Monday 23 April 2012

LETTER SENT TO GUARDIAN NEWSPAPER REGARDING ROYAL SHAKESPEARE COMPANY'S SPONSORSHIP BY BP

Culture
Stage
World Shakespeare festival

Letters
Oiling the wheels of the Shakespeare festival



guardian.co.uk, Sunday 22 April 2012 21.00 BST


Today, 23 April, is Shakespeare's birthday and marks the launch of the World Shakespeare festival (Review, 21 April). Yet what should be an unabashed celebration of Shakespeare's continued relevance to our world has been sullied by the fact that the festival is sponsored by BP. While the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon spill continues to devastate ecosystems and communities, and the highly polluting extraction of tar sands oil brings us rapidly closer to the point of no return from climate change, we feel that BP has no place in arts sponsorship.

We, as individuals involved in theatre and the arts, are deeply concerned that the RSC – like other much-cherished cultural institutions – is allowing itself to be used by BP to obscure the destructive reality of its activities. We would like to see an end to oil sponsorship of the arts and are committed to finding more responsible ways to finance this country's cultural life, for our own and future generations.
Mark Rylance Actor, writer and playwright
Moira Buffini Playwright
Van Badham Playwright
Jo Tyabji Director and actor
Rod Dixon Red Ladder Theatre Company
James Bolam Actor
Sue Jameson Actor
Lisa Wesley Artist and theatre-maker
Arabella Lawson Actor
Harry Giles Environment officer, Festivals Edinburgh
Professor Stephen Bottoms Chair of drama and theatre studies and director of the Workshop Theatre, University of Leeds
Andy Field Co-director, Forest Fringe
Daniel Balla Producer, Gaia Theatre Collective; director, Coexists Events Space
Tom Worth Producer of the Globe's Hamlet on Tour documentary
Lucy Jameson Gaia Theatre
Simon Lys Gaia Theatre
Leo-Marcus Wan Actor
Tim Jeeves Artist and writer
Phil Maxwell Director
Hazuan Hasheem Director
Sue Palmer Contemporary performance maker and artist
Stephen Duncombe Associate Professor, New York University, Gallatin School of Media, Culture & Communications, Center For Artistic Activism
Kenny Young Songwriter, musician, founder of Artists Project Earth
Ana Betancour Professor, architect, artist
John Volynchook Photographer
Leila Galloway Artist and senior lecturer
Dr Wallace Heim Academic and former set designer
Tracey Dunn Film-maker and community tv broadcaster

BP OR NOT BP? THAT IS THE QUESTION

BP or not BP? That is the question
If oil be the fuel for us, drill on
All that glisters is not gold
Action is eloquence

BP or not BP
BP or not BP? That is the question

At a time when the world should fear much more the heat of the sun and the furious winter’s rages, BP is conspiring to distract us from the naked truth of climate change, and by pursuing a future powered by more and more extreme fossil fuels, like tar sands, deepwater drilling and Arctic exploitation, with its daring folly burn the world.
Something is rotten in the state of Stratford

The Royal Shakespeare Company have chosen to put BP’s money in their purse. Yet he’s mad that trusts in the tameness of a wolf. BP is doing everything in its power to let not the public see its deep and dark desires – fossil fuel expansion and ecological devastation. BP is the harlot’s cheek, beautied with sponsoring art. It is the greenwash monster, which doth mock the meat it feeds on, and the RSC have made themselves complicit in its crimes. If this were play’d upon a stage now, we could condemn it as an improbable fiction!
Enough! No more!

Times are tough. Ay, there’s the rub. But all that glisters is not gold. And whilst comparisons are odorous, we do well remember the dropping of tobacco companies as sponsors by a host of cultural institutions. The arts continued, and so shall the RSC, freed from the grasp of this smiling damned villain. Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more!
We believe that action is eloquence

We say to the RSC: to thine own self be true. Be nothing if not critical and forgo your damaging relationship with BP.

Wednesday 15 February 2012

JAMES MARRIOT SPEAKING ABOUT OIL SPONSORSHIP OF ARTS FROM SOTA12



Platform at State of the Arts Conference, #sota12
Posted on February 15, 2012 by James Marriott

Presentation by James Marriott on ‘Artists & the Future Environment’*

The first speaker was writer Jay Griffiths, author of ‘Wild’, followed by myself, James Marriott, speaking for Platform. You can watch an interview I did after the presentation at the bottom of the text.

Thank you Jay for a beautiful exposition of the relationship between art and nature. I’d like explore this further in what we can call the practice of creating art, and in specific, the role of the Arts Council.

As Jay’s explained, all art has a relationship to nature, indeed all art is environmental. Regardless of whether the artist identifies the work as ‘art addressing nature’ or ‘art dealing with environmental issues’, the work itself will have an impact on the environment, locally and globally. Questions that arise from this include:

“Is the relationship between the artist and the environment one in which there’s a committed attempt to lessen the negative impacts of arts practice on the Earth?”

“Is the artist trying to draw attention to, or celebrate, nature and the wounds that humanity inflicts upon nature – such as the alteration of the Earth’s climate?”

“Is the artist trying reduce the impact of those wounds?”

I’m speaking here not because of the work of Platform alone, but also that of other artists and arts organisations who are committed to attempting to lessen the environmental impact of the arts and to creating, or fostering, art works that draw attention to those wounds, in particular climate change.

In March 2011, Platform, like many others, did not have its RFO status renewed in the form of becoming an ACE NPO organisation. Not surprisingly we were somewhat dismayed, but when we looked around it seemed that NPO status had not been awarded to any of the other arts organisations in London Region that have an explicit environmental focus. So we gathered together with Cape Farewell, Julie’s Bicycle, Tipping Point, Live Art Development Agency, ArtsAdmin, plus John Hartley – former ACE Arts & Ecology Officer – and Michaela Crimmin – former head of the RSA Arts & Ecology programme – and wrote to Moira Sinclair, Executive Director, ACE London. Working collaboratively we raised our concerns that the Arts Council seemed to be turning its back on this field, after having been its champion. Indeed just months before, Liz Forgan (Chair of ACE) when launching ‘Great Art for Everyone’, had talked of the necessity of addressing climate change in her opening paragraphs. So we requested a meeting and last July, thirteen of us met with seven ACE staff, four of whom were at Director level. We strongly delineated the changes we felt that ACE needed to make.

Three weeks ago, all parties met again, and to our delight we could salute some substantial shifts that had taken place. The agreement which each NPO body has to sign with ACE, now has a specific set of environmental deliverables. Julie’s Bicycle have been contracted to assist all the NPO’s in reducing their carbon dioxide emissions. ACE have supported Cape Farewell’s programme and the Tipping Point event in Newcastle next week. There’s a ‘Green Team’ in ACE at a national level and this subject area – Artist & the Environment – was added to the State of the Arts programme. As I say, neither I, nor we, would be sitting in this session if it weren’t for the collective labour of those organisations that demanded a meeting with Moira.

Part of the intent of these organisations has been to assert that ACE, as a key funder of the arts in England, has a fundamental role in driving artistic practice in a way that reduces environmental impact and draws attention to the wounds of the Earth, in particular climate change. By analogy, there was a time when questions of diversity and disablility were considered peripheral to ACE’s remit – now they are questions which stand at the core of ACE’s policies. Just as they should do. The aim, and hope, of those who’ve been pushing in the past year – and we’re determined to expand this group – is that the environment will become equally embedded in ACE’s practice. The new requirements in the NPO agreement, is an important symbol of a shift in direction.

It is especially heartening that ACE is making these moves when it is having to undergo very substantial cuts in its overall budgets, decimating its staff numbers and reducing the scale of the funds that it can disberse. On account of these changes, and in the light of the ideological inclinations of the Minister for Culture, ACE is pushing hard to encourage arts organisations to raise funds from private and corporate sources. For example through the Catalyst fund, which seeks to increase ‘philanthropy’. At this point when ACE is requiring NPO’s to monitor and reduce their carbon footprint, and ACE is itself endeavouring to act with greater environmental responsibility, it is important to consider the social and ecological impact of those other bodies which arts organisations are being encouraged to approach for support.

Consider the corporate sponsorship of the the Royal Opera House, the National Portrait Gallery, the British Museum and Tate – the lead sponsor of these four commanding heights of British culture, is BP. Meanwhile the National Gallery, the National Theatre, the South Bank Centre – along with the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum and the National Maritime Museum – all receive key sponsorship from Shell. Both of these oil companies are explicit in their intentions with this sponsorship. There is an important distinction here – whilst arts organisations are encouraged to seek ‘philanthropy, these corporations do not see what they are giving as ‘philanthropy’, but rather describe it as a means to building ‘partnerships’.

They see it as making an investment and understand that they receive something in return – what they receive is ‘the social license to operate’. This is a term used by the oil industry. It means the active creation of acceptance, or support, of a company’s activities by key sections of society, support which then enables the company to carry out its core function. In the case of BP and Shell this core business is the extraction and sale of oil & gas, the transfer of hydrocarbons from deep beneath the Earth into the engines of our society and then out into the air as carbon dioxide emissions. The transfer of carbon from the lithosphere into the atmosphere. This process is fundamental to our ever-growing impact on the Earth’s climate.

We should not underestimate the role of the oil companies in creating this impact. For example, the Kyoto Protocol essentially divides the world’s CO2 emissions by nation state – under this scheme, the UK is responsible for 2.5% of global CO2 emissions. By the same analysis BP is responsible for 5.6% of global CO2 emissions. This one company is therefore responsible for more than twice the emissions of the 62 million citizens of the UK combined. Anything that assists BP and Shell in their core activities – such as that which comes through their sponsorship of the arts – assists in this transfer of carbon from the belly of the Earth into the atmosphere, which is driving forward climate change.

What concerns a growing body of artists and arts organisations is the increasing pervasiveness of oil industry sponsorship of the arts, which thereby increases the environmental impact of the arts.

As Jay said: “We need a change in the climate of art to create the culture which nurtures nature, not only human nature but all forms of nature.” Not so long ago few arts organisations considered the carbon footprint of, for example, their touring programme. Now a change has come about to such an extent that considering this is part of the funding requirements demanded by ACE. Now it is time to take this change further, so that arts organisations consider the carbon footprint of the bodies from which they receive finance.

The strapline of this conference is ‘artists shaping the world’, and even the Minister of Culture said this morning “the arts sit at the centre of the changes in our society”. A fundamental change in our society that needs to take place is to take our culture off the use of oil & gas in order to slow down the pace of climate change. The arts can, and must, play a central role in this, but this will not be done unless we cease to finance our arts institutions from the sponsorship of oil & gas corporations, such as Shell & BP.

* one of the parallel sessions, at Arts Council England’s SOTA Conference 2012, chaired by Alison Clark-Jenkins, Regional Director Arts Council England North-East

Tuesday 24 January 2012

Monday 16 January 2012

FLOE PIECE LIBERATE TATE ARCTIC ICE

Floe Piece - Liberate Tate from You and I Films on Vimeo.


Floe Piece
Liberate Tate. Arctic Ice, canvas, light, water.

"The fact that BP had one major incident in 2010 does not mean we should not be taking support from them." - Nicholas Serota, Director, Tate.

[Floe Piece - an expression applied to sheets of ice not more than a furlong in length]

The Deepwater Horizon disaster did not end in 2010 for the communities affected; BP's harmful impacts are numerous and occur across the globe year on year. In 2010-11 BP pushed forward expansion plans into the Arctic in Alaska, Canada and Russia.

Oil extraction in this region is only possible because of melting ice caused by climate change. Spills in Arctic waters are immensely more complicated than elsewhere, and indeed BP is itself responsible for the largest oil spill on Alaska's north slope, at Prudhoe Bay in 2006, where the company continues to drill for oil.

This Arctic ice has been transported from the Arctic region to London, the home of BP; today (14 January 2012) it has been carried by Liberate Tate from Occupy London at LSX to Tate Modern's Turbine Hall.

The journey of this block of ice retraces the line of connection from BP's devastating impacts on ecosystems, communities and the global climate to Tate, an art museum complicit in this destruction though its support of the company's efforts to create a positive public image, a social licence to operate.

liberatetate.org

Wednesday 4 January 2012

LIBERATE TATE'S SPOKESPERSON ON WHY FIGHTING BP SPONSORSHIP PICKS UP THE CAUSE OF TAHRIR SQUARE


Photo by Immo Klink
Liberate Tate's "License to Spill" protest at Tate Britain's summer party, 2010


by Coline Milliard, ARTINFO UK
Published: January 4, 2012

Despite public protests, Tate Britain, the British Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, and the Royal Opera House are renewing their sponsorship deal with BP, which will fork out £10 million ($15.62 million) to the institutions in the next five years. On December 19, Tate director Nick Serota explained that the board had "thought very carefully about this and decided it was the right thing to do." Tate trustee artist Bob and Roberta Smith, publicly disavowed the move, but many, including the Guardian's art critic Jonathan Jones, feel that corporate sponsorship by the likes of BP is a necessary evil in the current economic climate.

Artists collective Liberate Tate has been — with Platform and Art Not Oil — at the forefront of the debate since 2010. The collective turned up with BP logo-embossed buckets of molasses at the Tate Summer party in 2010, and they are now starting a series of art commissions to "free art from the grips of the oil industry through creativity." G, an anonymous spokesman for the group, answers ARTINFO UK's questions.

You have been campaigning for two years, and together with Platform, presented Tate with a petition signed by 8,000 people asking them not to accept money from BP. What does this renewed sponsorship deal mean to you?

We had hoped that the trustees would demonstrate leadership and help take forward the art world and Tate as a public institution into the 21st century. The lack of ethical progression, however, was an expected blow given the entrenchment of BP in our cultural institutions to date.

In renewing this sponsorship deal, Tate is knowingly making itself, to some extent, complicit in BP’s many controversial operations around the world, including its tar sands extraction in Canada, the local conflicts in Papua New Guinea being exacerbated by its hugely problematic gas plant there, and its expansion into Arctic drilling with its Russian partner. Only by breaking its links with BP will the Tate board of trustees be acting in the best interests of Tate and the arts as well as affected communities, future generations, and the world we live in.

Why the focus on Tate, when BP also sponsors the British Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, and the Royal Opera House?

Tate likes to position itself publicly as a forward-thinking institution that takes climate change and human rights seriously as part of its cultural activities, so it seems particularly incongruous that it should have such an entrenched relationship with a corporate entity like BP.

[But] the issue is, of course, about oil and the wider cultural sector. There have been performances at the British Museum, and groups like Art Not Oil and Platform have chosen to engage with these other institutions, but we are committed to making this happen at Tate first and foremost. We believe Tate is supporting BP rather than the other way round. This association is damaging to Tate’s reputation and its relationship with an increasingly climate-conscious public.

You started Liberate Tate following a workshop on art and activism at Tate in January 2010, in which the curators asked you not to comment on Tate's sponsors. Do you feel that this renewed sponsorship deal means more censorship in the institution?

Some of us experienced an attempt by Tate to limit freedom of expression because of their fears about corporate sponsors. We have to assume that there are many other pernicious choices made by Tate and others due to oil money. This is not straight-forward ideological censorship, but marketised censorship that ultimately maintains the link between sponsorship and advertising at the expense of freedom of speech. Yet censorship is only one area of concern.

Your philosophy in a nutshell?

Free art from the grip of the oil industry through creativity.

How would you define your current relationship to the gallery?

Tate is the space in which we stage performances and other interventions which then resonate beyond the gallery in the art world and the public domain largely though mainstream and social media. We make provocations. Our artworks are site-specific and self-curated, necessarily situated in the honourable tradition of institutional critique, but we leave it to others to have direct dialogue with Tate itself.

How do you work with Art Not Oil and Platform?

We have a common goal and sometimes-common methods and initiatives with Art Not Oil and Platform. The art scene is very privileged to have Platform, and their research and links with communities affected by oil companies are invaluable in informing our performances. Art Not Oil are activists we greatly respect. We hope that by creating art inside the gallery we can contribute something extra and complementary to what these groups and others are doing.

Are the members of Liberate Tate anonymous? And, if so, why?

As an art collective we have a group identity which is paramount. Who we each are could become a distraction from the work we do. That is why, for example, we sometimes cover some of our faces in performances such as "License to Spill" (2010), when we disrupted Tate celebrating 20 years of their partnership with BP (against the ongoing backdrop of the Deepwater Horizon spill!) and in "Human Cost" (2011) in the Tate exhibition "Single Form." These are largely aesthetic choices though.

Some of us are artists with a public profile based around a very different set of practices and output. We include a number of staff from Tate and other oil-sponsored galleries who want to keep their jobs yet help their employer through the power of art itself.

Others are active in many walks of professional life. We are not seeking to get a name for each of ourselves or to make a living from our work as Liberate Tate so it just does not seem important most of the time, especially given our focus.

Could you tell me more about the "Tate à Tate" project? When did it come about and how do you hope to implement it?

"Tate à Tate" is an alternative audio tour of Tate, with sound works by commissioned artists, allowing anyone visiting Tate to be part of a Liberate Tate durational performance in an unsanctioned installation inside the galleries providing a problematised experience of the presence of BP within these spaces. The work takes place in three parts — Tate Britain, Tate Modern, and the boat journey in between the two. We have been lucky to work with artists such as Ansuman Biswas, Isa Suarez, and Phil England on the project.

All the recording and mixes are finished so we are now in production, and it will be unveiled in the coming months. Members of First Nation indigenous communities in Canada impacted by tar sands have already had a trial run when they were passing through London.

The Guardian's Jonathan Jones has called protests against the BP sponsorship "the stupidest and most misplaced of supposedly radical campaigns." How would you like to respond?

Yes, he said: "Why not do something useful like join Occupy? While protests around the world this year, from Wall Street to Tahrir Square, have picked the right causes and enemies, the BP art campaign is mistargeted, misconceived, and massively self-indulgent."

It is misguided to not see what Liberate Tate and our allies are doing as part of this global movement for public accountability of public institutions and for ending vested interests that are shutting down the possibilities of a better future. Many of us are active in Occupy and on Saturday 14 January, we are taking part in an afternoon event (2-6pm), "The Corporate Occupation of the Arts," at the Bank of Ideas that has been squatted by the Occupy LSX folks. We work with and in solidarity with artists and activists in the Middle East. Many oil companies like BP have a terrible track record of supporting repressive regimes like that of Mubarak that have tried to crush the Arab Spring, and sponsorship implicates art institutions in that. When you are targeting BP sponsorship of Tate, you are also supporting the uprising of Tahrir Square.

We welcome all commentators to this debate, even when what they might say is perhaps not really thought out. If you want to attack Liberate Tate knock yourself out — as Gandhi may not have actually said: "First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they attack you. Then you win."

In a time of severe funding cuts for the arts, what alternative to private sponsorship do you champion?

Firstly, for all sides of the debate around oil sponsorship of the arts, we need to know how much BP is giving Tate as it has been kept a secret. How much of the £10 million is coming Tate's way? A publicly known figure would provide a solid point of reference to discuss the value of BP sponsorship, and the practical steps in a move away from it.

Secondly, there is a difference between being against any sort of private sponsorship and being against oil companies in particular given they are some of the most reprehensible corporate entities. People have different views on the wider question of corporates and art even within the Liberate Tate collective. We would welcome a deeper and wider debate about private sponsorship models — we have never said we are against business supporting arts per se.

What we refuse to accept is that the art world has to be stuck in the 20th century in regard to how corporations are involved, especially with public galleries, when a company clearly has harmful impact on society.

Arms manufacturers and tobacco companies are no longer socially acceptable as partners. Is the art world really in total ethical stasis, not able to progress further? When we know what we do about climate change and oil, and what BP has done and how many artists and art lovers object to that, it is only a matter of time before the exclusion of oil companies is the next leap forward.

What is your next step?

There are more Liberate Tate artworks and commissions in the pipeline (sic). When Tate and the other arts giants agreed a new BP sponsorship deal, the London Evening Standard headline had a nod to our work. It said: THIS COULD GET MESSY. We quite agree.

The effort to end oil sponsorship of the arts intensifies. Our invitation for artists, art lovers, and other concerned members of the public to act to ensure that Tate ends its oil sponsorship remains open. Together we can imagine and bring about culture beyond oil, where art is put back into the service of life.

PLATFORM - THE CORPORATE OCCUPATION OF THE ARTS


Posted on January 4, 2012 by Kevin Smith

The Corporate Occupation of the Arts. -OccupyLSX / The Bank of Ideas
Earl St. EC2A 2AL – Sat 14th Jan 2012. 2- 6pm

We’re taking part in this afternoon of presentations and discussions at the Bank of Ideas, an abandoned office block purchased several years ago by the bank UBS and squatted bu Occupy LSX. More info about it all below

Could there be a crueller indictment of an art world that is convinced of its moral superiority to mainstream culture than to be subsidized by one of the criminal financial forces that has brought our culture to its very knees?
Mat Gleason

Art is the ultimate emotional branding.
Brunswick International Corporate Communications Partnership.

An afternoon of talks by artists, activists, writers and academics to explore the parasitic and exploitative relationship between art and capital. We will discuss the politics of sponsorship; activism against sponsors, Bloombergism, the transformation of the Art School and the ideological takeover of the dissensual values of art.

· Corporations who refuse to pay £billions in taxes are fêted for their relatively paltry largess and are awarded privileged access to events and policymaking. Donations no longer fit within notions of ‘patronage’ or ‘philanthropy’ but are strategically targeted blue chip branding exercises. This is part of a much bigger drive towards the marketisation of the arts and the privatisation of cultural provision and public space.

· There is a long history of Art’s aesthetic and sensual pleasures being used to conceal ethical irresponsibility. Now though, the space of dissent and critique is commodified and art’s autonomy is turned against itself.

· Whist arts funding is slashed, and the public space decimated, the artist’s labour is being yet more intensively exploited. Dozens of Associate Lectureship have been axed, a 10% wage cut imposed on ICA staff and 800 interns work for free. All this whilst corporate capital turns its casino logic into spectacular saleroom values.

· In campaigns against BP’s sponsorship of the Tate and demonstrations at auction houses, activists have recently brought public attention how the arts are used to whitewash toxic reputations and in the appropriation of arts positive values and associations. No account is taken of the contradiction between the utter incompatibility between the ethical promise of the art world and the destructive activities of many corporations.

· As is usual in Occupy, our conversation will turn from analysis and critique of ‘what is going on’ into planning and strategy for ‘what is to be done’.

Organised by Andrew Conio. (University of Wolverhampton and Chelsea School of Art.)

Speakers

Andrew Conio. Introduction – The State Against Art
Platform. Licence to Spill – Big oil and the UK art scene.
Liberate Tate. Performance interventions in gallery spaces
John Beck (Newcastle University) and Matthew Cornford (University of Brighton). The Art School and the Culture Shed.
John Cussans. Protest Pedagogy.
Mark McGowan. There is No Law Against Art.
Dean Kenning. The Corporate Occupation of Art.
Freee. Mel Jordan, Andy Hewitt and Dave Beech. Economists are Wrong.
Precarious Workers Brigade. How Can we Fight the Marketisaton and Corporatisation of the Arts?
Discussion.