C6 dennis Burton, Acting Foundation Co-ordinator to Paul Wong

It would be appreciated in future, if you are asked to make
a presentation of your work... that you first consider the varying
sensibilities and sensitivities of such a large body of student of
visual art, as those in the Foundation dividion to the viewing of
violence or the results thereof.

In that consideration of other people's feelings should be
the inclusion, prior to presantations that might offend, of the
"escape choice''. that is: that you verbally announce the
possibility of your art offending some young people in the audienge.
They would then have the freedom of choice to remain or leave.

Our democratic society has long deliberated on this issue, and
as with film presentations in theatres, the audience deserves the
right to be informed and forewarned. )9

Paul Wong to Tom Hudson

66 as an invited ‘guest lecturer' it has always been my desire
to provide as full a program as possible within a limited time period.
It was my intention to give as wide a range of 'my experiences' as
possible to the students... Ms. Dievelt fails to mention in her
letter that the particular upsetting work Murder Research (1977)
was approx. 5 minutes long and appeared about 2/3rds of the way
through the presentation... Murder Research is probably my most
single well known woek that hsas been widely exhibited and highly
acclaimed... (it) was never intended to be a banal and beautiful
work of art; as a sociological issue its intention was to move the
viewer, to provoke the audience to probe....

..it is unfortunate that Ms. Dievelt's ‘lack of experience'
prompted her to have had such a physical reaction, a reaction that has
not occurred from literally dozens and dozens of presentations.

| abhore the 'moral tone' of both her remarks and those of
Dennis Burton... in which both point the fingers of blame at me; the |!
“inconsiderate artist!’ who makes ''so called works of art''... they
refer to violent acts as something untouchable or rare, it is not,
prime time television produces more horrid violence in any given
evening... fictionalized accounts of violence in its abundance has
made the topic mundane. That is the point of Murder Research, that
this is fact; that it is presented in an ambiguous non-fiction style.
Mr. Burton and Ms. Dievelt make what | consider to be dangerous and