Creative Scotland claws back £68,000 from hardcore show
CREATIVE Scotland has clawed back nearly £68,000 of taxpayers’ cash from a controversial “hardcore” performance piece, MSPS have been told.
The funding agency took action against artist Leonie Rae Gasson after a public outcry over her show Rein.
However, the team behind the work, which aimed to show an “erotic journey through a distinctly Scottish landscape”, has denied ever misleading the funding body,
In a letter to Holyrood’s Culture Committee, Iain Munro, Creative Scotland’s chief executive, claimed Ms Rae Gasson and her team had breached her contract with the arts funding body.
He said the application had initially stated that the sexual performance in Rein would be simulated.
However, in a call-out for participants, Rein said “any sex that features will not be simulated but performed by cast members”.
Mr Munro described this as a “new and significant difference” which “took the project into unacceptable territory”.
He told the MSPS: “This represented a significant change to the approved project, moving it from ‘performance’ into actuality, and into a space that was, in Creative Scotland’s view, inappropriate for public funding.”
Mr Munro said Creative Scotland had “recovered £67,741 from the applicant” which, combined with the 10% of the funding which had not yet been paid, “means that £76,196 of the total award has now been withdrawn”.
Rein had incurred “contractually legitimate costs of £8,359, mainly to subcontracted freelancers, by the time Creative Scotland informed them that the funding was being withdrawn”. These fees will not be recovered.
The project was awarded £23,219 in lottery funding through Creative Scotland in August 2022 for research and development.
That will also not be reclaimed as “the work was completed as set out in the approved application”.
According to its website, Rein was to be a “45 minute, multi-screen, immersive, moving image installation” performed by a mix of “dancers, sex workers, performers”.
Audiences would be invited to “come see the Daddies lurking in the woods” and “bare-arsed lovers frolicking in long grass” before the climax of the show, “a secret cave sex party featuring a feast” of explicit sexual practices.
The website explained that on traditional film sets, “sex is usually ‘simulated’ – performers wear modesty garments, there are barriers between them, genuine arousal is discouraged/ prevented, and there would not be any genital contact”.
However, Rein was a “sex-positive exploration of dyke sexuality, and we are drawing on a long tradition of pornographic, erotic and radical queer performance work where the sex, in all its messiness and complexity, is allowed to be part of the process like other acts and feelings”.
In his letter to MSPS, Mr Munro said it was right that art and artists do not just entertain and inspire, but challenge and make people uncomfortable. He said: “Creative Scotland seeks to fund a broad range of cultural and creative work, across a wide spectrum of creative practice and for a diverse range of audiences, from that which can be seen as mainstream, to work which is far more challenging, provocative, and may risk controversy. Themes of sex and sexuality have been seen in art throughout history and continue to be visible in contemporary life.”
He said it was not the body’s role to “censor work”. However, he said Creative Scotland did have “important responsibilities to the public for the appropriate use of public funding, responsibilities we take extremely seriously”.
In a statement, the team behind Rein said the controversy over the show had been “co-opted by many groups, individuals and the media for aggressive political, anti-trans, and anti-sex worker activity, alongside attacks on arts and culture”.
They also said Rein “would not qualify as pornography because it was not intended as a way to elicit sexual arousal as the outcome. Performers were to be paid for the purposes of collaboratively creating the artwork, and not for a client”.
Any sex that features will not be simulated