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Tate director’s puzzling response to the call to #DropBP
This is a guest post by Tate Member Oliver Grant. Oliver came to Tate Members’ AGM last week and asked Tate Director Nick Serota to respond to Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s call for “people of conscience to break their ties with corporations financing the injustice of climate change.” Oliver reflects on Serota’s response. The AGM was a…
15 Dec 2014 anna -
EBRD plan Azerbaijan loan as regime’s fiercest critic is imprisoned
One of the most famous critics of the Aliyev regime has been imprisoned in Baku. Khadija Ismayilova, an award winning investigative journalist was arrested for ‘inciting suicide’. If found guilty she faces up to seven years in prison. Ismayilova has spent years uncovering corruption in Azerbaijan, which she has traced all the way up to…
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What we discovered at Tate Members’ AGM last week
Tate Trustees will be reviewing the BP sponsorship agreement in 2016. – said Tate director Nicholas Serota in response to members’ questioning of the BP relationship. This means we have approximately a year to persuade Tate (as well as three other institutions – British Museum, Royal Opera House, and National Portrait Gallery) to take the challenge of climate change…
10 Dec 2014 anna -
Tate, Big Oil, and the savage inequality of capital
Just over a week ago Tate Modern and its new landmark extension got a bit of a mauling from writer Will Self, who argued in the print version of The Guardian that it “symbolises the savage inequality of the capital”. It’s an interesting piece about art, privilege and the hyper-rich, and has got people arguing…
1 Dec 2014 jane -
We forced Shell to commit to cleaning up the Niger Delta. Now let’s make it a reality.
When we launched our Action Saro-Wiwa campaign back in May we had no idea how many of you would get involved and we could never have imagined that a breakthrough could happen so soon. After all, communities have suffered the deadly effects of widespread pollution in the Niger Delta for over 50 years. But your…
28 Nov 2014 Sarah -
سياسات النفط والصراع علي كوباني
كان يفترض أن تسقط كوباني. فعند هجوم داعش علي البلدة، حاصرتها القوات التركية من الشمال، مانعة عنها أي تعزيزات ومعتقلة مئات النازحين. وقد قصفت الطائرات الأمريكية قوات داعش في أماكن أخري، لتقودهم نحو روج آفا: المنطقة الكردية الكبيرة في شمالي سوريا والتي تحكمها ذاتيا الحركة من أجل مجتمع ديمقراطي (تيف-ديم،) والتي يرأسها سياسا حزب الاتحاد…
25 Nov 2014 mika -
Where do we go from here? Climate change, arts & Culture Shift
We’re very excited about Culture Shift – the new report by Emergence on how artists are responding to sustainability. (It’s also available in Welsh). Culture Shift includes a great idea for a “Gablik Test” for the arts, learning from the Bechdel Test. Here is an extract from the report. “If the scientists are right,…
24 Nov 2014 mika -
Sweet (Crude) Lies: is the game up for Shell?
Last week, Shell was forced to reveal documents as part of an ongoing legal case against them in the UK High Court brought by 15,000 community members in Bodo in the Niger Delta. The documents expose the fact that Shell has repeatedly made false claims about the size and impact of two major oil spills at…
17 Nov 2014 Sarah -
Decolonising Energy: An excerpt from ‘Energy beyond Neoliberalism’
Back in Spring, the Kilburn Manifesto team asked whether we’d like to submit a chapter on energy to their project. Edited by Soundings founding editors Stuart Hall, Doreen Massey, and Mike Rustin, After Neoliberalism seeks to open up space to debate alternatives to current dominant neoliberal systems. Most of our campaigning on oil focuses on…
14 Nov 2014 mika
