Thomas grew up in Northern California where he fell in love with music and photography while going to punk shows and shooting skate photos. He photography in college, which may or may not qualify him to host an art podcast. When he's not working on Art Uncovered, Thomas works as photographer, retoucher, and audio editor and also plays guitar in the band Sleepies. He lives in Queens, New York, for now.
https://www.btrtoday.com/thomas/feed/
Art Under Threat
This week: 2015 was a depressing year in terms of artistic freedom of expression around the world. According to the group Freemuse -- which documents violations of artistic freedom around the world -- killings, attacks, abductions, and imprisonments of artists were up 20% from 2014 with China, Iran and Russia leading the way as top offenders. Freemuse recently just published their annual Art Under Threat Report, and I recently got a chance to speak with the organization's Executive Director, Ole Reitov about the report. We discussed his findings, the challenges of documenting artistic censorship, and why music is targeted more than any other art form. Playlist 00:00 - BTR Today 01:42 - Freemuse 03:11 - Threat Report 05:11 - What Drives Censorship 08:01 - Censoring Music 11:24 - Changes in Iran? 13:57 - Hollywood Self - Censorship 16:49 - Gathering Data 19:53 - Violations on the Rise 22:35 - The New Europe 24:24 - Paris Attacks 25:38 - Threats in 2016 27:18 - BTR Today 28:19 - Finish