 Hello everybody and welcome to a special episode of Voice TV dedicated to our dear friend and comrade the journalist and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. As we all know if Julian is going to be extradited to the US he will be facing 175 years in prison. He is being treated as a war criminal and he is the one that is responsible for revealing war crimes and crimes against humanity. So why is he the one behind the bars we are asking every day? Why are you so afraid of Assange and who is afraid of Assange? Before I introduced my dear guest tonight we have a short birthday message for him from Yanis Varoufakis. So President Biden why are you afraid of Julian Assange? Boris Johnson, Angela Merkel, Manuel Macron, the great and the good, tyrants, tin pot dictators and democratically elected leaders seem to be scared of Julian Assange. The question is why? Well we know why don't we? Through WikiLeaks Julian succeeded in terrorizing Big Brother. He took Big Brother's technologies, constructed a digital mirror out of them, a huge one and turned it towards the face of Big Brother. So we who are being watched by Big Brother can watch Big Brother watching us. Nothing terrifies Big Brother more than that. The beauty of WikiLeaks is that it operates like an international, a global letterbox where any whistleblower can post and place within it information that consents all of us. WikiLeaks checks it out. They don't even know who it was that deposited that information. This is how they guarantee that no one can find out if they don't know themselves and then allows us to know what Big Brother, Big Business, the big states are doing on our behalf behind our backs supposedly in order to keep us safe while procuring the greatest insecurity and committing the worst crimes against humanity. This is why you are killing slowly, intentionally in a premeditated criminal fashion, Julian Assange's body, every day in Britain's Guantanamo, in Belmarsh. This is why we are looking at you in the eye in the same way that WikiLeaks has allowed us to look at Big Brother's eye and we are telling you in no uncertain terms. You stand accused of criminality and of murdering a man that made it possible for the rest of us to know your crimes. We shall not rest until those who perpetrate the crimes and those who cover up for them, like President Biden, President Macron, Mrs. Angela Merkel, Mr. Boris Johnson, the rest of those view in supposed authority are held into account. Meanwhile, with a smile on our face, we wish Julian Assange a very happy birthday. Okay, I think we have some little technical issues. Okay, I hope you all saw the video because I didn't see it for some reason. So today I have two very special guests, Angela Richter, a theater director and daughter, and Davide Dormino's daughter. Both of them have been fighting through their work for the freedom of whistleblowers and are very much dedicated to fighting for Julian's freedom. Angela and Davide, it's a great pleasure to have you with us tonight. Hello. Hi, everyone. Hello. I'm not sure what is happening. I don't hear anything. Do you hear me now? Obviously not because Davide, do you hear me? Yeah. I can hear you too. So obviously, Maya is the only one not hearing now. Okay, we can talk between me and you. So, well, we obviously lost our moderator, so I hope we are not totally lost. Yeah, you will just wait till they resolve the technical problem. And yeah, let's talk, let's just start to talk about our topic. Davide, I will just ask you some questions that I want to know. So maybe we start with that. It's about your work. How did you come across the idea to make this, in the meantime, very famous sculpture of the three whistleblowers? And when was it and what inspired you? Yeah, it inspired me the story of WikiLeaks. As you know, the role of an artist is to keep the information around us. So what I try to do is to visualize something that is connected with our lives. And the story of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, in this case, Chelsea Mendinga and Edward Snowder. It's a very hard story, especially for the government, who try to hide hidden some of their crimes. What I try to do is to create sculptures and a tinder and monument, difference from the other monument that we can see in the main square of the most important city that usually stay on the pedestal and nobody can touch it. We'll just see from the from down. And I created an Italian artwork in bronze, life-size bronze of Assange Mendinga Snowden standing on three chairs with an empty four chairs next to them. And the empty chairs invite the people to take place next to them and to speak out the truth. But also it's a free pedestal where you can stand and when you can sit there and you can say something different if you want from what they did. And since seven years the statue has traveled from in 15 European cities. At the moment the statue is in Geneva. We inaugurated the artwork the 5th of June where the Club de la Presse in Switzerland launched an appeal for the liberation of Julian Assange. Yeah, it's very interesting. I was there when it was in Berlin. I think it was in Berlin a few times as far as I know. I was there when it was at the Brandenburger Tor. And I was surprised that there were really lots of people using the opportunity to stand on the fourth chair and be on the same level, you know, like the whistleblowers. And I must admit I didn't because I was too shy to push myself in the front, you know. So I was rather observing it. But many people did, including Nils Melza. And sure you met him too. He did that. And I think he even was holding a little speech while he was standing on the chair, which was very interesting. And I think that he what he did for Julian was really a lot. I mean, many people supported him over the years in a similar manner. But I think it's like always it took a man from a position, you know, a white male man, maybe a cliche, to finally be heard in a way, I think. And this is a good thing in this case, of course, you know. Yeah, I think that when Nils Melza said what he said, he changed it a little bit the public opinion of Julian Assange, that at that moment was very low. So he revealed a lot of things of the background of Julian. And I think from that, since that moment, changed a lot of things. Yes, I think it came out in the public. And what I find very interesting also what I came to realize even more than before, of course, I was a veteran fit. But, you know, we take human rights for granted, you know. And the best, especially Europe is very proud of their human rights and everyone can be free and so on. But what I realized that they are they don't play a role in my life because I don't need them, you know. And that applies to most of the people. In Julian Assange's case, who exposed the powerful who spoke truth to power, exposed war crimes. And who's the only one, you know, he was like you said, he was putting the like Janice said, he was putting a mirror there. It's even a big light he shed on on war crimes. But what actually happened is that they reversed the light onto him. You know, all of a sudden he was in the center of it. And I was observing it for more than 10 years what happened with his reputation, how they managed to destroy his reputation and so on. He himself called it character assassination. So the first play I did. It was 2012. I did about it. It was called assassinate Assange. And at that point, I was not even aware how far the assassination will be. And like I said, this is something which I only became aware that the human rights are only worth if it can be used in cases like Julian's who spoke truth to power. When it is challenged, someone who challenges the most powerful people in the world and the most powerful military in the world and secret service and so on. If then we need those human rights and they just didn't happen, you know, in his case. And this is for me the most shocking part that not, besides from press freedom, which we can talk about too, of course, human rights don't seem to exist in the moment when you really need them in Europe. And this is something which I found, yeah, I don't know, utterly deeply disturbing. Yeah. And another example is Amnesty International, who started to launch the petition very, very, very late. I think maybe one year ago, something like that. Yeah, you're right. You're right, Angela. You're right. So tell me something about you and about what you created. Yeah, well, I actually started doing one play, like I said, it was 2012. I think I met Julian for the first time. I think it was 2011. Ah, now Maya is coming. I'm very sorry, I have no idea what happened. I think that my computer got really hot because even though the air conditioning is working, it's like 40 degrees here. So that's the only explanation. Are you sure? Maybe there are some enemies that are trying to... I'm trying not to be paranoid because of the topic, but yeah. You are not paranoid enough. I'm not paranoid enough, yes. So, but thank you for starting the talk without the host. That's really nice of you. But if you have a topic that you opened before I came, you can continue. Well, we just first spoke a little bit about Davide's sculpture, and then we talked about the non-existence of human rights in the case of Julian. And now I started telling how I began to work with WikiLeaks and with Julian. I would just say a few words. I mean, many people already know it, but maybe some don't. I started with Assassinate Assange in 2012. I met Julian like one and a half years earlier, so he was still free and walking around in Britain in London at that time when I met him the first two times, but he was already on the house arrest. So he was already not really a free person. He was wearing a tag on his foot and so on, and had this time that he had to be at home. And so he was not really free at that point, but compared to the years to come, it was, of course, different. And a year later, when he entered the embassy, I actually started to interview him for the play. And so, and I was at that point thinking, okay, you know, it will take one, two years, and then the case will be resolved, you know, and the play was called Assassinate Assange. And like I said to Davide, I never knew at the point how much this title will be prophetic for the next decade, you know, it was actually sad to state that. But yeah, that's what happened. And somehow I'm even glad that I didn't know because, you know, when he entered the Ecuadorian Embassy and I really got to know him, we were so full of hope, you know, everything looked like, okay, you know, that justice and truth will prevail after a short period of time. But no, you know, it just wouldn't, it got worse and worse and worse. And this is something that was really difficult to watch over the last decade, what the system did to Julian, you know, not only that he's now in a prison in isolation and stuff, but even before that, you know, the time in the embassy, it was so difficult. I think people can relate to it now a bit more that they experienced one year of lockdown. And this lockdown that the experience is nothing, nothing to sit in a room and not be able to even go out on a balcony or something, you know. So it's unbelievable what he went through in seven years. So already, and then after that, it even had a set climax going to, to a supermax prison, the British Guantanamo, like Janice pointed out, which is really not, not very, it's not exaggerated to say that. And yeah, it's, it's, it's something that made me realize lots about the world that we live in. And yeah, so I continued to work, like I said, I was thinking, okay, I will do one play and I ended up, I think all in all, I did four plays where he was either the main topic or one of the topics, you know. Yeah, it's interesting what you just said about, that was, I also visited Julian, it was 2016 when I, when I visited him, it was the right after the event, first day, came for Assange that we did in a couple of cities. And I remember that when I came there, and of course, we know all three of us have been there, that it was really small. And I, of course, I thought, okay, it's an embassy. And Renata told me that it would be small, but I really didn't imagine that it would be like smaller than, than my place, you know, I imagine an embassy, it's supposed to be like something huge where he can walk in some kind of a garden or something in my imagination. And then I, I remember, you know, this, this room with these curtains where he cannot, you know, reveal the curtains because he can be attacked from outside. It's like on the street, it's in the first floor, not even the first, but the ground floor. And then I didn't know what to say to him. It was really a weird situation because if I would start talking to him, what, what is happening outside and what we were doing, I felt like, no, we can't talk about that. He's here. And then about my trip to North Korea, no, I know he wants to hear about that, but he'd have travel. And it was really weird. And now you're comparing it to COVID, of course, that it's much worse for him than it was for us during COVID. But I remember that when the lockdowns started, and we in Serbia had really severe lockdowns, we were locked for four days that we could not leave the house at all, you know, during the weekends and from five p.m. every day to tomorrow. And I remember that for me, the first time it happened, all my friends were like, oh, going crazy. And I was like, no, this is okay, you know, I thought of him. And I was like, this is for him. This is every day for him for seven years. And now for two more years, even worse. And I was like, no, I'm completely okay with this because I'm going to go on the street in a couple of hours, you know, and I have to be okay with with this. And I just can't imagine what kind of torture in a system that we call democratic, you know, is happening to him for all these years. And I think that it's really a great thing that both of you are doing these artworks that are making people a little bit aware, you know, of the situation he is going through. And also the message that he gave to us, because like your your play, the other one, the super nerds, which we will see a little excerpt from, we can even see it now in a couple of minutes. But I just wanted to ask you what kind of not problems, but did you have some kind of problems? I'll just give a short introduction to super nerds, or a multimedia interactive play that you did. And it was in Schauspiel Köln, right, in 2015. But it was also broadcasted on the television radio and online. And it was very interesting that you were actually spying in a way, you did a little bit of surveillance spying on the audience. And I think it was a really great thing because people realized that this abstract thing of like being surveilled, because I know a lot of people that are like, I don't care, who is looking at my phone and stuff, became very concrete. Like we can do this, really, like not we, like Angela Richter, a theater director can do this. Can you imagine what the US government can do if I just a small little theater artist can do to you, you know, you're not even using I don't know how big hacking systems then. But I think it's a really great thing that you gave this experience to the audience. But I was interested how the audience reacted to this spying. And did people realize it? And did you have these discussions with people? And also did you have problems with dealing with all these topics of Julian? Because as we know, all of us here are very much in favor of Julian and his message to the world. But there are people even in in lots of places that think that he's a traitor, that think that he is, you know, somebody who who actually is a spy or Russia spy, whatever they think of him. Did you have problems like, you know, with people during all this work you did concerning him? Yes, very much so, especially in the beginning, you know, when I did assassinate Assange, there were two different phases actually, because I did for so many years, you know, I was actually visiting him every few months, sometimes weeks, it depended, you know, how much time I had and so on. But, you know, we developed a friendship over the years. So I continue to work. And it was very hard for me to, you know, to experience him as a person who I really started to like and to know and also to see what he did to humanity, what service he did and what was coming back, you know. So that was first, the first smear was of course the problem with Sweden. So I was very much attacked by feminists, you know, and leftist. I mean, I consider myself a feminist, you know, so, but it was very interesting because people didn't even see the play because in the first play I included the police protocols of the two women in itself are so revealing. And I was furious that none of the newspapers of the world was even looking into the fucking protocols because even just to read them, even if they were manipulated by the police and so on, as we know today, but even in this manipulated form, they were actually revealing a lot of his innocence in my opinion. So I put those in the big parts of it I put in the play and the rest the original paper I gave to the audience, you know, as a program so that they can see the facts, you know, that we had so far, you know. So, but nonetheless, they wouldn't even, they didn't want to even listen. They didn't want to read before the play was shown in Vienna because speaking about Vienna, you know, who has a very strong leftist and feminist community, they were asking for the play to be forbidden in an open letter to me. And even the director at that time was putting pressure on me to take out the Swedish chase. And I said, no, I'm not doing that. And if you want to forbid the play, you have to do it. You have to go openly and censor my play. But I'm not going to censor myself, you know. So and overnight, somebody sprayed on the theater, which is a typical Viennese old building, you know, very beautiful, and they sprayed no stage for rapists. So people were hysteric, you know, it was really interesting. Nobody wanted to even listen, you know, maybe psychologically sometimes I think they were just glad that they don't have to look at the war crimes and all the ugly things that he exposed, they were occupied judging his character. You know, I don't know, maybe some psychologists have to cope with that. And also what the press did. I mean, today, or I think, no, maybe it was, I think it was two days ago on his birthday, Frankfurt, Rundschau, a German newspaper, they put a huge letter on the front page. In a way, I would say they are even apologizing to him in a way, like acknowledging finally, acknowledging what he did and reassuring him of their solidarity. And I was thinking, my God, you are really too late, you know, you should have done that fucking 10 years ago, or at least six, seven years ago. So anyway, I will continue. So I did that and then I did the play with surveillance. And at that time, it became again very difficult because then after that, he got involved in this US election, you know, and when the Swedish case a little bit came in the background, and then Trump came. And again, we had a problem, you know, because the press and then also the audience would pick up everything, thankfully, that can be used against him. So he was all of a sudden, I remember when he put out the emails of Hillary, which exposed her, you know, and they were correct. It was no lies in it. And even a US judge was ruling at some point that this was something that the public needs to know, you know, of public relevance. And still people blame Tim only for Trump to be elected. But I know when it happened that somebody, everybody was saying in the press, oh, it's not even interesting. Nothing is revealed. Just go on, you know, don't watch it. And then when Trump became president, everybody said, Oh, it's him. You know, so I don't know, I have the feeling that Julian Assange was the scapegoat for everything that went wrong. You know, trying to somehow them asize it in my place. And like you said, your first question about the reactions. Yes, I did some survey surveillance on the audience. And I was even able to do things that were kind of good. I really also, I had the best advice. I went to Moscow to meet Edward Snowden for the first time. And he also told me some things. So I did have some good, you know, background to do it, you know, you're not just a little theater director, you were a little hacker theater director. I'm not a hacker myself, but I hired some people who can do it. And they really did a great job. And we even started it weeks before. So even people would purchase a ticket online. They were already in the game. They were receiving letters from Jacob Applebaum and people involved, even getting calls. And I mean, we involved them like in a movie, you know, and the funny thing is after a while, people start to forget it's only a game. So at some point, we said, Oh, my God, something went wrong with the technique. And we are so sorry, but now you are on a no fly list. And people would really believe it. There was some, some journalists from the local newspapers who freaked out, they called the theater and said, like, What are you doing? We want to go to America next week on holiday. We have a no fly list. It was very interesting that how easy it is actually to make people forget everything and then believe everything. So for me, it was very interesting. And most of the audience were really shocked, especially by the way older people, I would say 40 plus and even more, they were totally unaware of these things. And some of them even even watched the play twice. And they approached me and said, I couldn't sleep for a week, you know, after after your play. So I think it did make this very abstract feeling. I mean, today we have this problem. It's a little bit like climate change. But climate change, you can even see some pictures of floods, of burning now even, you know, the heat, everything. It's, it's, it's abstract, but you have at least some pictures in your head with surveillance. It's really invisible. And we don't feel it. And we don't feel like someone was unfree. Yeah, I think the play managed to show a little bit of that. And David, your sculpture, I don't know if you, you talked about it and how much you talked about it, but it's a really magnificent sculpture for people that don't know, but most of the people know about it. Anything to say. It was for the first time, it is a traveling sculpture. So it's going from place to place. And it features, it's a bronze sculpture of Julian Assange, Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning that are standing on chairs. We will also see a short excerpt of it later. And there is a fourth chair. The fourth chair is the chair for the audience, while the people that that see the sculpture that can do something with it. And it also won the, the, a very pre-zetic prize in 2016 by Antikor. And it traveled, I think, more than 15 cities, right? Yeah, I think you're muted. I'm sorry. Yeah, no problem. Yeah, no problem. And yeah, and, and for me, it was really interesting, this fourth chair. And first, the artists like standing on, the people standing on chairs, what did they do? Did they just stand and like take photos? Because for me, it was really a great position of sitting on chairs is something very comfortable. Like when you think of sitting, it's a very passive position where you, I don't know where from the theater, Angela and me, and we know that sitting on a chair is like a passive role of the audience just looking, you know, and taking something to, to, like from this, the scene, not, not being able to participate. But standing on it, it's a rude gesture. It's like the chair is not for standing. If you would stand on a chair in a restaurant or wherever, somebody would tell you go down, don't make the chair dirty and stuff like that. And you wanted them to stand on chairs, on chairs, not on something, but on chairs. So it is a rude, uncomfortable gesture where you're not sitting, you're not comfortable, you're standing, you're doing something that's against the law. And you gave the fourth chair to people to also be rude in a way. Was this your idea when you were doing the sculpture and also how did people react to this, this position and also the same question as Angela, did you have problems doing this? Did you have problems putting the sculpture on some certain places? And did you sometimes think of showing the sculpture in London? Would it be possible in any case? First, I would like to tell you the statement behind this artwork that is stand up instead of sitting like the others. So it's exactly that. We have to stand up because it's necessary, act in some direction. And if we do an act, we can change, try to change something of our life. But first, I would like to say something about imaginary and imagination. Because everything to me is starting from there. Drawing is the first thing we start doing as children. And we draw because we imagine new worlds. Drawing also teach us to look at the world and read ourselves. So drawing helps us to develop our critical sense. But unfortunately drawing is the first thing we abandon as we grow up. And with that we abandon our imagination. Because we start to dealing with reality and as we know life is difficult for everyone. But the imaginary remains in some person, in the artist in general, a philosopher and few political leaders. So this is the reason why I think that art is political. Art is political in the moment in which an act as human needs. Someone wrote, I think, maybe Picasso, if I remember well, that the artist is a survivor child. And I love very much this. Because art and culture to me are the real weapons of critical mass construction to make us evolve. I consider Junial Assange an intellectual. I have the fortune also as you to meet him. He's imagined a world made of transparency while knowing that those in power often lie and sometimes secrets are lies. Julian is a sentinel of democracy. But sometimes politics is not made by honesty but by strength. And we can delegate our salvation. So we have to act now to defend Julian. And I also think that ripping out Assange Tongue doesn't not make him as a liar. But it's a message to the world that is afraid of what he might say. So this is one of the reasons why I create this artwork. I think that our imagination is everything. And we can't stay still for that because what's happened to Julian could happen to us for sure if we will be a Stradite. So as an artist I have the duty to defend freedom of speech and expression and information because if we receive the right information not only for the mainstream but from the free press we have the access to that information and we can change in which part of the world we want to stay. So the artwork is exactly that. To replay to your answer, the only place where we had problems to bring the statue is London. Yeah of course. That's why I asked is there's a chance that you could do a guerrilla action and maybe do it sometimes in London. Unfortunately the pandemic didn't support us today because we tried some months ago to move the statue also with them and their campaign and we tried to and we find a place for the event but you know with this restriction it was very very difficult. For the rest I didn't receive problems for the statue. I didn't receive support from the art world. It's strange but it's like that but I created this artwork for the people not only for the world of art. Yes and you also which is great you did a crowdfunding for the statue it was that also a thing did you ask for financing somewhere and didn't get it or did you decide it to be a crowdfunded project because you wanted people to participate in creating the statue the second that's what I thought that's what I thought but I wanted to also because you know when you create something you can't imagine all the reaction of the people but it was something like to feel if the feeling was good to the to the world you know because half of the world thinks that he is a traitor but I concentrate myself to the other half of the world that thinks that he's a hero. Yes and maybe with your work you could in a way and I think there are more and more people which you were talking also about that are realizing now that things are not black and white as they maybe fought a couple of years ago you know they really see a person suffering in prison for a cause that was something for the whole of humanity. I would love for us to see a little excerpt of Angela's play Super Nerds maybe Angela it is I saw your play unfortunately only on video but it was enough because it was a really good you sent me a link so it was it it was good and we're going to show a part with Julian that that is like a he's a hologram can you tell us something about this did he really how does this function I'm completely technologically not aware how this hologram thing function so maybe give us short introduction and then we can see the excerpt. Yes it was very I will not reveal all the secrets about it but it was very difficult to achieve this I think a normal theater even a state theater which it was couldn't afford at that point this technique maybe it's even a bit cheaper today I don't know I think it might be still very expensive to do it so you need a special camera to film Julian that is the one thing and then you need a huge device because we wanted him to have the same size as the actors you know to appear on stage and be seen by the actual audience not only on TV to do that on TV is rather simple in a way but to do it like for audience audience of 600 people and we had the 20 meter wide stage which is the yeah 20 yeah I think so very wide so and from every angle people had to see Julian and receive him in a 3d impression like everyone and that he could just talk with the actors and behave like he's standing with them on stage so we managed that but it was really expensive and very it was a big effort to do it we were very lucky that we had the German national TV in in in and also some produce the Gebrüder bits from Berlin and that made it possible to finance the whole thing otherwise we couldn't have done it so yeah and is it and he was not live it was pre-recorded and then made well I will not tell that because we never okay okay okay so then then we okay so let's see this excerpt and then we can talk afterwards Julian how are you well I would be very pleased to be here in Germany well I can understand how do you feel after three years of being detained without official charge to be detained for four and a half years without charge in europe well something is wrong with europe many things are wrong with europe such as the united kingdom being in europe the united kingdom should be pushed out of europe if it can't obey basic principles of european law what do you think which influence does this situation have on your life well it's difficult it's very difficult for my family and my young children to be in a situation they need to be protected as various death threats have been made against them and so on so i'm angry about the situation but on the other hand wiki leaks is still going um yeah i i must admit that i'm a little bit shocked every time i see the english version because they translated it to german and then back to english yeah it's i don't know why they did that but yeah in the show we could hear the original of course yeah of course okay i will i won't ask you for for other details uh but um watching this uh i was also thinking about um about the art world that we work in uh and uh about wiki leaks and the way that wiki leaks functions as a horizontal organization international where people it's non-profit and people gather from all over the world and do a good cause for for humanity uh working with the leaks and you know giving uh uh anonymous sources the protection that they need to leak all the things and i was also thinking um can we in a way be uh and should we as artists uh be whistleblowers in our own uh you know um in our own jobs you know uh should we also uh have this um is it our duty in a way uh to be whistleblowers i was uh i was talking uh last time i had the uh this dean voice i was talking to a hitosh tyrell and uh she was telling me that a couple of times she had to be a detective to see where the money that was financing her artists from and then she realized that one point i think it was in istanbul that she was financed or even somewhere in europe that she was financed by an uh a company that makes weapons and of course she had to react to this and we in the art world and davide also in in in visual arts and we in theater uh or many times uh have the situation where we are thinking where the money is coming from you know and should we work for some institutions but then we have to work for them because we cannot always work uh uh somewhere outside of institutions and then uh are there some kind of information from these institutions that should be leaked you know like i'm sorry but i want transparency i want to see how this theater is financed where the money is going why is it going here not there uh should we in a way be also not just artists but also whistleblowers in our in our own work you know what my it's a very interesting point that you are bringing here and i must say as a first statement that i am working in theater for 20 years and i also had a lot of to do with art world because i was married to a very famous artist for 20 years um i i'm utterly and totally disappointed and disillusioned with the theater and the art world you know uh artists like uh davide is very rare i mean imagine how many artists are there and nobody even bothered about you and in the opposite my experience with artists and theater people they were very difficult they considered me being a freak and by the way i did that i i was uh whistleblower three years ago because i exposed in my own theater and call on some uh power abuse and imagine i was also the one who was punished in the end in a way you know like always and not the people who are the actual uh although there were 20 people suffering from it as victims still um they are in the same position so you know it happens always for me it was not a big drama because um uh yeah compared to things that happened to julian or edward snoden or chelsea menning it's nothing you know so but i would also like to answer your question about art um i prepared a little text um that um i want to reach uh to the audience uh because i think they might be interested in julian's opinion on art and that was one of my very first questions i posed to him i i think it might have been 2012 that i asked him that because i have lots of materials still that i recorded and transcript cried that i never used you know in the place so uh i once asked him if he thinks and that was really an important question for me because i wanted to know what he thinks if i can change something you know it was very naive of me in a way uh doing this play about him so i asked him if he thinks that art is a powerful tool and this is what he said to me okay i will read it out i extra text today um okay he said to me i come from a theater family the word art has the same root as the latin word art if it's a which also means lie or deception all art is a form of deception a lie sometimes it is necessary to deceive in small ways in order to reveal more effectively the truth as a whole but this is seldom done in art here's how i see it good art leaves the viewer more powerful than he was before the art experience he leaves the theater the audience leaves the theater more powerful than he entered it stronger more resilient more resilient smarter more intelligent i think that's the only kind of good art everything else only serves to intoxicate and exploit the viewer and if you ask me does art have power it certainly does look at the iraq wall which was created by the art of lies by the art of secrecy through pro pro war movies that came out of hollywood art affects the lives of millions of people so art has power and it is mostly negative the question is does it also have the power to do good well it does it certainly does but remember the basic tool is the tool of deception so i i find that i was just reading it because i was looking into it for this talk today that he turns 50 and i was really shocked in a way today i even look at this quote much differently when i did back then actually back then i didn't even want to hear it because i wanted just him to say yeah do the play and you know yeah i was kind of you know shocked when he said it but i think he is true it might be not something that people want to hear but i think he has a point you know yes i i completely agree with him now and after cobi then after not being in the theater for a year i really think that the power of art is big but much less than we think you know and i think that this that doing things that are above art that are not just art are also very important not to give yourself completely into something and not realizing that you're living in the world where you have to act and react in a non-artistic way in a way yes yeah davide can you also tell me what is your opinion on this topic and do you think that i know that you work not just in institutions but also in different kinds of ways of working but what is your opinion on this yeah i'm an independent artist so i don't have to say thank to anybody and i don't have to need nothing to anybody so that's that make me make me free but it's very hard to work alone because you have to find the money when you have to product something but the point is always the same it makes sense what i'm doing to to the other to the people so my topic was always the humans and i could i try to create an imaginary regarding exactly the human human beings so um for sure if you if you do these these work you need connection sometimes call it public relations to me are human contacts so what i'm did is is always try to explain my project and find some people who can support me and support my idea if it makes sense in italy it's uh it's a different situation from Germany or other places because the role of the artist is not considerated so if you have um i don't know in english something like a bureaucracy systems now i don't know if you pay the tax as an artist you can receive some money especially during the the pandemic but if you don't pay the tax you don't you don't have to you can't receive that money that maybe uh it's good maybe angela can confirm me confirm me confirm to me this that uh angela merkel give 5000 euro to every artist at the beginning of the pandemic is it correct the information that i have it was even more in some cases it went up till 9000 i think um it was very easy to do it actually um yeah in the beginning people get some money and it was also different in different areas of germany i know that they even had a another program in 2021 i know in berlin in 2020 people could get on a very easy way just through signing up on the internet and three days later you had the money between five and nine thousand so yeah i think the germany in fact did offer some help that was certainly more than in other countries i as far as i know you know i think it became more difficult in this year you know to get uh money again i i i didn't try and i so i don't know exactly what happened this year but i heard from other people who really needed the money that um it was quite difficult and at some point they asked artists to go on the level of you know to get the social money that normally people get who are unemployed which would be fine but it became very very um difficult for artists to get this because you had to go through all a process of revealing a lot of private stuff which is weird because it's not your fault you know why would you do that and then yeah it was also really impossible to meet all the all the things that requirements to get it so i think it became very difficult in the meantime in the beginning they pulled out a lot so yeah so that yes in italy it's very as i told you it's very difficult because the visual artists especially the visual artists are not considered uh when you say artists in italy we we think only about the actors musicians and that's it contemporary visual artists are not considered but it's okay we we are trying to move in something also but it's strange because italy is the is the country of art no if you we can say that but we can't live with our works so that's really really make me sad make me sad and mad anyway i i think that art is the last um territory uh for reflection for individual expression and as i said before is the only way we had to um defend ourselves and to development our critical senses so we can't if you try to image for for a minute uh a word without art and without the artist we are keeping out the soul of the world because contemporary art um um um what can i say um is it is is an opportunity to uh to understand better the world around us some phenomenon uh without art will be hidden you know so our role is is very important in the society it's not important the direction that you want to choose for sure we decide to be art uh artivist art artivist you know me and angela yeah to to create awareness and to tell to the people a different story how is it presented that's what i think and uh i would love us to see your um video of your piece anything to say uh which is beautiful because uh you put the sculptures in nature uh which is something that is completely different than than we are used to you know to see uh sculptures in some really great huge free natural environment so yes yeah does the truth belong to the one who speaks first or is the truth sometimes hidden behind facades word constructions walls why do we punish the people that try to remain truthful and why is it easier to lie to the reflections in our mirrors rather than to confront reality does the loss of our freedom not matter to us at all or are we too occupied by the thought that certain things do not concern us how much freedom are you willing to sacrifice to give truth your face how much freedom are we willing to sacrifice so how much freedom are you willing to sacrifice while you're working are you thinking of this you know when you work uh uh we of course sacrifice some kind of a freedom in in some situations but it is really i think important to think what are your boundaries i'm going to this but if i come to this maybe i don't know i get arrested if i do this maybe i won't work in this place so what what is a three artist in your opinion i know that nobody can really be free but if we would imagine a free artist and a really independent artist that is in a way also sacrificing his freedom who would this be what would he do angela angela um well that's a difficult question you know i like i said i i i have a very unromantic view of the art world that it exists today and and even in in my first play i i i put out a thesis even accusing myself being an artist and not someone who is let's say a hacker or someone who's trying to be a truth teller so for me the true artists of today um are actually people who are whistleblowers you know because what they did changed society so much more like art used to do and i think it has something to do with history and how we you know art was very important to somehow establish some quality of life that we have today you know that we can love who we want to love that there is a certain kind of individual freedom that we do have and i think this is also a problem why people don't feel any problems anymore with um surveillance and these things as long as they as they don't feel it and as long as their personal freedom is not so much affected they don't care and the art most art pieces became about narcissism you know very self-involved or like julian said intoxicating things and you know to create problems that don't even exist why would i bother people with problems that don't exist you know so to to say the truth i'm an artist who is very disappointed in in artists today and and in the art world maybe even in art but maybe it's it's also okay you know because now maybe other people have the same um struggles we artists had in the last centuries because i feel that art somehow stopped being the avant-garde in the last let's say 10 years or so in a way because we stopped asking for the maximum demand you know in in society and politically wise i know even that in germany it became very unpopular to make political art or you know things that are important looking at society and it was more like looking at at you know personal problems and this and that and being somehow you know dragged by art and for me i don't care about this anymore so for me the true someone like julien asan is is who is placing the maximum uh demand is something like the avant-garde today you know that's all i can say yeah you're right angela um before to be to be an artist um i'm a citizen i'm also a father and a husband but to be an artist is uh is uh is a vocation uh a mission uh i i'm free i i think that i'm free to decide what i want to do but to do that uh if you want to be an artist you have to know that 90 percent of the work is organization only the 10 percent is make the hands on them on on the materials you know what i mean yeah and uh in this case when i create anything to say when i start to thinking about it if it was the end of 2013 so our i don't know how many years or eight maybe i spent every single day of my life with julien so i consider him part of my family my wife say my wife told me many times a day oh always me you and julien okay that's that's very funny but it's true because since i create this artwork i work every day with this sculptures because i have meeting like this uh interview um events and many other things so i have to to to work on the social network i have to share the message and and i'm sure that in italy especially i involved a lot of people that did nothing about julien assange and his story so that makes me makes me proud frankly yeah it's a sacrifice but as i told you it's very natural to me um so julien turned 50 years uh two days ago and i um really wanted to finish the discussion with the birthday message uh that the two of you would give to him if uh you could tell him something now to make his life a little bit easier at this moment of course it's very hard what what would you say to julien what would your message be to him angela no okay if you want i i can go i can go first and and and mute and mute okay i i i i i i i say before um something very simple that it's that it's something that we we wish to him to be free as soon as possible to re-embrace his family his child and his fiancé and to and and and to be free to breath the fresh air that missing in his body since 10 years you also had a little you told me before our talk that you have a little speech that you wanted to give or are you still who me yes you said i have some little speech maybe i didn't understand you uh no no no no it's okay i i i say it before so that's my wish okay okay okay okay angela uh okay um i i i would uh it became for me very difficult i i will write tonight to julien in an email to the president and and i will exactly say this that i i that i wish him the freedom and that he will the second century of his life that he will be free but that's truth will finally set him free i i still have that hope although it is really difficult sometimes to keep it up and i will send him a little quote that i found today um i read it in an article of hannah arendt the philosopher that she wrote in the 1950 and it's related actually to the germany post nazi germany uh some observation that she did about um the problem of opinion versus facts and uh she is relating it of course to to her observations in post post nazi germany but um when i read this article i realized that um it very much fits in today's situation that we are experiencing at the moment with all this post-factic uh anti alternative facts um and people who cannot distinguish between facts and news and i know that julien was someone who was always insisting to call it a scientific journalism what he does what wikileaks does you know and also to empower people to make up their own opinion based on facts that they have access to and this is for me something which is still very unique that he created and um uh tonight i will send him the whole article and i will only by hannah arendt maybe he knows him uh it i already i don't know maybe he might maybe not but um i will just read out a little part and as i said it is related to germany but i think that mostly in principle today uh we can find that phenomenon actually unfortunately everywhere especially on social media maybe even okay so hannah arendt said then but perhaps the most striking and frightening aspect of the german flight from reality is the habit of treating facts as though they were mere opinions in all fields there is a kind of gentleman's agreement by which everyone has a right to ignorance under the pretext that everyone has a right to his opinion and behind this is the tacit assumption that opinions really do not matter this is a very serious thing not only because it often makes discussion so hopeless but primarily because the average german honestly believes that this free for all this nihilistic relativity about facts to be the essence of democracy yeah so when i was reading this sentence especially i thought okay this is so true today and um this is something that i will send to julian because i think he was someone who was exactly doing a great job going against this this phenomenon that we have today that people can really not distinguish anymore between fact and opinion and fake news thank you so much and thank you angela and david for being sorry i'm sorry maya can i can i say a little of course of course of course i want to launch a global call so please save the date september 11 2021 austria on the costanza lake in the city of braggans is correct angela braggans i think so that we take place a huge concert called take a stand stars for a sunsh so i would like to invite all the musicians from every country to participate to this huge festival we are waiting for the answer of mr roger waters that i'm sure that will upset the invitation we will add other most important art important artists so please share this information to your contact and to all the people that are listening to us thank you of course of course we will share i will share in serbia also so some of my musician friends so thank you so much really for being with us at dm voice tonight and i also before closing would like to tell the audience that we are launching a fundraiser for dm voice because we need your support to continue the work of dm voice that has been developing turning the dm 25 political messages into art so if you can help us it would be really great and now i would like to close this episode with a short video of artworks from dm voice that are dedicated to juliana sanj and also with my message dear julian happy birthday and we will continue to spread your idea and fight for your freedom as long as it takes um just a little one thing um people were asking about the article i quoted it's the aftermath of nazi rules reports from germany by hana aren't you can google that that's one thing and the last thing i want to add before we finish is fria sanj fria sanj fria sanj fria sanj mankind in some sense just having a small glimmer of understanding about how it is progressing through the world we actually have access to much more knowledge but it's been eliminated through the speed of informational processing processing of knowledge is moving into artificial intelligence in a computerized civilization encryption is the fundamental building block of liberty some small amount of capital leading to mass open cut harvested of the knowledge of humankind a serious threat to the stability of human civilizations smells a bit like totalitarianism totalitarianism totalitarianism