art of sedition

a la hommage to steve reich's 1960's tape music has been pulled from broadcast by an adelaide radio station, based on legal advice.

the piece, "Decennial Celebrations" commemorates the coalition and john howard's ten years in power, and was performed at adelaide's delicatessen venue in 2006. apparently the phrase "kill john howard" is enough to provoke the removal of such a work from airplay. in the words of the composer Christian Haines, "...eventually the words [in the piece] lose meaning because you can't tell the start and end of the sentence and leads to a sort of auditory hallucination."

in the final days leading up to australia's 2007 election, this really paints a picture of our rights to free speech.