Ken Avidor is multitalented artist based in Indianapolis. His wife, Roberta Avidor, is also an artist. Working in oils and watercolor, she is a fine artist in more ways than one: her very fine depictions of urban scenes in the Circle City are well worth a look. Together the Avidors have a website called Avidor Studios. You can reach it by clicking here. You can read a little more about Mr. Avidor and his projects on the website FilmFreeway, here, and on his own blog, Bicyclopolis, here.
Born in Brooklyn, New York, Ken Avidor is a cartoonist, illustrator, street or urban artist, video artist, sculptor, and courtroom sketch artist. He recently created the first episode of an illustrated video series called Unjabbed and posted his video to the online platform Vimeo. On October 15, 2021, Mr. Avidor received word from Vimeo that it was removing Unjabbed because of its content. Vimeo explained:
"We do not allow health-related content that might cause people to take dangerous or unproven treatments or refrain from taking indicated precautions or treatments that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) or World Health Organization (WHO). We also do not allow claims that an epidemic or pandemic (such as COVID-19) are conspiracies."
Mr. Avidor's video tells a story of a dystopian/post-apocalyptic future in which an unnamed disease and the human response to that disease have brought down a society and a civilization. In other words, Unjabbed is science fiction, more generally, fiction and a work of art. Evidently the platform Vimeo and all of its fellow travelers are unaware of the concepts of art and fiction. In any case, you can still see Unjabbed on another platform, called Rumble, by clicking here. I urge everyone to see it, to support Ken and Roberta Avidor in any way possible, and especially to stand up to censorship in all of its forms.
For the original story, see "Vimeo Removes Artist’s Fictional Vaccine Cartoon, Labeling It 'Dangerous' Health-Related Content" by Gabe Kaminsky on the website The Federalist, dated November 2, 2021, here.
Original text copyright 2021, 2024 Terence E. Hanley
