News May 23, 2018

A Melbourne duo’s controversial music video was removed from YouTube

Image: Jack Mannix

A controversial music video by Melbourne doom duo Divide And Dissolve has been reinstated to YouTube after it was removed for supposedly violating the video platform’s Community Guidelines.

On Friday, the video for ‘Dissolve’ by Geelong-based duo Divide And Dissolve made headlines around the country for its supposed depiction of group members Takiaya Reed and Sylvie Nehill using urine-filled water guns to spray historical landmarks, including monuments of John Batman and Captain James Cook.

“We would like to acknowledge these are a few of the many monuments to genocide, white supremacy, colonial violence, cultural genocide, ecocide, slavery, rape, and murder,’ the pair said in a statement at the end of the video.

“We are so excited to live in a world where these monuments do not exist. Bring them down. Decolonise now.”

As Noisey notes, the pair later admitted the liquid was not urine, but rather coloured water. Despite this, the video quickly became the centre of major controversy, with politicians and political commentators alike making their thoughts on the matter very clear.

“An unsettling disrespect for our history and traditions is being encouraged by groups who want to dismantle Australian society and its values,” wrote Cory Bernardi of the Australian Conservatives. “And it’s those values and traditions we need to protect and defend.”

Meanwhile, Melbourne Lord Mayor Sally Capp said she was “aghast at the disrespect, disrespect for our history for our parks, and disrespect for the people that want to come and enjoy those spaces.”

Following this outrage, the video was noted to have been removed from YouTube earlier today after being found to violate the Community Guidelines set in place by the service. However, as Music Feeds notes, the video has since been reinstated, with YouTube admitting they made a mistake by taking it down.

While the video is again available to view on YouTube as an age-restricted video, a spokesperson for the service admitted they were wrong in regards to its removal.

“With the massive volume of videos on our site, sometimes we make the wrong call,” a spokesperson for YouTube explained. “When it’s brought to our attention that a video has been removed mistakenly, we act quickly to reinstate it.”

As it stands, Divide And Dissolve have not yet responded to the video’s reinstatement, though they did release an earlier statement in which they hit back at the negative comments that the video was generating.

“With our video for ‘Resistance’ we are drawing attention to the memorialisation of genocide, slavery, rape, murder, cultural genocide, and ecocide,” they said in a statement.

“The people commenting with hate are clearly displaying the fact that we do not live in a society free from white supremacy, and are perpetrating everything we stand against.”