SILENCED

   
Alternative futures: 
greening Tate as radical gesture

The message is complicated, the ethical decisions hard to swallow but the story is simple.British Petroleum takes over Amoco to become the fourth largest corporation in the world, and with the help of creative industries, finally rebrands itself as a corporation 'beyond petroleum'. To show it means business a new sunflowery logo starts to appear in discrete but strategic placements. The image is confusing  - is it biofuel, is it wind, is it rain, so natural its blend of green and yellow - by jingo no it isn't. After all if the world needs oil this company sure will find it. It now shuts down its alternative energy HQ only 2 years after its inception (in June 2009), cancels flagship renewable energy projects and starts bragging about securing giant oilfields in Iraq (2010). Of course this isn't a debate about arts funding as such, it is a debate about Satan - the satanic desire of us - the rich, privileged westerner to keep on having it and having more, and more and more.
  But I am an artist and I want that to change, not in some tomorrow but now. Because even if I knew that was only a forlorn hope, I still hoped that old devil might change (through a magical artistic transformation). Or is it this, that I should be grateful that BP sponsors Britain's cultural institutes. Grateful for all the inflation in gigantic trophy art projects that are now representative of what… and yes this message, to end BP sponsorship, is about shooting yourself in the foot, and arm and the leg.
 It may seem totally inappropriate to be talking about sponsorship and how the arts is funded, in a climate where the new government is talking up 40% cuts in public sector funding. But perhaps this return to politics might allow art to offer real spaces of alternative thinking; rather than playing its pantomime role with such open sangfroid and glee, and without the attendant celebratory, success and careerism. Satire and dissent are not the preserve of 18th, 19th or 20th Century  - for art has at its core, the celebration and defense of the principles of free speech and thought. There is a need for more, not less, open debate and transparency in the 21st Century as we try to envision a world beyond petroleum. Otherwise the Mephistophelean pact will rot the values and fine words of cultural institutes and leaders.
Of course all these issues (capital, plastics, oil, energy, money, art, wealth, poverty etc. etc.) are conflated. You wouldn't expect anyone to begin to digest all the complexities and ramifications. But for any media outlet the message has to remain childishly simple.
So let's say for now that the Good Crude Britannia is campaigning on the issue of climate change (and read that as all our environment), searching for the real, urgent need for leadership on alternative energy. We ask then the naïve question again and again - does Tate really care about climate change - are the new buildings and conversions at Bankside carbon-neutral or even better carbon-negative? Surely it is right that we are looking now, for the alternatives, the radical visions for a future beyond petroleum. Especially as many of the alternative technologies and structures have existed for decades. We can turn gesture into behaviour and make it socially unacceptable to believe that we have a right for more and more and more; show that there is a very real cost for all our wonderful shiny plastic world. For the inescapable part of the argument for those who would rather not look at BP’s record, is the ridiculous notion that now it has happened it can all be ‘made right’. The slogan for the Gulf of Mexico shouts promisingly we’re “making it right”. Yet two decades later the environment in and around the area of Exon Valdez spill stubbornly refuses to recover. But the oil industry said it would be alright then. They told everyone their story and we believed it… because it was far away.
It is right then that anything and everything BP and similar type corporations are involved in is scrutinised. There should be transparency and clarity about their sponsorship partnerships. The amount - where, for what and when – then the media rather than only talking up the ‘shocking’ amounts of ‘public’ money given to fund small arts organisations might also try writing balanced news stories that tell of corporate funds and backroom deals.
Instead of this absurdly apolitical cloak that wraps itself around art, which in itself remains a grand political gesture as the denial of dissen - there is a return of repressed politics. This argument against targeting art sponsorship as a soft target: the claim that any questioning of this type of sponsor is childish, a silly own goal, a romantic delusion, a gesture of absurd insignificance. Or an even better sounding argument - just be grateful, take the money, and enjoy.
But we should understand the gesture – it is the gestures of art and artists that creates a climate (of national identity, of visionary futures, present day sentiment, historical mythology) – listen carefully to the tide, to the noise of time and you may hear another vision where formula-1 racing-car designers reinvent themselves as creators of eco-friendly cars. Where giant global companies sink into the Tar Sands of geological history and are returned as woolly wind farms or fossilized beasts. 
Because art should never be totally co-opted and submissive and yet it is hard to resist when artists see all the fine projects and money feeding their beloved practices, then fear the worse. The real danger is paralysis, retrenchment, clichéd, unthinking responses to the situation that confront us. And yet there is a possibility that politics (co)exists, and that artists (art commentators, lovers, spectators etc) can be both artists and political. You can choose. Remember this, there are always alternatives. Lets get on and green it…

(This is a response to recent media coverage and commentary in national and international press to The Good Crude Britannia's campaign against BP sponsorship of British Cultural institutes - part of a larger campaign - see platformlondon.org and Liberate Tate. This article published by Charlie Fox 6.7.2010)


Silenced, silence, silenced...

Move on quickly please...

'Let us start with an empirical given: police interventions in public spaces consist primarily not in interpellating demonstrators, but in breaking up demonstrations...It consists, before all else, in recalling the obviousness of what there is, or rather of what there is not, and its slogan; "Move along! There's nothing to see here!" The police is that which says that here, on this street, there's nothing to see and so nothing to do but move along.' (Ranciere 2010: 37)

The manifestation of the impermissible - barely - that which is spoken of in whispers, buried in thought, the insensible returns...

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



Posted LiveArt JiscMail 16th March 2010


In response to the latest Art Monthly Editorial - 'In Advance of A Broken Arm' and the companion polemic 'On refusing to pretend to do politics in a museum' (John Jordan: 35) (Both in AM 3.10) I came face to face with my own acts of self-censorship, pre-emptive censorship and cowardice.

Why did I go on humiliating and torturing myself for the sake of some dubious recognition, some form of tenuous collaboration with established protocols and niceties; the brute strength of sponsorship, the power of those who pay the bill, the issues of 'reputational risk'. I was downhearted, underneath the Arches, crying and wailing in the wilderness:


This is not (part of)
Nor a part of the
National Review of Live Art. 

WILL BE SINGING A SONG FOR THE ARTIST MARK MCGOWAN and....



Dug out from the  JISCMail Archive:

SNAKE OFFERS BRIBES TO GLASGOW CITY COUNCIL


correction:
i thought it was part of the national review of live art
but apparently its not i thought it was but its not
maybe it was once but not anymore
i am not sure if it has anything to do with glasgow
city council being a major sponsor
or any brown envelopes!!!!!!!!




press release  feb 2009

GLASGOW CITY COUNCIL CORRUPTION?

In an extraordinary art performance artist Mark McGowan is to stand outside Glasgow City Council, George Square, Glasgow dressed as a SNAKE and offer councillors, staff and workers, money and gifts, in return for a few favours.
The art event is to take place on Friday February 13th 2009 and starts at 10am, finishing at 6pm.
McGowan says, "ALL local councils are corrupt, (most business gets done on the golf course, you know backhanders), everybody knows it, i unfortunately think that it is so endemic, that nothing can be done, so i am going to see whats on offer. I will have a couple of bottles of whiskey, some brown envelopes and assorted gifts and i am going to stand there all day and see what i can get."

Niall Walker, a former Liberal Democrat councillor in Glasgow wrote in his book about Glasow City Council, 'Halls of Infamy',

"The more I experienced the planning committee, the more convinced I became that corruption was involved. The old story of brown envelopes being thrust into sweaty palms is not a fiction.
I have received phone calls from architects and publicans who confirm that councillors and officials in some cases have a price list for a favourable vote in committee. Some councillors just come out with it, no beating about the bush, and some are obviously more circumspect.
I heard from a publican that it cost £2,000 to get a licence."

this event is not now part of The National Review of Live Art

'The essence of politics is dissensus. Dissensus is not a confrontation between interests and opinions. It is the demonstration (manifestation) of a gap in the sensible itself. Political demonstration makes visible that which had no reason to be seen...' (Ranciere 2010: 38)

Ranciere, Jacques (2010)  Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics, ed. and trans. Steve Corcoran, continuum books