Licence to Spill — Liberate Tate create an oil spill at the Tate — inside & out

On the evening of the 28th of June at approx 7:15pm, Lib­er­ate Tate In protest over BP’s spon­sor­ship of the arts per­formed a “Solemn” oil like spill at the Tate’s Sum­mer par­ty.

Dressed in black and veiled the per­form­ers car­ry­ing black buck­ets with BP logos spewed molasses over the entrance way as onlook­ers watched in amaze­ment as the Port­land stone floor was con­sumed by the black oil like mess.

Feath­ers were scat­tered and filled the air and in the same man­ner of approach the artists grace­ful­ly paced their escape.

Licence to Spill

“Apart from cat­a­stroph­ic spills like the Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon, there are a whole host of adverse impacts that are asso­ci­at­ed with the pro­duc­tion of oil. On the local lev­el, it often involves extreme forms of pol­lu­tion for local com­mu­ni­ties, while region­al­ly oil is fre­quent­ly asso­ci­at­ed with greater mil­i­ta­riza­tion and conflict. Glob­al­ly, car­bon emis­sions, oil com­pa­nies, and our col­lec­tive depen­dence on the prod­uct they push, are tak­ing us ever clos­er to the edge of cli­mate cat­a­stro­phe. ”

To down­load Licence to Spill, a new release from Plat­form, vis­it http://www.carbonweb.org/showitem.asp?article=381&parent=39

Info : http://www.artnotoil.org.uk/

Watch the video of the action : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pz-_2KLt1W0

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Anoth­er report, includ­ing what hap­pened inside the ex-gar­den sum­mer par­ty:


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 as the cleanup 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 with 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 the 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 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 Lib­er­ate Tate.

www.twitter.com/liberatetate

Images: www.immoklink.com/BP-Tate/index.html

www.youandifilms.com/2010/06/license-to-spill/

See also LIBERATE TATE COMMUNIQUE 1 http://bit.ly/9RFfxJ (MAY 2010)

Full Video Report http://www.youandifilms.com/2010/06/licence-to-spill-full-report/