VANCOUVER (CUP) — From artists to events staff, a whole raft of people weren't allowed to speak critically about the Olympics last month. Sometimes, though, you can say more by saying nothing at all.

Blackout was a project by Vancouver artists Alex Leslie and Elizabeth Bachinsky that put Vancouverites and visitors in Candahar — a performance installation that emulated an Irish pub — and let them use a black pen to create their own messages from photocopies of Olympics coverage.

"Our project is a response to all of the censorship around the Olympics," Leslie told the Canadian University Press.

Controversy had started when Vancouver poet laureate Brad Cran declined to participate in the Cultural Olympiad, according to the CBC, due to a clause that would block participating artists from making negative comments about the Olympics or sponsors.

"We've had a number of aboriginal artists who've participated in the project," Bachinsky said, "and many of them have participated in the Cultural Olympiad." She estimated that about 80 per cent of submissions were completely anonymous.

According to Leslie, they have received all kinds of blacked-out submissions. "Some are funny, some are playful, some are really confrontational, some are gibberish," she said. "Our idea . . . was that we wanted to do something that wasn't really didactic.

“We wanted to do something that took all the materials that represent the Olympics in the media and say, 'Look at this, what happens when we take this apart.'"

Some submissions include references to housing and other protest movements.

"Quatchi kid don't like war at all, but he do love the miles he get when he protest war," read a piece originally about a small child watching a celebration involving the Olympic mascot. A quote about what volunteers should do if approached to speak by the media now reads "You are a roach in our home," another reads. "Go roach off."

A quote about a bylaw that would allow police to enter houses to remove ambush marketing signage was blacked out to say "This bylaw is to protect the billions of public coffers to the hands right of mega products."

Some were less politically active, including one that read, "If you have sound, cover the brand" and one that changed a roster announcement for the men's hockey team to look like a lottery card.

Despite the artists' desire to be neither pro- nor anti-Games, a lot of the material ended up confrontational — but that was up to the individual participants. "I think the people who really jumped on the project . . . were people who really wanted to respond critically to the Olympics," Leslie said.

She noted, however, that contributors have come from a wide range of backgrounds. “We also have contributors who were children, contributors from all over the world who came to see the Olympics," she said.

Bachinsky agreed. "Every night . . . has been a really different space," she said. "From night to night, the audiences have been really varied."