Category: Culture Jamming/Subvertising

6.7.12

With the Olympics now only three weeks away, protests against Olympic spon­sor BP are esca­lat­ing. Today dozens of BP logos across Lon­don were sab­o­taged, includ­ing the UK’s most pres­ti­gious bill­board site at Cromwell Road. Around the cap­i­tal, pro­test­ers hit petrol sta­tions, BP-spon­sored cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions and adver­tis­ing hoard­ings, protest­ing against one of the world’s most envi­ron­men­tal­ly destruc­tive com­pa­nies being a major spon­sor of the Lon­don Olympics. Signs were splat­tered with oil and BP’s tagline ‘Fuelling the Future’ was sub­ver­tised with the URL ‘f‑ingthefuture.org.uk’.

BP has con­tin­u­ous­ly been slammed for its sys­tem­at­ic dis­re­gard for the envi­ron­ment, human rights and work­er safe­ty, includ­ing its fail­ure to clean up after the Gulf of Mex­i­co dis­as­ter of 2010, its deci­sion to enter the dev­as­tat­ing Cana­di­an tar sands, and its plans to drill for Arc­tic oil. This crit­i­cism has increased dra­mat­i­cal­ly since BP was announced ‘Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Part­ner’ of the Lon­don 2012 games, and today’s protests fol­low a series of recent actions tar­get­ing BP’s Olympic spon­sor­ship:
* On the eve of BP’s AGM in April, protest group CAMSOL posed online as LOCOG and announced BP had been dropped as Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Part­ner.
* In April, the UK Tar Sands Net­work nom­i­nat­ed BP in the Green­wash Gold cam­paign as ‘worst Olympic spon­sor’.
* Since April, the Reclaim Shake­speare Com­pa­ny has been invad­ing Shake­speare­an per­for­mances across the coun­try to protest against BP’s spon­sor­ship of the Cul­tur­al Olympiad.
* Last week, acclaimed actor Mark Rylance spoke out against BP’s spon­sor­ship of the Games, reveal­ing he had ques­tioned his own involve­ment in the Open­ing Cer­e­mo­ny.

One of those tak­ing part in the action, Bren­dan Pierce, said, “BP is pay­ing tens of mil­lions of pounds to clean up its tar­nished image, in what could well be the most expen­sive use of pro­pa­gan­da in his­to­ry. But with even its own busi­ness pro­jec­tions prepar­ing for a six degree tem­per­a­ture rise, BP knows it is damn­ing us to a future of run­away cli­mate change.”

Anoth­er activist, Deb­o­rah Dud­ley, said “Reports sug­gest that BP’s spon­sor­ship of the Olympics has been high­ly effec­tive at laun­der­ing its filthy image, so we’re reveal­ing the dirt behind the glossy brand­ing. I’m proud to be tak­ing direct action as part of a world­wide move­ment for cli­mate jus­tice. I encour­age oth­ers to get involved.”

A web­site, f‑ingthefuture.org.uk, shows pic­tures of the action and out­lines the prob­lems with BP’s spon­sor­ship of the Olympics.

For more infor­ma­tion, inter­views and high-res­o­lu­tion pho­tos, email: f.ingthefuture@gmail.com

 

 

What the web­site says:

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Why shouldn’t BP spon­sor the Olympics?

BP’s green logo is plas­tered all over the Olympics. The com­pa­ny is ‘Offi­cial Fuel and Gas Provider’ and also spon­sor of the Cul­tur­al Olympiad and Lon­don 2012 Fes­ti­val.

Worst of all BP is ‘Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Part­ner’. That’s right, the organ­is­ers of the Olympics have decid­ed to allow BP, one of the dirt­i­est com­pa­nies on earth, the oppor­tu­ni­ty to rebrand itself as social­ly respon­si­ble and take an active role in propos­ing how soci­ety should approach cli­mate change.

Do you remem­ber images of oil gush­ing into the Gulf of Mex­i­co from BP’s deep-sea Macon­do well back in 2010, coat­ing the ocean and its inhab­i­tants? Have you heard of BP’s plans in the tar sands, the world’s sec­ond largest oil deposits after Sau­di Ara­bia, that can only be extract­ed by using four times as much green­house gas and have been labelled the most destruc­tive project on earth? Have you heard about BP’s deals to extract oil from the depths of the pris­tine Arc­tic, despite the poten­tial risk of a cat­a­stroph­ic spill even hard­er to clean up than the Gulf?

Do you think BP has earned the right to be ‘Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Part­ner’ to the Lon­don 2012 Olympics?

Does BP have the right to have any asso­ci­a­tion what­so­ev­er with the Games, whose found­ing state­ment speaks of ‘uni­ver­sal fun­da­men­tal eth­i­cal prin­ci­ples’, whose 2011 Char­ter declares that the Games should be ‘pro­mot­ing a peace­ful soci­ety con­cerned with the preser­va­tion of human dig­ni­ty’, and require ‘mutu­al under­stand­ing with a spir­it of friend­ship, sol­i­dar­i­ty and fair play’?

Do you think oil and sport shouldn’t mix?

Do you some­times have the feel­ing that wher­ev­er you turn these days, adver­tis­ing has intrud­ed a lit­tle fur­ther, unin­vit­ed, into your per­son­al space?

BP is a cor­po­ra­tion that feeds off injus­tice and the destruc­tion of the nat­ur­al world that we and count­less oth­er species rely on. That destruc­tion comes most threat­en­ing­ly from the cur­rent bru­tal desta­bil­i­sa­tion of the world’s cli­mate.

BP is deeply embed­ded in British soci­ety – our ener­gy, our pen­sions, our invest­ments, our cul­ture… It pumps seri­ous mon­ey and effort into keep­ing things this way. Mar­ket­ing works. Shiny adver­tise­ments around the cap­i­tal do change the way peo­ple per­ceive a com­pa­ny. By spon­sor­ing activ­i­ties like the Cul­tur­al Olympiad, the Lon­don 2012 Fes­ti­val, the World Shake­speare Fes­ti­val and the Games them­selves, BP is able to con­tin­ue its cat­a­stroph­ic, though increas­ing­ly prof­itable, oper­a­tions. That’s why we had to act.

Remem­ber, if you see any ‘improved’ BP adver­tise­ments, please take a pho­to and email them to f.ingthefuture@gmail.com – and don’t wor­ry, we won’t assume that you have any respon­si­bil­i­ty for them!

 

Here are a few more things you can do:

• Take action for cli­mate jus­tice! See Ris­ing Tide UK and Cli­mate Jus­tice Col­lec­tive for ways to get involved.
• Learn more about BP’s enor­mous envi­ron­men­tal and human rights atroc­i­ties. Start with tar sands.
• Move your mon­ey away from banks and oth­er insti­tu­tions who will lend it to fos­sil fuel-based projects
• Har­ness your cre­ativ­i­ty to a more car­ing, con­scious future, pos­si­bly by con­tribut­ing to Art Not Oil‘s ‘Cutur­al or Vul­tur­al 2012?’ gallery.
• Be part of a move­ment for real, deep, pos­i­tive and last­ing social and eco­log­i­cal change: http://www.occupyuk.info, http://occupylsx.org
• Cut your car­bon! Cut out short-haul flights, min­i­mize car use, min­i­mize your meat con­sump­tion, insu­late your house. There are plen­ty of things you can do…but what­ev­er you do, try to chal­lenge the over­ar­ch­ing mind­set and sys­tem that’s allowng this insan­i­ty to hap­pen!

(NB. These links are not con­nect­ed to us, we just like ‘em!)

 

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