A Palestinian literature event that was at the heart of a censorship controversy earlier this year is coming to the Barbican Centre in London tomorrow (14 September).
There was public outrage in April when Voices of Resilience, which comprises readings from diaries written by Palestinian authors during the outbreak of the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, was initially cancelled by another venue, the arts centre Home in Manchester. According to the Guardian, Home made the decision after the Jewish Representative Council of Greater Manchester claimed that a participating writer, Atef Abu Saif, who is also the Palestinian Authority’s culture minister, is antisemitic. The organiser of Voices of Resilience, Comma Press, called these allegations “baseless and libellous”.
After widespread pushback, including an open letter signed by more than 300 cultural works and more than 100 artists removing works from an exhibition at Home in protest, the institution reinstated the event and issued an apology. Voices of Resilience was held at Home on 22 April; last month it travelled to the Edinburgh International Book Festival.
This weekend at the Barbican marks the first time Voices of Resilience will be staged in the UK capital. It comes after a recent period of controversy at the Barbican in which the institution faced accusations of censorship on Palestine.
Last year, a talk by Pankaj Mishra, titled “The Shoah after Gaza” (Shoah is the Hebrew term for the Holocaust) and held in collaboration with the London Review of Books, was pulled after Barbican decided it was unable “to do the careful preparation needed for this sensitive content”. This impacted an exhibition at the centre, Unravel: the Power and Politics of Textile in Art, which ran from 13 February to 26 May, after a number of lenders and artists pulled works from that show to protest against the Barbican’s cancellation.
The Barbican’s decision to put on the Voices of Resilience festival has come with direct messaging on the Gaza crisis in its marketing materials. On the webpage for the event, the blurb includes a quote from Amnesty International referencing people in Gaza experiencing “alarming signs of genocide”.
When contacted by The Art Newspaper, the Barbican declined to comment as to whether its hosting of Voices of Resilience reflects a change in policy around the staging of Palestine-related events. Instead, it provided a statement from its recently appointed director for arts and participation, Devyani Saltzman, who says: “I’m very much looking forward to welcoming the artists and writers of Voices of Resilience, in line with the Barbican’s purpose for inspiration, debate and to be a leading space for the essential voices of artists.”
Saltzman’s appointment marks one of several staffing changes among Barbican senior management. In July this year Claire Spencer, chief executive of the Barbican, stepped down from her role after just two years. In a post on LinkedIn Spencer wrote that she had not taken the decision lightly and that it was time to hand the job over to someone with “fresh legs”.
The chair of the Barbican Centre board, William Russell, said in a statement that the board will begin the process of recruiting a new chief executive following “a period of reflection”.