Art Not Oil

Should the art world dump BP?

by Ossian Ward, Time Out,19.7.10

http://www.timeout.com/london/art/article/1346/should-the-art-world-dump-bpr

Greenpeace boss Sauven on BP and the Tate:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2010/jul/02/bp-arts-sponsorship-tate-protests

Tate Britain's Summer Party, a celebration of 20 years of BP sponsorship, is flooded with oil and scattered with feathers, (28.6.10)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPpWPbEPspY 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pz-_2KLt1W0 
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2010/06/454500.html 
http://climatecamp.org.uk/blog/2010/06/30/
great-art-but-without-the-blood-money/ 

LIBERATE TATE COMMUNIQUE #2 (JUNE 2010)

 
It was us and it was art!
 
Last night (28 June), as Tate celebrated 20 years of BP ‘support’ for British Art with a Summer Party, Liberate Tate disrupted the proceedings inside and out by pouring hundreds of litres of ‘oil’ (molasses) and scattering thousands of feathers as the UK’s celebrity glitterati watched on in fascination.
 
Sipping Pimms and gobbling canapés, many of the guests expressed confusion at whether these striking actions were ‘art’ or not. Despite inaccurate reporting in various media outlets, Liberate Tate would like to claim full responsibility for these acts of creative disobedience as art - art that refuses to pretend to do politics but is politics, art that makes transforming the world a beautiful adventure.
 
The Tate Summer Party had been planned to be in the museum gardens and involve speeches from BP executives. However, due to the rumours of disruption, Tate was forced to hold the entire event inside the museum and no speeches were made.
 
As the evening sun baked down on the stone courtyard of Tate Britain and members of the cultural and corporate elite made their way into the party, 13 figures dressed in black, their faces veiled, appeared from around the corner. In a mournful procession, the art-activists approached the entrance carrying large barrels branded with the BP logo. Dozens of photographers and TV cameras swarmed and a moment of tense silence enveloped the area. Something was going to happen.
 
Then, in a perfectly choreographed moment, the front phalanx poured hundreds of litres of the black liquid all over the entrance, whilst others threw feathers into the air which gently drifted down into the huge sticky black pools. The sombre figures walked calmly away, disappearing into the city, as the security redirected the guests to another entrance and the clean-up operation began.
 
Meanwhile, despite the heavy security at the door, two Liberate Tate art-activists managed to infiltrate the party wearing large floral bouffant dresses underneath which were concealed large sacks filled the oily molasses. Calling themselves Toni Hayward and Bobbi Dudley, they began their performance in the crowded central gallery. At first drips began to fall from their handbags. “Oh, I seem to have a leak” whispered one of them to the lined up waiters dressed in brilliant white, who kindly provided napkins to stem the spill.
 
Soon the sacks under their dresses burst releasing tens of litres of ‘oil’ across the shiny parquet floor. As a crowd formed around them, the two donned BP branded ponchos and scrambled on all fours trying to clean up the mess using their high heel shoes to pour the slick back into their handbags, but to no avail. “Compared to the size of the gallery this is a tiny spill, a drop in the ocean,” they apologised to the viewers, “we’ll definitely have it cleaned up by, say, August”.
 
The polite crowd that had formed continued to watch appreciatively for another 20 minutes, amidst a sea of camera-phones. Many began debating among themselves whether this was art or not (“I think it is. I like it”), whether Tate had organised it, and what their personal aesthetic reactions to it were (“If I had seen this outside, I think I would have felt as I do seeing it… inside”). More than one invited artist openly described this to their fellow drinkers as the most sophisticated work in the room.
                                          
LIBERATE TATE
 
Liberate Tate is a network dedicated to taking creative disobedience against Tate until it drops its oil company funding.
 
The 28 June art activist performances follow on from last month’s disruption of Tate Modern’s 10th Birthday celebrations by hanging dead fish and birds from dozens of giant black helium balloons.
 
The network was founded during a workshop in January 2010 on art and activism, commissioned by and at Tate. When Tate curators tried to censor the workshop from making interventions against Tate sponsors, the incensed participants decided to continue their work together beyond the workshop and set up the wider network that is Liberate Tate.
 
www.twitter.com/liberatetate
 
Images: www.immoklink.com/BP-Tate/index.html
 
Video: (from outside, inside video to be released soon)
 
www.youandifilms.com/2010/06/license-to-spill/
 
See also LIBERATE TATE COMMUNIQUE 1 http://bit.ly/9RFfxJ (MAY 2010)

- ends - 

*******************

Art Monthly discussion with John Jordan (Liberate Tate etc.) and JJ Charlesworth about BP and museums and art and revolution

http://tinyurl.com/2vn9dtn 

********************* 

Guardian poll, June 2010:

'Should the Tate continue to accept BP sponsorship?'

45.9% - Yes
54.1% - No

 ************************

And this is amazing: 

http://instantoilspill.com/?url=http://www.tate.org.uk/

*********************

171 artists sign letter calling for Tate to climb free of BP, (Gdn, 28.6.10):

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jun/28/bp-tate-curator-oil

http://www.carbonweb.org/showitem.asp?article=382&parent=39

*****************

'Galleries and museums face summer of protest over BP arts sponsorship', (Gdn 24.6.10)

Prestigious institutions defend links with oil firm as artists and green activists plan action www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jun/24/galleries-museums-summer-protest-bp-arts-sponsorship

Above: a poster from New Orleans...

**************** 

 For a musical 'tribute' to BP, have a listen to 'Celebrate This!' by The Carbon Town Cryer:

www.myspace.com/carbontowncryer  

****************

PLATFORM's new briefing (June 2010) is definitely worth a download:

http://www.platformlondon.org/carbonweb/documents/licencetospill.pdf 

************

Terrific, in-depth discussion of these issues:

http://www.archive.org/details/UnimaginingCorporateGreenwashing 

That above is a brand new image by Raithy, placed here partly as a response to the terrible loss of human life and animal life in the Gulf of Mexico at the moment.

---------------------

Here's a groundbreaking question to Nicholas Serota slotted amongst the art theory, taken from The Observer's piece headed 'Artists, critics and readers on 10 years of Tate Modern':

Glen Tarman, Charity manager, Wapping, London: 'In a time of climate change, will you stop sponsorship by oil companies so we can visit Tate and enjoy great art without being complicit in climate chaos?'

Serota: 'The first thing to say is we have support from BP, which as a company is looking at renewable energy as well as using up fossil fuels and using oil. We have long had support from them and are not intending to abandon it. But we are committed to addressing issues posed by climate change. Tate has made some big strides in terms of carbon reduction and bringing that to the attention of other people in the world.'

Taken from:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/apr/25/serota-tate-modern-tenth-birthday?showallcomments=true#comment-51

Picture shows 'Disobedience Makes History' workshop participants using the windows of 
Tate Modern to make their feelings known, 30.1.10

Pressure is growing on the Tate to ditch BP as sponsor, preferably in time for the opening of its new extension in 2012. 

This is from Art Monthly's March editorial, reporting on a recent workshop titled 'Disobedience Makes History', held there by artist/activist John Jordan with 30 participants, many of whom are now committed to seeing Tate live up to its sustainability rhetoric and go BP-free:

IN ADVANCE OF A BROKEN ARM 
The insistence that public art institutions bring in funding from the private sector is looking less clever now. Post crash, sponsorship has evaporated, threatening the survival of those, like the Institute of Contemporary Arts, that came to rely on it. Even the most powerful institutions, such as Tate Modern, 
are now so timid when it comes to their sponsors that it affects their programming. 
What, then, might another model of funding look like?

The pity of it is that the UK's flagship museum of modern and contemporary art should feel so exposed and vulnerable to the vagaries of sponsors that it engages in this form of self-censorship - in advance of a broken arm, so to speak.'

Here's a snippet from his piece in the magazine:

ON REFUSING TO PRETEND TO DO POLITICS IN A MUSEUM 
John Jordan on what happened when Tate programmed a workshop on disobedience 'What is it about the word "disobedience" that the institutional art world doesn't understand? Last autumn the Nikolaj Contemporary Art Centre in Copenhagen dropped the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination's Bike Bloc project when it realised that the "tools of civil disobedience" that we were going to build were not gestures but actual tools and tactics for the protest actions around the UN's COP15 Climate Change Conference. The curator told us that she feared that the museum's funders, the City of Copenhagen, would not support any "illegal" activity. It seemed that she had assumed we would pretend to do politics.'

http://www.artmonthly.co.uk/current.htm 

********************

EMAIL DIALOGUE WITH PENELOPE CURTIS, DIRECTOR, TATE BRITAIN, MAY 2010

Here's a recent email dialogue with Penelope Curtis, Director of Tate Britain, elicited by our sending to her a copy of the Art Not Oil 2010 diary, and an impassioned plea to consider terminating the relationship with BP.

On 11 May 2010, at 17:43, Penelope Curtis wrote:

 Dear Mark Bran

I realise that I have been slow in responding to your note of 3 March but I only arrived in post on April 6 and I wanted to understand the situation more thoroughly.   

 Your point has since been reviewed internally and I feel better able now to make a response. Obviously things have also changed in recent weeks so as to make the situation more topical.  The Ethics Committee has met and considered the balance of the argument. As I am sure you know Tate works with a wide range of corporate organisations, but BP has been one of the most consistent supporters over the last seventeen years.  At the present time BP support enables Tate to further its charitable objectives in important ways in relation to the Collection.  Without BP’s support Tate would be less able to show the collection in a changing and stimulating way.  Given that the majority of Tate’ s funding is self generated, it is necessary for the gallery to work across a wide range of corporate organisations and the sponsorship policy is regularly reviewed by the Trustees. The points you raise are important ones and I hope you don’t feel they have not been taken into consideration.

Yours sincerely

Penelope Curtis

Dr Penelope Curtis?Director?Tate Britain?Millbank?London SW1P 4RG; www.tate.org.uk Please note that any information sent, received or held by Tate may be disclosed under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

From: markb@gn.apc.org

Sent: 12 May 2010 15:59

To: Penelope Curtis

Subject: Tate Britain, BP and the Ethics Committee

Importance: High

Dear Penelope Curtis,

Thanks for writing back.

Am I to understand that the Ethics Committee has looked at BP and deemed it sufficiently ethical to be associated with the Tate? I thought the sponsorship criteria mention that sponsorship should not be accepted from companies that damage the Tate brand. It seems to me that your relationship with BP needs to come to an end for precisely that reason, with Deepwater Horizon one in a continuing series of disasters with BP at their heart. 

It would be very good to hear your responses to these questions.

Yours,

Mark Brown

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

On 13 May 2010, at 11:37, Penelope Curtis wrote:

Dear Mark Brown

On balance the Committee took the view that Tate gained more from BP's sponsorship in achieving its charitable objectives than it lost.

Yours sincerely

Penelope Curtis

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

From: markb@gn.apc.org

Sent: 13 May 2010 13:49

To: Penelope Curtis

Subject: Re: Tate Britain, BP and the Ethics Committee

Dear Penelope,

Your admission that something is lost as well as gained in your relationship with BP is admirably frank. 

Is it possible that the Tate's charitable objectives could be advanced admirably with BP's money, while outside the world is plagued with resource wars, oil-devastated oceans and coastlines, injured or killed oilworkers and a potentially catastrophic surfeit of CO2 in the atmosphere, the responsbility for which lies in part at the door of that very same BP? Does what takes place outside the citadel that is Tate not feature in the decision-making of the Ethics Committee? If not, is that Committee held back from doing what is right by legal restrictions forcing it to act only in the interests of Tate itself? If so, how can we help change that situation?

Thanks for your time,

Mark

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

On 20 May 2010, at 11:33, Penelope Curtis wrote:

Dear Mark Brown

I am afraid the volume of requests about BP will now preclude the possibility of a more personal discussion.  I think you will find a statement issued on behalf of the organisation as a whole going out in response to questions such as yours.

Yours sincerely

Penelope Curtis

Dr Penelope Curtis?Director?Tate Britain?Millbank?London SW1P 4RG

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Dear Penelope,

Just to say good luck to all of us in making cultural institutions climate-friendly for this new decade. 

Please let me know if there's ever an opportunity to make a representation to the Ethics Committee about BP's wider societal and ecological impact.

Yours,

Mark

This letter was sent by a participant in the 'Disobedience' workshop concerning Tate's March 19th symposium

'Rising to the climate challenge: artists and scientists imagine tomorrow's world'.

Subject: Tate Modern Symposium on 20 March: Oil-free Tate by 2012? Date: Fri, 05 Mar 2010 09:53:33 +0000

From: Barry Mason < barrymasonuk@googlemail.com>

To: Robert Bloomfield Agnes Denes Professor Brian Hoskins Luca Orta Professor Corinne le Quere Professor Steve Rayner Tomas Saraceno

Rising to the Climate Challenge: Oil free Tate by 2012?

I'm so looking forward to this. Thank you. The symposium includes the chance to formulate propositions for change, whilst imagining the social and psychological impacts of climate change. I've been a huge admirer of Tate even since I settled in London as a very young 18 year-old. I've grown up with the Tate as it's changed into a world leader, taste-changer and opinion former. The symposium on 20 March gives us all a unique and unmissable opportunity to do something very positive and very visible about climate change. It's time for positive action. Since...

*Tate's new Taking Tate Forward policy document says "our priorities to 2012 include wanting to be a leader in sustainability and setting a great example..."

*Tate has now appointed internal Green Champions to ensure recycling etc. in their offices etc

*progressive opinion-forming UK institutions need to start doing much more about climate change and energy use very soon

*increasing numbers of Tate Members, Tate staff and local Southwark people feel strongly about the point... ...it would seem essential and world-exemplary for us to help Tate wean itself off oil company sponsorship in time for the opening of the Tate Modern 2 in 2012 - and the hugely symbolic conversion of the three massive clover-leaf underground oil tanks into public art space. Art not oil.

So, a great, doable, effective, leadership action from this symposium would be to get all present to very publically agree to help Tate make that move to new areas of funding and away from fossil fuel money, in just the same way that museums and galleries dropped tobacco sponsorship 10 years ago. A big pointer to a better world. And I'll be saying all this at the symposium and asking the room to vote on that proposition. It would be wonderful if you, as a Panel member, could back this timely move too.

Very best wishes.

Barry Mason Tate Member 56256 Rotherhithe London SE16 7FJ 07905 889 005

And this letter was sent to many Tate employees in early March:

Dear Penelope Curtis,

It looks as if BP's involvement in oil tar sands is triggering a strong wave of civil society unrest. It seems positive change is afoot, and if the Tate was to jump in ahead of the game and refuse to take any more sponsorship from such sources, it would receive widespread acclaim. How about it? I would be very grateful if this issue could be discussed at the next meeting of Tate Trustees. Please let me know if and when this takes place.

Yours in hope,

Mark Brown from Art Not Oil

1.) Urgent action request: is your pension fuelling climate change?

Dear Supporter,

This spring, your pension provider will use shareholdings in BP and Shell held on your behalf to vote for – or against – a resolution on one of the biggest single factors driving climate change. You have the opportunity to influence their vote.

Tar sands are among the world’s dirtiest fuels: their extraction produces on average three times the greenhouse gases of conventional oil. The pollution, deforestation and wildlife disturbance associated with tar sands developments also threaten the traditional livelihoods and wellbeing of indigenous communities.

Tar sands developments could also put pension savings at risk: industry analysts increasingly warn that tar sands could be long-term loss-makers.

The resolutions are already supported by some major investors, but we need you to use the power of your pension or savings to force a review of this damaging and risky activity. You can express your concerns directly to your pension provider or (if you don't have one) by emailing one of BP and Shell's largest shareholders.

* End of Fair Pensions text *

This Greenpeace tar sands video on Tar Sands is quite a punchy (and polemical) intro:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KokiUgvlwc4

2.) I'd also really recommend Rena Effendi's photography from BP's Baku-Ceyhan pipeline: www.refendi.com

This short film of her work with her commentary is terrific:

http://www.foto8.com/new/online/photo-stories/1077-pipe-dreams-a-shortfilm-by-rena-effendi

3.) This recent piece from the Sunday Telegraph looks at the impacts of BP's Casanare pipeline;

(I have the pdf with photographs in case that would be of interest):

ttp://findarticles.com/p/news-articles/sunday-telegraph-the-london-uk/ mi_8064/is_20100221/curse-black-gold/ai_n50066304/?tag=content;col1