Ruling Out Art

In the 1980s, the Ontario government engaged in a series of legal skirmishes with media arts communities. Its Board of Censors – responsible for the classification and approval of all film and video exhibited in the province – began to subject artists’ work to the same cuts, bans, and warning labels as commercial film. Ruling Out Art reveals what happens when art and law intersect, when artists, arts exhibitors, and their anti-censorship allies enter courts of law as appellants, defendants, or expert witnesses. Taryn Sirove argues that the administration of culture during Ontario’s censor wars was not a simple top-down exercise. Members of arts communities mounted grassroots protests and engaged the province in court cases, ultimately influencing how the province interpreted freedom of expression, a fundamental and far-reaching legal right. The language of the law in turn shaped the way artists conceived of their own practices. By exploring how art practices and provincial legislation intertwined during Ontario’s censor wars, this innovative book documents an important moment in the history of contemporary art and cultural activism in Canada, one that helped artists secure their constitutional rights under the law.