No scissors! A Story about Pigs and Monsters and German Phrases
Collage work by Yvonne Dalschen.
Artists are not in it for the money; brotlose Kunst, breadless art, describes it quite well. So why make art? I hope that most artists apart from Thomas Kinkade would agree that there is the need for self-expression—to show, to tell, to move, and maybe to change. All of this is very hard to do if nobody sees your art, and there are not a lot of opportunities to show art, not pretty pictures. There always was the see-saw of pleasing and selling versus unsettling. At this point in time, I am rather angry and feel that people should be challenged more.
I just did not know that I was already there when I got censored.
It was a series about Oak Ridge: lenscapes, diptychs, documenting the strangeness of being stuck in the past, so often lifeless… how walkways end, shops are abandoned, and how the image of science and progress contrasts with the influx of MAGA. The series was created last fall, but my unease had never stopped after 2020. When planning to present three images of the series in March 2025, I felt that I needed to make a point and what better than to name them “Diversity,” “Equity” and “Inclusion.” “Diversity” was not even far-fetched for an orange monster, a clay pig, and a Trump cutout. It shows the reality of historic Jackson Square where the iconic pig-collecting Razzleberry’s is only one antique store removed from a fanatic Trump fan’s print shop.
It was not great art, but it was censored. It wasn’t a juror picking favorites, it wasn’t lack of space, it was a ‘NO, this will not be hung.’ Was it profane, obscene, did the pig’s testicles fall under nudity? As with a lot of photography, pictures can have different meanings to different people. What is testicles to one is ‘cojones’ to another. A MAGA-loving colleague simply said, “Obviously they censor Trump.” So, what were they afraid of? Who were they trying to please? You can’t win.
This censorship scares me, a lot. It scares me for this country. Combine it with the changes in language on government websites, the book bans from school- and public libraries, the defunding of science and humanities, the disappearance of people and civil rights, and you get to an ugly place called Gleichschaltung in German (I have a project on Dachau as well), vaguely translated as synchronization—that is, bringing in line. The recent attack on the Smithsonian illustrates another German concept, the terrifying vorauseilender Gehorsam, obedience in advance.
The Washington Post talks about a “frenzy of fear,” quoting anonymous NPS employees using “as broad a brush as possible, because the consequences of missing something are a lot more severe than the consequences of doing too much,” and some webpage changes “resulting not from demands from above, but from seeking to comply with what they believed Trump wanted.” (Washington Post, April 6, 2025, Amid anti-DEI push, National Park Service rewrites history of Underground Railroad.)
Arts and humanities, universities, and cultural institutions are being defunded, no matter how much they bend over backwards and try to please. The Orwellian Thoughtpolice is not just “Restoring Truth and Sanity (aka the Glory of White Male Americans) to History.” The cultural revolution attacks professional organizations in science and engineering as well. Some try their best to fly under the radar. It is hard to find what NCWIT stands for apart from “expanding the talent pool” in tech. To whom are they expanding the talent pool you ask, dolphins or Martians? You would have to remember that their full name used to be National Center for Women & Information Technology, which has disappeared from their website with any mention of ‘women,’ ‘girls’ or ‘female.’ West Point banned the National Society of Black Engineers, the Society for Hispanic Professional Engineers, and the Society of Women Engineers. You can’t win.
What does this mean for my little world? Do I have to have a Schere im Kopf, scissors in the brain, to self-censor? Do I have to reign in my anger and my creativity because I don’t want to get exhibition organizers into trouble? I am inundated by offensive, denigrating, profane and fascist symbols and language every single day, and I am told “It’s the First Amendment, stupid!” I am told that I need to keep my head down, to be polite, decorous, to not be emotional, to not be angry. Does the First Amendment not apply to me then?
My family in Germany is worried for me. My husband’s great-aunt had to move to South Africa (of all places) when the Nazis came to power. Else would not have kept her mouth shut. Mundtot machen, to inflict mouth death, is another German phrase without a proper translation. In Old High German, munt meant protection, munttot was being without protection and defense. At some point, people started thinking that the word must have something to do with mouths, so the spelling and the meaning changed slightly. Now someone who is mundtot is not able to make a public statement. The inner emigration in Germany claimed that beredtes Schweigen, eloquent silence, was an act of resistance; they handed out criticism so subtle that it was invisible, and most ended up as Mitläufer, fellow travellers, collaborators. As Toni Morrison said, the artists that try so hard not to be political are political by saying, ‘We love the status quo.’ For those wanting to get freaked out a bit more, read Uwe Wittstock, February 1933: The Winter of Literature, or brush up on Octavia Butler.
Victor Klemperer wrote on 21 February, 1933, about the new Hitler government:
“It is a disgrace, which gets worse with every day that passes. [...] Everyone’s keeping their heads down, Jewry most of all and the democratic press [...] What is strangest of all is how one is blind in the face of events, how no one has a clue to the real balance of power [...] Will the terror be tolerated and for how long? The uncertainty of the situation affects every single thing.”
This sounds eerily familiar, but in 2025 we have a very clear idea where this went and how long it lasted. Another German saying that drives me crazy is, Es wird nichts so heiß gegessen, wie es gekocht wird: nothing is eaten as hot as it is cooked, which amounts to Wait and See. But I don’t want to Wait and See, what I see now is bad enough for me to want to scream. However, photography is my medium, and so I document and combine. I know that my yelling into the void will not subvert power if nobody sees it. That my silly little image was censored almost feels like a victory to me. Now I just need to find a place to show it. The National Park Service has reinstated Harriet Tubman’s photo and some content to their official website on the Underground Railroad—so maybe anger and public protests are not as futile as they want us to believe.
Speak up, show up, create and ditch the scissors in your head.
Maybe you can win.
