to write a more extended response in the comments section here. Since this is where the debate will happen most substantially, it would be the most appropriate place for you to reply to JJ Charlesworth's article. It would also give others an opportunity to respond to you in turn. In terms of your contention that none of the facts or figures were checked with the ICA and that the resulting piece is therefore unsubstantiated and subjective - does this imply that only officially sanctioned ICA data and explanations are accurate and objective? JJ's article deploys several registers of argument: some based on the ICA's accounts which are in the public domain (from which he draws provisional conclusions about the shift to a greater dependency on sponsorship within the context of the pre-crunch financial bubble, and the appointment of directors to the ICA's board from some of those sponsoring companies); others reach conclusions based on a set of activities which were never hidden (axing the membership fee, closing down departments and their programmes, and increasing the frequency and significance of ICA branding events). In short, this comes down to journalistic approach and levels of investment in a story - where the national newspapers have been all too happy to regurgitate the ICA's official line over the causes of the cash crisis, JJ has chosen an independent line of investigation and, as is obvious, reached some very different conclusions. Clearly then, there are compelling reasons for him to look to other sources to piece together an analysis of the crisis, rather than the ICA's own press department. On that final point - Mute did indeed check with the press department as to the status of the vote of no confidence to which it received the same perplexingly Kafakaesque response that is reproduced in the article's conclusion. NetBehaviour thread
This article is being quite thoroughly discussed on the NetBehaviour mailinglist: http://www.netbehaviour.org/pipermail/netbehaviour/20100211/thread.html#14319 Great additional material in regards to this article. Sign of the times...
What an excellent article that encapsulates the problem of de-skilling within publicly funded arts, while using the sorry tale of Eshun's ICA captaincy as the lens through which we can think about the problem. And another reason why journalists should NOT pretend to know what's best in or for contemporary art (see: BBC's recent stupid appointment of a journalist as their new arts editor). indeed
Very good article. If the ICA or indeed the Arts Council wish to go beyond distraction and prevarication I'll be interested to hear what they have to say. Strong approach
It's a good article. I think we must discuss more about the future of art institutions. We need more networking and community approach... articulate and thought provoking
What a good piece. There are many people in the arts community in the UK and across the world who were quietly aghast at the lack of debate and nonchalance in the community and the press when the measures for the ICA were announced. The starting gun was fired with the closure of the Live Arts departments and Media Arts departments at a point when Performance and Media Art are real thriving areas of artistic practice in both art schools and professional practitioners in UK, Europe and the world. It seemed that who ever was making those kinds of decisions, rather than being "visionary" clearly didn't have their eye on the ball. Ask the people who really know. It seems the other difficulty at this time is that the very people who should be debating and talking about the mess, are also entrenched in difficult funding battles of their own, and must tow the line in public, for fear that aligning themselves with critique of public funders including the Art Council will be counter productive to their own struggles. This article clearly puts foward the arguments and sentiments felt by many people in the arts community - curators and artists - that are unhappy with the management and artistic vision of an institution that people still hold dear to their hearts. Well written, articulate and thoroughly researched, it is a testament to the piece that the ICA were rattled enough to it respond on-line. Well done. Don't Leap Into the Void: against de-institutionalisation
I'm re-posting this piece from Mute's News & Analysis section originally published when news of the ICA's 'deinstitutionalisatoin' experiment started to leak out. I think it's still pertinent and hopefully reads productively alongside JJ's excellent anatomy of the ICA's corporate self-cannibalisation. Don't Leap Into the Void: against top-down de-institutionalisation Rumour has it that several of the major public or semi-public art spaces in London are currently making severe cutbacks to their services. The ICA recently proposed a ‘radical’ programme of ‘deinstitutionalisation’ in which unpaid curators and artists would curate the gallery’s exhibitions for a year. While the ICA’s top curators pitched this idea to a group of potential collaborators from outside the institution, existing staff members sat and waited to hear whether they would still have jobs at the end of the day. Both those facing redundancy and those putting together this ‘alternative’ option – a transparent attempt to keep the gallery open at no cost – would seem to have been on the receiving end of decisions made higher up the institutional hierarchy. Their funders and supporters might claim that managers’ errors have lead to this dire situation. However, given that several other important publically funded art spaces are facing similar problems (the Whitechapel and others loaded down with debt from capital projects are sending out begging letters to their email lists) it seems obvious that the financial crisis is the underlying cause – or at least the pretext – for this sudden contraction. It is shocking that major public institutions should be 'restructuring' like this without making any public announcement of their plans, or any effort, apparently, to do something about it before imposing their problems onto their staff. But it is also striking that the response of management has been not to oppose cutbacks head on but rather to spin the crisis as an ‘opportunity’ for a ‘radical’ new approach. While very different in their function for capital, there is an analogy here between the wider public sector and the state funded cultural sector. I hate Hackney Council for selling off public space to developers and for complicity in social cleansing. I despise the ICA for bending so zealously to the imperatives of neoliberal economics. But if it turns out they are to be viciously cut in a crunch-related purge, do I celebrate – great, at last they get a taste of their own medicine? If the council says it’s going to scale back services and ask tenants to run their own housing do I cheer – an opportunity for some real self-management? If public art spaces are up to their eyes in debt and looking for new – unpaid - inputs, do I leap at the chance to impose a radical curatorial programme on the capitalist institution? It might seem strange to many activists, politically engaged artists or indeed MPs enamoured of the ‘budget airline’ approach to public services, but the answer to this and other related questions is no, I do not. I don’t cheer and I don’t say ‘what a great opportunity’. Because, first of all, a cut is a cut, and as the biggest capitalist crisis in decades continues, we should oppose cuts, whether in housing or in arts, services or jobs. When institutions try and pass off their downsizing or outright closure as an ‘exciting new experiment’ one should remember the real significance of the ‘Easycouncil’ idea – all such ‘liberations’ and ‘devolutions of power’ are simply desperate attempts to conceal austerity – the destruction of value in the form of jobs, budgets, etc. Self-Reduction Not Self-Reproduction! A capitalist crisis is all about destroying value, eliminating costs, wiping out over-valued assets, whether writing down prices or knocking down walls. Crisis is deflationary, to be precise it is the devalorisation of values – whether property prices, arts budgets, or the price of labour-power. When state institutions of whatever kind start slashing staff and services, however this is presented, whoever is blamed, we should understand it as a part of this wider process of devalorisation. There is nothing natural or desirable about it. Deflation isn’t something that just happens, nor is it ‘liberating’ per se, since it does not set us free from money any more than not eating sets us free from hunger. Our reaction should not be celebration but opposition. It’s not our responsibility to get them out of their mess. Capital is keen to make it ours, of course, they want us to ‘own the problem’ and to help them make this process as smooth and frictionless as possible. Savvy managers play to our very sense of dissatisfaction, anger, or outright hostility to institutions in order to get potential enemies onside as they go about writing off infrastructure and jobs. That they have spent the last decade or more ruining cultural and other institutions shouldn’t inure or blind us to what’s going on now. They may hope that they can tap into our desire for revenge – it’s harder to fight for institutions that have been systematically run down and fucked up. But revenge is a dish that is best served by oneself, not vicariously through the imperatives of capital. Just as one should defend council housing (however lousy it may be, it’s better than no state housing at all), so we need to go on defending other state institutions now in crisis. We need to destroy value on our own terms, not theirs. It may be that very soon all of us will have a wonderful opportunity for self-management (not to mention self-reproduction) in the husks of gutted state and private-public institutions. However, the process of neoliberalisation in its terminal and accelerated form should not, primarily, be taken as a kind of ‘revolution from above’, a windfall for radicals. If there were a wide social movement with a strong popular basis opposing capitalism then the tactic of undermining and taking over the tottering institutions would make absolute sense. As it is, there is a real danger that activists and artists, acting in isolation from the rest of society, will play the role of ‘left wing of deflation’ (or ‘left wing of devalorisation’). We will, as in gentrification processes past, be asked to play the role of unpaid cultural caretakers. This time however, the market is collapsed and heading down – there is no upturn in sight, unemployment is rising, production falling, property prices are predicted to fall as much as 50% from their bubblicious peak. This is not 1991, no new Hoxton cavalry of dotcoms is going to ride in and save the day. Instead, those who become the shocktroops of these New Institutions will be pioneering a future of freedom – that is, institutions free of paid staff, cleaners, or indeed, futures. Again, if we were in a proto-revolutionary situation this could sound quite appealing, but until we are we should not conspire in the process of value destruction more than we have to. Beyond Culturedrome? Everyone is critical of the institutions now facing (intensified) restructuring and privatisation. Some wish they could be transformed if not 'supressed and realised' once and for all in a world which no longer needs art centres or a specialised sphere of creative activity. However, we need to keep a realistic sense of what is possible at this point in the current crisis. At present, 'radical' programmes in general are not part of some wider revolutionary movement. And we are talking about blue chip culture centres not workers councils. But even if such a social upsurge is brewing and can find a focus in elite cultural and academic institutions, it is more likely to arise through struggle against capitalist acts of value destruction than through the mis-representation of cut backs and shut downs as 'radical experiments’. However much people may love to loathe them, at present the collapse of cultural institutions is not a victory but part of our defeat. We should be realistic about the probably low levels of wider participation in 'deinstitutionalised' institutions given the current climate of depoliticisation, defensiveness and understandable insecurity. Even a suddenly 'free' (as in unremunerated) institution would exist within a context of intensified economic and social polarisation. Rather than calling for revolutionary new programmes that have no social basis, culture workers should oppose cuts in semi/public art spaces and state-funded culture more broadly. In fact, such resistance is more likely to forge meaningful connections that go beyond the abstract discursive productions of politicised cultural workers since the stealth downsizing of institutions involves workers at every level including technicians, cleaners and other staff. It would be ironic, though not untypical, if cultural ‘providers’ were to overlook an opportunity for meaningful solidarity with other workers in the rush to develop radical curatorial programmes. Why wait till after the existing staff have been laid off to get ‘radical’? Conspiring in the ongoing contraction of bourgeois cultural institutions is not automatically good for those they have always excluded. But it is definitely going to make things harder for the minority who either make a living and/or do something critically or aesthetically interesting in these spaces. The knock on effects of ‘decommodifying’ this activity in the midst of a crisis will be a further precaritisation and straitening of the circumstances of all involved – except, of course, the management, who will have passed their problems on to us. Blowin' in the Wind
Thank you JJ for an important and timely summary. That the double-speak of 'de-institutionalisation' comes to mean 'bureaucratization' and that a 'reading room presenter/attendee/artist/philosopher' comes to mean 'seasonal worker' is sobering. The only thing missing from
The only thing missing from this are some comments on the tokenism and racism that have made Eshun untouchable. when money was king
excellent article, a perfect storm in a very english teacup - when ACE & co. thought they could be the ideas based venture capitalists in a fix of away-day culture and really be part of government funding initiatives, letting the artists and artworks service the creative industries When did Mute become the Socialist Workers Party?
I have to say this feels like a modern day lynching to me. I have never seen a campaign so vile and so focussed on one specific person. Mute used to be an interesting space, however since Simon moved on, it just seems to be a forum for bitter -middle class- trust fund mums to be vile to others and feel smug about themselves while they push their prams from café to organic food shop along Broadway Market. It would I think be very interesting to do a critical review of Mute, the organisation and the people working. I know for one, their office for the last 5 or more years has been based in a project set up under new labour regeneration scheme– which due to the entanglement of funding for that project – closed down a youth centre, closed down the Whitechapel Library and helped fund the expansion of the Whitechapel Gallery! I guess the super cheap rent they have been paying has meant they have been able to refurbish their homes (not flats) in Hackney (“ we are not gentrifies, we moved here before it was cool”) – never mind the consequences of their behaviour on others! We all know Mute is run by a small clique of white only trustafarians. Does that matter? Yes it does, in London, in east London and when they publish articles like this, when they helped undermine a youth centre and fund the expansion of the Whitechapel Gallery. Yes it matters! A critical review of Mute would see tactics quite like the ICA, maybe not to the same scale as the quite significant ICA, but very similar principles all the way through the organisation – advertising, use of freelance labour, taking money from ACE taking money from artists so they can be the dishonest new front for the Socialist Workers Party. A little bit of class, race, gender and structural analysis of Mute along with its contributors wouldn’t go astray!!! are you really ready for this debate Mute?
JJ's piece obviously reflected some issues that had been talked about in sections of the arts community but hadn't been surfaced in mass media commentary, and so for that reason it deserves a voice somewhere, even if Mute may or may not be the best place for it. That said, when the comments come in about tokenism and racism, I can't help but think the article has set up the conditions for that to appear, through the individualist focus of the article. So I think at some level Mokabi Allen's comments have to be take on board - it's not enough for Mute to say in the name of "openness" that it might just publish something and allow the conversation to be what it may: Mute stands for something and is open to the same kind of institutional analysis that the ICA is subjected to here. Mute have put forward the piece not as one among others, but as a standalone article, and a certain level of endorsement is therefore implied. If the focus slides to the questions Allen raises (similar to the ones JJ raises about the ICA), I could see that a journalist could have a good time pursuing some inconsistencies in the gap between Mute's ideals and practice. I don't know if a debate about Mute and race is what you want, but if it happens then the publication of this article will be the event that brings it on. beware of the spin, you're in.
This recent shift in the debate on here is a political trick. It's spin. It's trying to alter the goalposts of the debate and stifle it by making it a magazine vs institution/person debate. Don't fall for it. HEY! ARTS COMMUNITY, ARTISTS, CURATORS, INTELLIGENT PEOPLE, DONT FALL FOR IT! The contemporary parlance, I believe is, "don't mugg us off!!". So while the points made might be valid, everyone involved actually has more responsibility to the public and the arts community and the legacies of Herbert Read, Roland Penrose and other founders of the ICA than letting this descend into some stupid slanging match. The discussion is becoming too parochial. Mismanagement and bad decision making is just that. If that's what has occurred. If you are head of a major organisation like the ICA you are a politcian in some shape or form. Government pressures, funders, strategies and so on. Questions and criticisms have been raised, and they deserve intelligent and comprehensive responses, not just back to this tiny publication outfit, like you're all having some little private debate, but more importantly to a whole raft of artists, creative thinkers, musicians, writers, curators, students across the world, who deserve some real answers as to why an institution like the ICA can appear to have go so very wrong to the point of even mentioning the world 'closure'. The debate needs to open outwards, not the current direction which is clearly designed and framed to spiral in and evaporate. This is about the ICA. A massive history, a key INTERNATIONAL institution and everyone should have more responsibility and keep the debate intelligent, and focused on the ICA and its funding issues and future. Don't mugg us off! Legacy Schmegacy
Let's open out the debate then: "A massive history, a key INTERNATIONAL institution" - talk about ossified - why should any organisation trade on its "massive history"? and who is deciding what "key" is? (racketeering art professionals?). This kind of bollocks, which only serves to concentrate and delimit CULTURAL CAPITAL (much more insidious and fundamental than monetary capital) is the kind of bollocks which leads to boring, irrelevant art and art institutions. There are FAR too many art institutions duplicating themselves, their functions and the "creatives" they harbour anyway. Looking back at the ICA
Ekow shouldn't be targeted! He is simply a celebrity fall-guy hired by the ruling class. It is the people who employ him who we need to give notice to. The ICA used to be an important state institution for the recuperation of the new radical arts thrown up by the Sixties and Seventies liberation movements. In particular it 'celebrated' and brought into the elite sphere key feminst, black and working class artists. Thus inoculating any popular appeal such a cultural moment might have sparked in a classic recuperative strategy. The ICA's lavish psycho-geography on the mall provided its elite credentials. In a symbolic level it was still courting power quite literally. These artists, representing key oppressed groups, burst on the scene from the vastly expanded art education sector of the Sixties. The process by which this uprising from below was neutralised through the Eighties was its restructuring into a corporatised Equal Opps culture - in a form that has been adjusted to exclude class. In short the Equal Opps strategy is accept a few radical artists as long as they are willing to behave in a more or less middle class manner. Most people on the street in Brixton in the Eighties would probably have felt uncomfortable dropping into the ICA. But they did drop into the large scale shows in Brixton Gallery that the ICA could never have considered. These were shows that espoused openess and collectivity rather than the ideology of selection that is the bulwark of elite art. Now that moment has gone. Corporate Equal Opps has nulified the challenge from below and the working class artists from the Seventies like Conrad Atkinson and Tony Rickaby are kept out of any spotlights. The ICA no longer has its special mission. Since 2000 the ICA has also been thoroughly upstaged on the now globalised art scene by the Tate Modern. With its more corporate rather than courtly positioning in relation to the city and St Pauls its Power psychogeography is nigh perfect. Stefan Szczelkun, Just like everywhere else
"the board and management have to make tough and potentially unpopular decisions if the ICA is going to become a sustainable organisation delivering strong artistic programmes, through a fit for purpose organisational structure and robust financial strategy." I could replace ICA with NHS and artistic with medical and find a exact replica in any recent trust report. The Arts Council's euphemistic management speak is becoming a mantra in every public institution. All it means is that bankers + cronies keep their champagne soirees while the rest of us take the hit for their incompetence. Eshun deserves personal criticism for acting patsy for the deconstruction of the ICA, as do all managers in museums, local councils, NHS trusts, etc who have enthusiastically embraced the magical thinking of the last ? years and ripped up existing organisational structures because they had a 'vision': ie some management consultant told them it would make their institution more 'fit for purpose' - without really focussing on what that purpose should be. All who participate in the lie that public services should suffer because some bankers decided to steal all our resources bear some personal responsibility, even if they are only playing out greater forces. Equally the board should be named who hired him. The changes at the ICA seem to be just the logical conclusion of putting someone at the helm who seems to think that the only 'purpose' the organisation has to fit for is to be 'cool'. A lot of what Eshun - and the The Readers Group - said reminded me of Barbara Ehrenrich's recent book 'Smile or Die' - it is the language of the life coaches hired by companies trying to convince employees that redundancy is really a great opportunity for personal growth. The positive thinkers who 'vision' good outcomes for wildly irrational behavior despite all evidence to the contrary and thus miss the chance to really improve things. I suggest staff, users and concerned artists occupy the place... WHY THIS IS A MODERN DAY INTERNET ENABLED LYNCHING
I must say, having just re-read my post I was a little taken aback by how furious I was at the time. My message was just raw un-edited stream of thought, focussed on the astonishing contradictions of the gloriously indulgent all white pram pushing trustafarians at Mute. Alongside this was the draw-dropping lynching, via the internet, of a black man in Britain, by some try-hard middle class twat (who calls himself or let his parents call him ‘JJ’!), the moralist, pseudo-Marxist and self proclaimed protector of the ICA. Who happens to be the same person that ran off with one of his 22 year old students. Anybody who knows him knows he has not only been riding the capitalist gravy train but one of the gravy makers! However having just read the postings below mine, I am no longer furious. I am instead indignant and disappointed. What kind of wantabe middle class wanker – publishes such a vile and personal attack on one, just one individual and then says “It’s not about Ekow”. What kind of intellectual integrity remains in Mute? This article is entirely about Ekow!! It should have been about capitalism, art and our commitment to it. It was however about a black man and importantly not a mixed race black man, but a full blooded first generation born immigrant black man having the audacity to run an art space on The Mall! The article by ‘JJ’ should have been about how all of us have been entangled in the capitalist system, how art galleries all across the world are in the process of decomposing as a result of their entanglement with corporate finance or worse – mafia money and what we might be able to do to assist the ICA – one of the first galleries to go public on the issue. The pursuit of Ekow Enshun and this micro-fixation on him cutting the Live Art programme is an attempt by people like ‘JJ’ to wash away our combined capitalist sin by surrendering a black man. Is this the example of what is to come next? Perhaps the focus on the ICA is also because of the number of Jews are its board? Is history repeating itself? How can this authour not see this pattern, how can the contributors not see what they are doing? Is Mute, so white, so middle class, so frontier Hackney gentrifies that it has no reference points to understand? There are so many examples of this lynching throughout the article but ironically the most obvious is the use of the images selected to illustrate the article. (Why any images are needed, I am not sure, perhaps Mute thinks its readers can’t read more than a few paragraphs without some kind of Kit-Kat Break?) Mute & ‘JJ’ want us to make sure we don’t forget that Ekow is all alone, without supporters and perhaps even without a community. This was done throughout the colonial projects; isolating a person, making it easier to personally justify acts of violence and denigration onto an isolated object, removing them from something that is bigger that they belonged to. In the process Mute & ‘JJ’ want to make sure that we don’t forget Ekow is really black, not just a little bit black as we like them to be – European features and mocha skin – best if they have a bouncy afro also. There is nothing Anglo about Ekow at all, he clearly doesn’t and shouldn’t fit in. Of course there would be an image of him standing in front of some silly sign; badly spelt and badly designed. Again we see a familiar pattern – these are not unlike images of freed slaves illustrated in front of failed crops or Africans photographed in dilapidating colonial buildings post their independence. What this and all the other ‘surrender Ekow’ stories should actually be about is how capitalism and corporate capitalism swept us all up. How we were happy to live and work in a low tax economy. The ‘ex-ica’ contributor should note that Mute & ‘JJ’ are the ones creating the spin. All the ‘artists, intelligent people, curators, blah blah’ s/he lists should see that this discussion is being spun away from the real questions at stake here. Mute, ‘JJ’, ex-ica etc etc have all participated in the last ferocious capitalist revival – perhaps on different scales but don’t think for a second they haven’t paid some or much of their mortgage off (owning property!) without many capitalist created pennies. As I pointed out earlier, Mute, for example, has always participated and benefited ‘regeneration schemes’ – first Tory, then New Labour. Mute has always taken money away from artists via the Arts Council, always used flexible labour practices and always used other capitalist techniques/approaches – such as advertising, sales and ‘donations’ to ‘sustain’ their organisation. The scale might be different but the actions are the same – ‘we are all capitalists now’. Tell me one gallery in London; The Whitechapel, the Tate Modern, The Serpentine, the whatever whatever – they are as entangled with capitalism as much, perhaps even more than the ICA has been. You reading this have been and remain entangled with capitalism! The problem Ekow has is as a first generation immigrant black man, he doesn’t have quite as many names in the telephone book that Peyton-Jones or HUO, for example do. He has less people to call for anonymous donations or to open doors to money. His other problem is, unlike so many other so called contemporary art galleries, he would not have wanted to enter into the process of having exhibitions paid for in exchange for cleaning very dirty money from Russia and other countries whilst chaperoning highly dubious individuals through the process of accumulating cultural and social acceptance in British or European society. So what if he took $185,000 from an IT company that went broke, do you have any idea where most of the money comes from for these other galleries and art fairs?? It is fair to say nothing but intellectual corruption and indolence would offer up the closure of the Live Art programme as a reason for the ICA’s predicament. It is more likely the ICA now finds itself in this situation because it refused to go ‘all the way’ with full horrors of ‘art and capitalism’. It is here the real story lays for what ‘ex-ica’ calls ‘artists, intellectuals, curators … whatevers’ – and our own entanglement and compliance with capitalism. It is the internal landscape that needs to be explored before organisations like Mute and ‘critics’ like ‘JJ’ who due their intellectual laziness and conceit (psycho-geography babble for example?!) will once again provide the fertile soil and light for people like Tony Blair or worse to once again grow and flourish. It remains to be seen if the all white trustafairans will go to their holiday homes with their children once the European summer arrives like they did in 68 or if they start to understand the seriousness of what they have just published. PS: If as many emails/bloggs were written about the illegal wars Britain is fighting (with your passive agreement) as you pseudo political art-wankers have done attempting to web-lynch Ekow there might be a half decent planet still around for future generations! Mokabi Allen's comments are
Mokabi Allen's comments are little more than the incoherent ramblings of a confused half-wit. ICA figures
All ICA funding and figures should be accessible to all via the Freedom of Information Act (FOI) - if the ICA do dispute JJ Charlesworth's figures, readers can check for themselves by emailing the FOI officer at Arts Council England - details on their website. Although having seen the ICA's rather terse and defensive reply at the top of the comments page (you don't have to check with a public body's press office about their finances post-FOI), I rather think that I can guess the answers. As for the suggestion that arguing that ICA and Eshun in particular, are incompetent is racist, this type of argument is to be expected - and perhaps our angry correspondent is right that the Guardian, the Times and Mute are in some sort of racist conspiracy to oust Ekow although that wouldn't explain why Ekow called in Thorp to do an organisational review and has freely admitted to losing money hand over fist. Ekow was always going to bit of a hot potato and its important to remember he had absolutely no relevant experience when taking on the job - alas it looks like that he AND Guy Perricone (not mentioned enough and has scarpered) AND the board (who seem to be hiding beneath the parapet) have been financially incompetent for almost all their regime. Eshun deserves some respect because he's the one facing the flak whilst the board dither and Perricone has disappeared, but the buck, alas, looks like it's going to have to stop with him. Dermot bbc arts editor
i'm not sure ekow is voluntarily staying to face the flak. i heard he applied for the bbc news arts editor job. it went to will gompertz, who is equally unqualified and (interestingly) friendly with and supported by yentob too. do you think gompertz will cover the ica issues? he should but i doubt he will of course. Thank you Allen, for raising
Thank you Allen, for raising important questions about art and circuits of globalisation and neo-liberal policy. I, too, have been dismayed and embarrassed by the vitriolic comments directed towards Ekow. What the people making these personal attacks don't realise is that the so called 'glory days' of the ICA were at a time when the institute was being bank-rolled by the government. The change in the financial structure needs to be acknowledged. This has nothing to do with public programming and the end of 'live art' or the lack of vision. 'JJ' did not acknowledge the fact that Ekow inherited an institution in dire trouble - a sinking ship. Nor that he was responsible for opening up the ICA - no more entrance fees, no more 'members only' cafe, films for a fiver on Monday nights etc. The new approach to public programming - "experiment in de-institutionalisation, prototyping a lightweight, responsive arts organisation able to cope with more straitened and complicated times " - sounds like just what we need our institutions to do! To reflect, to open up and to challenge us to think about how we want culture to operate. It might also be a chance to discuss/debate and consider alternate funding structures. This isn't about creating spaces for art works or art 'events' that are ready for display and consumption but an opportunity to create a space where questions/commentary/insight are produced. This has nothing to do with 'being cool' - but rather to do with being thoughtful, innovative and challenging. Charles Esche from the Van Abbemuseum in the Netherlands is doing this very thing - stopping the production of new projects/exhibitions and instead reflecting upon the role of culture in a time of a global financial crash. In stark contrast to the treatment of Ekow, Charles has been widely praised for leading the way forward for cultural institutions (thankfully for Charles, his institution is almost entirely funded by the government). Makes me wonder if Allen is right about the web lynching of Ekow. I have never seen another director treated with such disdain - begs one to ask difficult questions about race and equality in 21st century London. Not least, as Allen pointed out, due to the problematic images used to illustrate this article and the venomous personal attacks it has incited. No surprise that white commentators will find this observation difficult to swallow and will thus be either dismissive or defensive. JJ has written a vicious and poorly researched piece - offering no thoughtful or productive observations. No propositions and only blame hinged on one person. Not one mention of capitalism, the art market, neo-liberal art policies forcing a reliance on funds from dubious individuals, corporations, development companies, or 'society' friends. Natashap I look forward to hearing your response. Mute is there no editorial voice - how on earth did you allow this chap to have such a platform? I've met him several times before - including at the ICA in fact! Come on Mute - you used to be better then this. Look forward to reading your response (following b and Allen) calling for a critical review of Mute. Lack of knowledge
You clearly have never worked at the ICA or have any understanding of quite how badly mis managed the institution has been over the last five years. duplicitous???
www.metamute.org/en/content/internships Lunch & travel paid for six month internships - min. two days per week! Duplicitous??? Exploitation??? It really is time Mute's 'credibility' in addressing the topics of capitalist exploitation, creative industries & criticism are questioned! J Dickson Verity, Ekow and the spectacle of debate
As an ex-member of ICA staff, I'm very glad to see this article published, not least because in a funny way it's gratifying to see what was previously a private hell opened up to debate. The ICA is, at the bottom of it, a public arts centre, and so its policies, programming and problems are rightly a matter of public discussion. There's a lot I'd like to get off my chest, but I'll try to restrict it here to what might be helpful. On verity: alongside the recent piece in the Guardian, this is actually one of the better-researched pieces into the current crisis. I can't say that I remember every budget figure presented in staff meeting (but those trying to highlight the role of Guy Perricone alongside Ekow in the crisis are correct; read his blog http://www.ica.org.uk/13233/Guy-Perricones-blog/Its-behind-you-its-behind-you.html to get a sense of the man), but the account of sponsorship, and particularly the relationships with SpinVox and GuestInvest seems substantially correct to me. On singling out Ekow: does he have "quite as many names in the telephone book"? Actually, he does, they're just more likely to be from the worlds of television, advertising and magazines than they are from art or cultural organisations. This might account for the fact that of the five senior managers during the majority of the period under discussion three had magazine backgrounds, one was an internal promotion and the fifth was Perricone. Ekow's hardly an outsider: he knows people, and he likes to know people. Socially, he always gives you the impression of being rather embarrassed by your uncoolness. (He is not, however, as rude as Alan Yentob, who will literally stop talking to you mid-sentence if someone more interesting happens by.) Sarah Mackenzie's exhortation "to challenge us to think about how we want culture to operate" reeks of exactly the faux-naive posturing that Charlesworth is attempting to critique here, forestalling actual debate by suggesting the spectacle of debate. Challenge us? As a longtime non-curating, non-managing arts worker, it might not be surprising to hear that I've actually thought about how I want 'culture to operate' quite a lot, and my main conclusion is that I'd like people running places like the ICA to be a bit less arrogant, a bit more competent, and give just a little bit more of a shit about their staff. That's all. link not working
The link to the blog isn't working. It seems to have been removed from the ica's web site.
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On behalf of the ICA
Whilst we entirely respect JJ Charlesworth's right to opinion and Mute's right to publish, we need to state that no facts or figures were checked with us and therefore must be read as unsubstantiated and subjective. We would welcome a full right to reply in the next issue.