The Warring States of NPF - The morallity of art or Canada fears artwork

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The morallity of art or Canada fears artwork

So while diving through my Deviantart messages, I came across an interest case about artist "R�my Couture" being arrested in Canada for making realistic super gory art.

Info can be found here.
http://news.deviantart.com/article/162439/
and here
http://innerdepravity.deviantart.com/
Warning may be NSFW to view this page signed into your DA due to his gore art.

It sounded dumb on the surfice but after learning a bit about the case and Mr.Couture himself. It seems the charges are aimed more at the fact that in his short films it looked like they really did kill a teenager. Even though they didn't, someone panic'd, called the police and Mr.Couture was arrested.

He is promised a trial and is getting quite a bit of support from some of the now ticked off artists and fans on DA.

One of the users asked Remy a series of very good question. Remy was gladly answered each of his/her questions.

Quote:

1-How much money were you charging to view your films ? ( you did charge right ? I mean how else would you have funded them ? )

The website innerdepravity.com was free.INNERDEPRAVITY.COM was a web-based multimedia project I produced and created back in 2005. The content, a series of short movies along with photoshoots, were displayed by thematics. I am also a special FX makeup artist, and my goal was to put in practise the various special FX techniques I acquired throughout the past years.

2-How much money were you planning on charging the couple who booked you and your studio to make photos of themselves for Halloween, er before you discovered they were undercover cops ?

I usually charge 150$ per person, including prosthetic.

3-Did you really resist arrest until one of the cops pulled a gun on you, in the street ?

Sure because they wasn't dress like police and never show me Police ID.

4-Did you refuse to attend two court dates ? No

5-Did you really think trial by jury was a better idea than the alternative offered to you of judicial judgment.

Yes because we talk here about a social case, it's better to have 12 opinons then 1.

6-How much money have you received in donations, and just what exactly are you planning to use it for.

There is some fundraiser right now and we plan to get about 15 000, the trial cost to me about 30 000$ fee( lawers and psychologist )
It's one year lawyer work, so all donate is to pay the fee.

7-How much is your day job paying you ? Under 50 000 $

8-How do you explain the "Artistic" merit/concept behind the films you have made other than the "Ima make up artist" line , and if they were just to show case your Make up Art skills why did you not make a show reel of stills that could be shown commercially with out breaching any laws on obscenity ?

Innerdepravity perpertratres the terrible mindset of a serial killer. A tattooed masked man performs many of his killings in many different settings, and every killing is accompanied with a photographic journal of his deviances. im a make-up artist and producer.Nothing in my wrok was diffrent then what you see on horror film.
To create a good make-up fx, is better to create an universe to make people believe in. no ?? create need artistic view !

9 If you are a film maker ? who is also a make up artist ? who is also a graphic designer, who is also an Artist, and you are also 30years old, ( well around the 30 mark) How could you Not know the Laws regarding your er work ? ( and if you did why'd it take you untill you were 30 years old to start breaking them ? bit of a late development?)

Are you kidding me ??

First of all: Access to my website since 2005 was strictly allowed to a mature audience(18 years old and up), due to the graphic content of my art.

Second, im maybe an ignorant,but as many people here in canada, we never heard about this corruption of moral law. If we apply this law, we WILL BAN ALL HORROR AND PORN MATERIAL, please read and read again the law :
(a) makes, prints, publishes, distributes, circulates, or has in his possession for the purpose of publication, distribution or circulation any obscene written matter, picture, model, phonograph record or other thing whatever; or
(b) makes, prints, publishes, distributes, sells or has in his possession for the purposes of publication, distribution or circulation a crime comic. "Crime comics" are stated to be books that glorify criminal activities and have at least one depiction of such criminal actions of the book's text.

10-Do you Honestly not understand why the Canadian police took your computer ? and why they have to view the over 5000 images on it ?

Because they never investigated about me. You dont know everything about it. Its easy to you to judge, but the whole story will see the light at my tiral.

11-You have said yourself your work is highly disturbing, so are you really surprised that other people agree with you and deeply question your motives ?

Look, there is a movie cast at the end and it was cleary mentionned in the disclaimer that everything was fake in my website. Can i be more cleary ? My motive is the same of all people who like horror, did Tom Savini has deviance to make horror stuff since 40 years ?

12-Can you not understand that Interpol actually do track down and catch real killers, rapists, child murderers and other "Real" obscene criminals, and that your attempts to play" pretend" bad man, must make everyone who has had to deal with your case want to lock you up if only to stop you wasting genuinely valuable time , as well as question deeply your level of intelligence.

To question my level of intelligence need an investigation. They have to investigated where i live, what i do in life,what is my lifestyle, my hobby,my social life..... To question my intelligence is one thing, but to treat me as a criminal after the evidence that im an artist... That is stupid and waste of time and money !

13 Ever heard of Alfred Hitchcock ? its a good starting point at your age to move in to understanding the psychology of fear and how to incorporate it into film, mind you I dunno what His make up skills were ?

First of all, Innerdepravity was a old project, i work on many stuff and innerdepravity was not my priority, most of the picture and film was made in 2005-2006. Now i work in all kind of project, not only gory and disturbing material. I like gore but its only the way where i want to go. I want to explore all kind of way !

Like I said ,Don't go breaking any bail conditions to reply Remy.

I dont break any condition,i can use computer !

This case as got me thinking. About how much Moral Insensitivety can affect art work and projects. On one hand it's good to crack down on some of this stuff but on the other, it's harmful to the artcommunity and can scare some artists from even attempting things like realism and horror or even hentai considering that you can and will be arrested for stuff like this.

I may live in the US but personally it really on a matter of time before the US decides to go down this road. Assuming they havn't already.

What do you guys think?

Frankly, this is just another case of the people with all the power not having enough of the information they need to make a proper decision. I'm really ashamed that it's happening in my country, but we're all still people. It's still the same human race and we're all still flawed.

I've gotten into Marilyn Manson recently at the behest of a few friends and it looks to me that a lot of the stuff he talks about would apply here. He does his "thing" to show people an angle that they wouldn't otherwise see, to set them outside their comfort zone just to show them what it feels like.

It's funny, I thought we had gotten past the point where people could just ban artwork because it makes them uncomfortable. Couture's stuff isn't really my area of interest, but I appreciate the value of what he's doing, and he's damn good at it. There's no more reason for him to go behind bars than for the people behind the Saw franchise to.

I want to believe that everything will be made clear at the trial, and Couture will walk. But honestly, I don't have enough faith in humanity to see that as the most likely option. He'll end up with a jury of 12 people, more than half of whom will look at his artwork, immediately feel nauseous, and knee-jerk a guilty verdict without considering the facts at all.

I honestly thought we were above this kind of treatment towards artwork too. But then this happened and I discovered canada's little law about "morally insensitive art is illegal" and my heart just sunk.

Though I feel that he might win this case in the end. Since it did seem mostly aimed at them thinking he murdered some of his actors in his films.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kyanbu The Legend (Post 1160097)

That "morally insensitive art" law sounds like the kind of thing that they would have done decades ago and just forgotten about, only to drag it up when it supports their argument again.

Really, there should be an expiry date on laws in general. Reinstate them if they're still relevant, but otherwise just let them die. It makes it easier to avoid this kind of debacle, and it forces people to continually rethink whether the current rules are sane enough to continue enforcing. It also means that (in theory) it'd be harder to casually "ignore" laws like they keep doing in the US. If you've reinstated the First Amendment, and then the police force turns around and assaults peaceful protesters, there'd hopefully be a bit more dust kicked up about it.

Quote:

What do you guys think?

I think that depictions of violent sadism and gore for it's own sake, or even simply for the sake of exercising free speech rights, is repulsive and degrading.

But, even though I don't think that's something that should happen, I think that if someone wants to view or create such works of art that they should be able to do so.

Read a couple other articles on this. I have a feeling that this will be more about whether any of his actors were underage or not. My understanding is that he's being charged under child pornography laws.

"While I don't agree with your view, I would do anything to protect your right to express it" is an old saying that comes to mind. It used to apply to politics rather than arts, but since we're politicizing artistic expressions here I think it's appropriate.

Also I had the impression he was charged with suspicion of murder. Interesting that people would think pictures that show what might be interpreted as autopsy performed by someone overdosing on PCP, is porn.

I think the person who reported him to Interpol thought the videos were depicting real events, however I'm pretty sure what he's actually being charged under is child pornography. Like I said, I'm kinda thinkin it's gonna be mostly about the ages of his actors. That said, information seems a bit sparse and contradictory.

At any rate, I'm not prepared to call the government on abusing obscenity laws just yet.

Quote:

Originally Posted by BitVyper

This kind of makes it sound like they are just looking for anything they can attempt to pin him on which would totally be an abuse of the law, but then again I guess I don't really understand the context of what is in the film or what specifically these obscenity laws are supposed to censor.

Quote:

This kind of makes it sound like they are just looking for anything they can attempt to pin him on which would totally be an abuse of the law

Not if they have reason to believe that he's been using underage actors. Articles that detail exactly what is happening are hard to find, however. Most of them are pretty heavily lopsided and don't actually provide the government's position.