Clinton Fein

Clinton Fein (born 1964 in South Africa) is an artist, writer and activist, noted for his company Apollomedia's controversial website Annoy.com and its Supreme Court victory against Janet Reno, United States Attorney General, regarding the constitutionality of the Communications Decency Act in 1997.^[1]

This victory, a landmark for First Amendment rights, won Fein's right to disseminate his art.^[2] Fein won another federal First Amendment lawsuit to remove a government-imposed gag order.^[3] As recognition, Fein received a nomination for a PEN/Newman's Own First Amendment Award in 2001. Fein now presides the board of First Amendment Project, a nonprofit organization that protects and promotes freedom of information, expression, and petition.

Early life and career

Born and raised in Johannesburg, South Africa, Fein graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in 1986, with a Bachelor of Arts in Industrial Psychology. After living in New York for a couple of years, Fein moved to Los Angeles, where he began reporting directly to the President of Orion Pictures, as part of the creative team for numerous films, among them Academy Award-winning Dances with Wolves and The Silence of the Lambs.

From the outset, Fein's work has led him into some high-profile confrontations. In 1994, his CD-ROM Conduct Unbecoming: Gays and Lesbians in the US Military, based on the book by renowned investigative reporter Randy Shilts that examined the issue of gays in the military, used digital technology as an art form. When the US Navy unsuccessfully attempted to block its release,^[4] it became the first CD-ROM to triumph under First Amendment protections.^[5] Conduct Unbecoming won the Critic's Choice Award, was praised by Wired Magazine as "a tantalizing peek at the potential of CD-ROM publishing," and dubbed "evolutionary" by Rolling Stone Magazine.^[6]

Art and Law

Fein was the first South African-born American to challenge government restrictions on technological communications when he filed a federal lawsuit on 30 January 1997.^[7] Fein, represented by Michael Traynor of Cooley Godward LLP and by William Bennett Turner of Rogers, Joseph, O'Donell and Phillips, filed a lawsuit against Janet Reno, former United States Attorney General, challenging the constitutionality of the Communications Decency Act (CDA).^[8]

The CDA made the communication of anything "indecent with the intent to annoy", a felony punishable by a fine and up to two-year imprisonment. President Bill Clinton signed the CDA into law in February 1996. Fein filed the lawsuit, Apollomedia v. Reno,^[9] the same time he launched his Annoy.com web site.^[10] A three-judge panel in United States District Court for the Northern District of California made a divided decision on the lawsuit.^[11] Fein filed an Supreme Court appeal, which he won in 1999.^[12]

In June 1999, the U.S. government sent Fein an order to reveal a user of Annoy.com's e-card service.^[13]

Earlier, in April 1999, the University of Houston tried unsuccessfully to obtain the website's records. The government later ordered Fein to stop discussing details of this investigation, its existence or its application. In United States v. ApolloMedia, Fein argued that this gag order violated the First Amendment and the statutory requirement that it have a definite duration.^[14]

The case moved from a Texas magistrate court to the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas and then to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.^[15] The Fifth Circuit granted the appeal. The District Court then unsealed the website's records and all related proceedings and lifted the gag order.

Art, Politics and Censorship

As an artist, Fein is represented by Toomey Tourell in San Francisco and Axis Gallery in New York, and his shows have been dogged by controversy. In 2001, Fein was scheduled to open a solo exhibition, Annoy.com, (based on his critically acclaimed^[16] web site of the same name), in San Francisco in October. After the September 11, 2001 attacks, Artforum Magazine pulled an advertisement for Fein's show from their October issue. The advertisement displayed an image of a purse lipped former New York mayor, Rudy Giuliani, sitting naked in a urine-filled glass, referencing the technique used by artist Damien Hirst, in which animate objects are soaked in formaldehyde and encased in a glass containers. Fein’s advertisement, designed to link Mayor Giuliani with mayoral candidate Michael Bloomberg, incorporated imagery from the exhibition Sensation that resulted in mayor Giuliani withholding funding from the Brooklyn Museum. Clutching a crucifix with a nod to artist Andres Serrano and with another Giuliani targeted work, Chris Ofili's Virgin Mary forming the backdrop, copy on the top of the image reads: "Mike for Mayor" and at the bottom, "Start Spreading the News."

Artforum Executive Editor, Knight Landesman, stated that the magazine was understaffed and that the editors did not feel comfortable publishing a disparaging image of Rudy Giuliani.^[17]

In October 2004, Palo Alto-based printing company, Zazzle, destroyed two of Fein’s giant images.^[18] just before the opening of a solo exhibition at Toomey Tourell Gallery.^[19]

The one image, reviewed at Chelsea’s Axis Gallery by New York Times’ Ken Johnson,^[20] was described as "an American flag with the stars and stripes made from the text of the official Abu Ghraib report is accompanied by fifty representations of the iconic image of a hooded man teetering on a box with wires trailing from his arms comprising the stars." The second image depicting President Bush on a crucifix entitled "Who Would Jesus Torture?" was also withheld by the printing company, who told San Francisco Chronicle art critic, Kenneth Baker that the company had "destroyed the images."^[21] Company spokesperson, Matt Wilsey, claimed the image might "offend Christians," and threatened to sue Fein for defamation if Fein publicly criticized the company’s actions.

Fein's image, "Who Would Jesus Torture?" was published in Art of Engagement, Visual Politics in California and Beyond, by Peter Selz, released in November 2005, and exhibited at the Katzen Arts Center at American University in 2006. Peter Selz is Professor Emeritus of the History of Art at the University of California, Berkeley, is the founding director of the Berkeley Art Museum and a former curator of New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

In November 2006, "Who Would Jesus Torture," accompanied an article about Fein in American Protest Literature by author and Harvard University lecturer Zoe Trodd, published by Harvard University Press. It was this interview that Fein cited as a catalyst for his exhibition Torture, which opened at Toomey Tourell gallery in San Francisco in January 2007,^[22] featuring gigantic, high-resolution photographs^[23] that reenacted infamous scenes from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq [1].

Fein's Torture series was exhibited in Beijing^[24] in September 2007^[25] and in London in October 2007.^[26] A review in the December 2007 issue of Art in America magazine , summed up the impact of Fein's Torture series, stating: "Torture of detainees or their rendition to countries with even more abusive torture regimens has become semi-legal under the Bush administration. Fein reminds us, however, that these practices can never be anything less than intolerable."^[27]

Fein is the current editor of First Amendment Project's web log and writes a blog, Pointing Fingers [2] for the San Francisco Chronicle.

External links

Bibliography

• Clinton Fein Official Web Site
• Clinton Fein at Toomey Tourell Gallery
• Clinton Fein at Axis Gallery
• Clinton Fein and the Art of Political Protest By Deborah Phillips
• Clinton Fein is not afraid to make a statement By Kenneth Baker, San Francisco Chronicle

Articles

• The Horror of Torture, Reinterpreted through Art By Kenneth Baker, The San Francisco Chronicle
• Precision Strike By Michael Leaverton, The San Francisco Weely
• The Bigger Picture 'Torture' By Reyhan Harmanci, The San Francisco Chronicle
• Everything's Fein By Molly Freedenberg, Ventura County Reporter
• As Nov. 2 nears, artists get in their last licks, sending up Bush and company on center stage By Steve Winn, The San Francisco Chronicle
• The Clinton Cabinet Surface Magazine
• The Importance of Being Annoying By Michelle Goldberg, Metropolitan Magazine
• Designed to Annoy, Web Site Flouts CDA By Steve Silverman, Wired
• Asserting a Constitutional Right to Annoy By Pamela Mendels, The New York Times
• Does Anything Go? Limiting Free Speech on the Net:Five Players Debate the Issue The Wall Street Journal
• U.S. court protects 'annoying' online speech By Elinor Mills, CNN
• A very confusing decision KRON TV
• Additional articles

News

• Corporate Policy Leads to Political Censorship By Molouk Y. Ba-Isa, Arab News
• 2 of Clinton Fein's political works run afoul of his printer's policies By Kenneth Baker, The San Francisco Chronicle
• Annoy.com Webmaster says war art censored By Paul Festa, C|NET
• Artist and advocate Clinton Fein has his controversial images destroyed prior to exhibition By Kresta Tyler Johnson, Artthrob Magazine

Publications

• American Protest Literature by Zoe Trodd, from Harvard University Press, 2006.
• Art of Engagement: Visual Politics in California and Beyond by Peter Selz, from University of California Press, 2006.

Art, Editorials and Writing

• Annoy.com
• Clinton Fein at Redroom.com
• Pointing Fingers on SFGate
• The First: First Amendment Project Blog

References

1. ^ Elinor Mills, U.S. court protects 'annoying' online speech, CNN, September 29, 1998.
2. ^ Malcolm Maclachlan, Annoy.com Downplays Supreme Court Defeat, TechWeb, April 19, 1999.
3. ^ Jon Rhine & Todd Stein, Ungagged CEO of Annoy.com sinks teeth into critics, San Francisco Business Times, September 15, 2000.
4. ^ Carol Ness, CD-ROM with gay sailors released, The San Francisco Chronicle, March 8, 1995.
5. ^ United States Navy Censorship Dispute, www.clintonfein.com
6. ^ Conduct Unbecoming Reviews, www.clintonfein.com
7. ^ David Hudson, Federal court rules that annoy.com may continue to annoy, First Amendment Center, September 25, 1998.
8. ^ Ray Delgado, Web site owner sues to limit 'decency' law, The San Francisco Chronicle, October 21, 1997.
9. ^ Pamela Mendels, Asserting a Constitutional Right to Annoy, The New York Times, January 31, 1997.
10. ^ Apollomedia Corp. v. Reno, Netlitigation, 1998.
11. ^ Courtney Macavinta, Annoy.com free to bother Netizens, C|Net, September 24, 1998.
12. ^ Joan Biskupic, Court Upholds Ban on Obscene E-Mail, Washington Post, April 20, 1999.
13. ^ David W. Quinto, Law of Internet Disputes, Aspen Publishers Online, Published 2001.
14. ^ Declaration Of Clinton Fein In Support Of ApolloMedia's Motion To Stay Paragraph 7 Of Order, Annoy.com, June 16, 1999.
15. ^ United States v. ApolloMedia: United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Opinion, Annoy.com, September 15, 2000.
16. ^ The Webby Awards, The Best Sites of 1998, 1998.
17. ^ Clinton Fein, Post Traumatic Press Syndrome: The Full Story, Annoy.com, November 12, 2001.
18. ^ Kresta Tyler Johnson, Artist and advocate Clinton Fein has his controversial images destroyed prior to exhibition, Artthrob, October, 2004.
19. ^ Molouk Y. Ba-Isa, Corporate Policy Leads to Political Censorship, Arab News, January 11, 2005.
20. ^ Ken Johnson, Clinton Fein, "Warning" at Axis, The New York Times, September 17, 2004.
21. ^ Kenneth Baker, 2 of Clinton Fein's political works run afoul of his printer's policies, The San Francisco Chronicle, October 12, 2004.
22. ^ Clinton Fein: Torture, ArtNet.com, January, 2007.
23. ^ Peter Beaumont, Iraq inspires surge of protest art, The Observer, September 9, 2007.
24. ^ Steven Winn, WWII fades into distant past, and with it, our sense of patriotism, The San Francisco Chronicle, September 22, 2007.
25. ^ Art Beijing 2007, September, 2007.
26. ^ Helen Stoilas and James Knox, Bridge, The Art Newspaper, October 12, 2007.
27. ^ Peter Selz, Clinton Fein at Toomey Tourell, Art in America, December, 2007.

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Name	Fein, Clinton
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Date of birth	1964
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