As busy Kenningtonians we sometimes forget that we have a massive, world class museum on our doorstep. To address this we recently decided to take a moment out of our exhausting cycle of Murder She Wrote repeats deadlines to pop along to the Imperial War Museum to see their latest show ‘Culture Under Attack’,
Culture Under Attack is set over three gallery spaces and grapples with the distinct ways in which our cultural lives are compromised during conflict. We spent the most time in ‘Rebel Sounds’, an immersive exhibition which deals with music censorship in four vastly different eras and cultures; Nazi Germany, northern Mali, Northern Ireland in the ‘70’s, and Serbia in the 90’s. The theme is how specific people or institutions sought to rebel against censorship and prevail. The Northern Irish story is told by record store owner Terri Hooley. The northern Mali story is told by the band Songhoy Blues, who now perform their music as exiles in the south of the country.
A second exhibtion is called ‘What Remains’, and focuses on how war kills not just the ones we love but also the cultural symbols which help make up our identity. The exhibit moves in time from the physical destruction of Hiroshima to the very conscious destruction of icons and art by ISIS only a few years ago. In each of these exhibitions you are invited to take a quiz about the importance of culture, censorship, and the protection of buildings.
The third exhibition is called ‘Art in Exile’ and it focuses on attempts by the IWM and other galleries to safeguard their works of art during WW2, and how at times these attempts failed. This exhibit also details the heroic and altruistic methods employed to protect other forms of material culture in times of conflict by undertaking activites such as concerts and plays. It poses several intriguing questions such as ‘to what lengths do we go to preserve culture’.
Culture Under Attack is free to all of us and open until 5 January. Get your good selves along this weekend as it’s a hell a of a lot better than thinking about Brexit or climate change.
