The 2019 Free Thinking Imperial War Museum Remembrance Debate

Arts & Ideas

BBC

Society & Culture

4.2 • 598 Ratings

🗓️ 7 November 2019

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Who decides what’s worth saving and what is culturally significant to protect in wartimes and war zones? The panel, hosted by Anne McElvoy, are:

Sir Peter Bazalgette - Chairman of ITV and former Chairman of Arts Council England Carrie Reichardt - International Artist and grassroots activist Zahed Tajeddin - Syrian-born Artist and Archaeologist Rebecca Newell - IWM’s Head of Art

Recorded with an audience at the Imperial War Museum, London on Weds November 6th. What Remains, an exhibition with over 50 photographs, oral histories, objects and artworks, created in partnership with Historic England, explores why cultural heritage is attacked during war and the ways we save, protect and restore what is targeted. It runs until 5 Jan 2020. As does Art in Exile which puts on display for the first time documents revealing IWM’s plan for evacuating our art collection during the Second World War.

The 2018 Imperial War Museum Free Thinking Lecture looked at how we remember war and asked Why are we silent when conflict is loud? Peter Hitchens; Rector Lucy Winkett; Neil Bartlett and Professor Steve Brown joined Anne McElvoy and an audience. https://bbc.in/2odyOUM and on our website you can find a collection of Free Thinking on War https://bbc.in/32EK0bI which includes discussions about Trees, Catch 22, a conversation between an ex marine and a Gulf war government advisor and analysis of writing by Wilfred Owen, Celine, David Jones, Robert Musil and John Buchan.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right?
0:23.3	It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's out of ice cream.
0:28.8	Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds.
0:33.3	BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts.
0:37.5	Hello, I'm Anne McHelvoy, and in this Arts and Ideas podcast, we'll be considering how
0:43.4	cultural identity is threatened by war, right after this message.
0:48.7	Hi, I'm Alastair Sook, and I want to tell you about the way I see it, a brand new podcast from BBC Radio 3.
0:56.0	It's a 30-part series in which we're throwing open the collection at MoMA, the Museum of Modern
1:01.1	Art in New York, to some of the sharpest creative minds of our time. We'll be speaking to
1:06.9	comedian, Steve Martin, writer Roxanne Gay, musician Steve Reich, and many, many more.
1:13.6	I'll be your guide throughout the series, so join me as I explore one of the greatest
1:18.4	collections of modern art in the world. If you'd like to hear more, just search for
1:23.5	The Way I See It on BBC Sounds.
1:35.8	Hello and welcome to the Imperial War Museum in London for the annual IWM Remembrance Lecture, part of the museum's culture under attack season.
1:42.8	Loss of life and the displacement of populations are clearly
1:46.1	the gravest and most pressing costs of conflict. But the damage inflicted on the cultural fabric
1:51.9	of a society can also have a profound and a long-lasting effect. It's always raised a question for me
1:58.2	as a former war correspondent which hovers in the mind as we watch footage of man-made disasters on our TV screens from Iraq to Syria and to Yemen.
2:07.5	To what extent does identity depend on the cultural artefacts all around us?
2:12.6	What can be done to protect them in extremists?
2:15.5	Who decides what's worth saving?
2:18.3	And if they can't be saved,
	...

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