The Roundabout Dog Tour is inspired by the artwork of Swedish artist Lars Vilks. It intends to visit 60 European cities to highlight the importance of free speech. As in many campaigns before it, art is used to highlight the issues. Lars Vilks produced his Roundabout Dog series of drawings in response to the atmosphere of censorship that has enveloped Europe in recent years. He has been demonized, threatened and lost his livelihood because of the stand he took.
The drawings themselves are not on tour. Instead, the tour involves a plywood mock-up of the roundabout dog and it is this mock-up that visits the various cities. The plywood roundabout dog was created by a Swedish society called Free Speech Europe. It is non-political and promotes freedom of expression by supporting those who have been “blacklisted” or persecuted because of their political or artistic expressions.
Now, 5 years later, Lars Vilks is still figuring as number 5 on the Al Quaida death list!
Read more at our home page:
http://en.freespeech.nu/roundabout-dog-tour/
Sunday the 26th of May the Roundabout Dogs will capture Germany.
The Free Speech Europe Roundabout Dog TOUR will visit 20 cities in Germany and The Czech Republic between the 26th of May and 12th of June.
Unfortunately our mission is so sensitive, that we cannot reveal the exact places or times in the selected cities. We would be happy if anybody offer a little local help during the journey. I could use help to carry the “dogs,” to borrow a parking spot with car and caravan outside a “friends” property. We could use ideas about places for photo sessions or names and contact to people worth interviewing or people in the Art business for exchanging of ideas.
For press and other interested parties:
Please feel free to mail Hans Erling Jensen at [email protected] or phone +46 707 875750 if you have questions or know of something that could be of interest for the TOUR.
The TOUR list will be approximately as follows:
26 May – Schleswig
27 May – Lübeck/Schwerin
28 May – Berlin
29 May – Berlin
30 May – Berlin
31 May – Berlin
1 June – Dresden
2 June – Prague
3 June – Pilsen/Regensburg
4 June – München
5 June – Stuttgart
6 June – Heidelberg
7 June – Frankfurt
8 June – Fulda
9 June – Göttingen
10 June – Hannover
11 June – Hamburg
You can read much more of the TOUR here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lars_Vilks
http://en.freespeech.nu/about-free-speech-europe/
Here you will find pictures from the TOUR in Sweden and Denmark (will be updated daily):
http://en.freespeech.nu/press-room/press/
http://en.freespeech.nu/press-room/links-from-press-and-blogs/
An article describing the tour from Dispatch International/ICLA:
http://www.d-intl.com/a-roundabout-way-to-promote-free-speech
Support The Roundabout Dog TOUR & Lars Vilks
Would you like to support Free Speech, then you can invest in Lars Vilks new Art work ”in style of.” Available here: http://en.freespeech.nu/the-art-shop/
You can also ”member up” with the Free Speech Europe society for only Euro 35 for 2 years:
