Oil Extraction

Collected Works 2012

ecoartscotland, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

From EcoArtScotland/Reblogged from Liberate Tate Blog:
Click to visit the original post

Floe Piece (2012)

Arctic ice, canvas, light, water

“The fact that BP had one major incident in 2010 does not mean we should not be taking support from them.” Nicholas Serota, Director, Tate.

On 14 January 2012 Liberate Tate carried out another unofficial performance highlighting Tate’s complicity in BP’s ongoing controversial oil extraction practices around the world. At 6.30pm at the Occupy London protest camp at St Paul’s Cathedral four veiled figures dressed in black lifted a 55kg chunk of Arctic ice onto a sledge and walked it in procession across the Thames on the Millennium Bridge and into the Tate Modern Turbine Hall.

Read more… 983 more words

 

ecoartscotland is a resource focused on art and ecology for artists, curators, critics, commissioners as well as scientists and policy makers. It includes ecoartscotland papers, a mix of discussions of works by artists and critical theoretical texts, and serves as a curatorial platform.
It has been established by Chris Fremantle, producer and research associate with On The Edge Research, Gray’s School of Art, The Robert Gordon University. Fremantle is a member of a number of international networks of artists, curators and others focused on art and ecology.
Go to EcoArtScotland

Powered by WPeMatico

Brief to make KEYSTONE XL an international issue

ecoartscotland, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

This post comes to you from EcoArtScotland

Brief for a campaign extension

Bill McKibben‘s team along with a number of other NGOs and activist groups in the US and Canada have been campaigning to stop Obama signing off the Keystone XL project.  The extension of the Keystone pipeline is a fundamental to the development of tar sands oil.  Tar sands are one of the most polluting forms of oil extraction and only viable because of the approach of peak oil.  We are faced by a choice: get off our addiction to fossil fuels, or continue into even dirtier and more destructive habits.

The Keystone Pipeline and its extension run from up near Edmonton in Alberta, Canada, down to Houston, Texas (see transcanada’s map).  They are literally a throat down the middle of North America with which to feed the addiction.

The Tar Sands Action campaign in the US is well supported and reaches out to a large environmental community, but there is relatively low awareness in other parts of the world.

In an email exchange with members of McKibben’s team it became clear that there was a need for creative and environmentally active people outside the US to create artworks, actions, logos, graffiti and other forms of intervention in order to raise awareness and show solidarity.

Current campaigning in Washington seems to be focused on encircling the White House, visibility at all Obama’s public engagements, securing mass arrests of celebrity figures to maximise news coverage.

If you are interested in responding to this (unofficial) brief then do something.  If you want to, you can send proposals to ecoartscotland.net and also to the Tar Sands Action team, but we’ll just say “get on with it”.

Budget: whatever you can invest in time and materials.

Timescale: sooner the better – 6th November is a key date when it would be good to have some shared plans.

Insurances: none required.

ecoartscotland is a resource focused on art and ecology for artists, curators, critics, commissioners as well as scientists and policy makers. It includes ecoartscotland papers, a mix of discussions of works by artists and critical theoretical texts, and serves as a curatorial platform.

It has been established by Chris Fremantle, producer and research associate with On The Edge Research, Gray’s School of Art, The Robert Gordon University. Fremantle is a member of a number of international networks of artists, curators and others focused on art and ecology.
Go to EcoArtScotland

Top 5 reasons why tar sands cover-up “ethicaloil.org” is a seriously dirty trick | Platform

ecoartscotland, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

This post comes to you from EcoArtScotland

Top 5 reasons why tar sands cover-up “ethicaloil.org” is a seriously dirty trick | Platform.

Thanks to Suzaan Boettger for drawing attention to PLATFORM’s rebuttal of the “ethicaloil.com” website.  “ethicaloil.com” is a web site that purports to demonstrate that tar sands are an ethical form of oil extraction as distinct from “conflict oil”.  We know that in the Middle East and Africa oil is associated with conflict ranging from invasion to insurgency and terrorism as well as corruption.  Supposedly oil from tar sands is better and this site, crafted to look like an activist project, is trying to spin, spin, spin.

 

ecoartscotland is a resource focused on art and ecology for artists, curators, critics, commissioners as well as scientists and policy makers. It includes ecoartscotland papers, a mix of discussions of works by artists and critical theoretical texts, and serves as a curatorial platform.

It has been established by Chris Fremantle, producer and research associate with On The Edge Research, Gray’s School of Art, The Robert Gordon University. Fremantle is a member of a number of international networks of artists, curators and others focused on art and ecology.
Go to EcoArtScotland

“Edward Burtynsky: Oil” at the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto

Cultura21, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

This post comes to you from Cultura21

Exhibition until July 3rd; Symposium on May 6th and 7th

The images of the exhibition Edward Burtynsky: Oil explore the hotly-debated effects of oil extraction and our international dependency on the substance. The symposium in May brings together top scientific and arts industry experts for two days of discussion about essential issues of oil, planetary sustainability, and the energy options available to us, from both the scientific and aesthetic points of view.

Program of the Symposium

Friday May 6, 7:00 p.m. – How Humanity Became a Rogue. The Growing Economics and the Shrinking Ecosphere: Keynote by William Rees, Professor, School of Community and Regional Planning, University of British Columbia, Originator and co-developer of ecological footprint analysis.

8:00 p.m. – Topography and Spectacle: Contextualizing the Landscapes of Edward Burtynsky: Keynote by David Harris, Associate Professor, School of Image Arts, Ryerson University, Curator and Writer.

9:00 p.m. – Manufactured Landscapes, Dir. Jennifer Baichwal, 2006 (90 min): A striking documentary that follows Edward Burtynsky through China, as he shoots the evidence and effects of that country’s massive industrial revolution.

Saturday May 7, 10:00 a.m. – Interview on Stage: Edward Burtynsky Discusses His Groundbreaking Photographic Work With Richard Rhodes, Editor of Canadian Art.

11:00 a.m. – Kicking the Fossil Fuel Habit. Possibility and Necessity: Keynote by Tom Rand, Director of VCi Green Funds, Lead Advisor at the MaRS Discovery District. The lecture is based on his highly popular book of 2010 Kick the Fossil Fuel Habit: 10 Clean Technologies to Save Our World.

2:00 p.m. – Innovations for the Future. The Final Decades of Oil and Beyond: Scientific Panel Discussion with Lisa Margonelli (Director of the New America Foundation Energy Policy Initiative, Washington), Tom Rand, William Rees, Richard Sears (Visiting Scientist at the MIT Energy Initiative and the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems, former Executive at Shell), David Naylor(Professor, Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering, Ryerson University). Moderator: Edward Burtynsky

4:00 p.m. – Photography as Intervention: Aesthetics Panel Discussion with Sarah Milroy (Art Critic and Writer, former Art Critic at the Globe and Mail), Michael Mitchell (Photographer, Filmmaker and Writer), Paul Roth (Executive Director of The Richard Avedon Foundation, New York and Curator of the Edward Burtynsky: Oil exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.), Robert Burley (Photographer, Professor, School of Image Arts, Ryerson University). Moderator: Eleanor Wachtel (Writer and Host of CBC’s “Writers and Company”)

The admission is free. For more information visit the website: ryersongallery.ca or call: 416-979-5000 x6843.

For the whole schedule and more information about the speakers read here.

Partly reposted from www.projetcoal.org

Cultura21′s international network, launched in April 2007, offers the online and offline platform for exchanges and mutual learning among its members.

The activities of Cultura21 at the international level are coordinated by a team representing the different Cultura21 organizations worldwide, and currently constituted of:

– Sacha Kagan (based in Lüneburg, Germany) and Rana Öztürk (based in Berlin, Germany)

– Oleg Koefoed and Kajsa Paludan (both based in Copenhagen, Denmark)

– Hans Dieleman (based in Mexico-City, Mexico)

– Francesca Cozzolino and David Knaute (both based in Paris, France)

Cultura21 is not only an informal network. Its strength and vitality relies upon the activities of several organizations around the world which are sharing the vision and mission of Cultura21

Go to Cultura21

Licence to Spill Campaign on IndieGoGo

Announcements, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTCsw0M_yOg

The Campaign

In May 2010, a group calling themselves Liberate Tate released black helium balloons carrying ‘oil-slicked’ dead fish and model birds to the upper airspace of Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall during the gallery’s BP sponsored birthday party. A movement was born. Gushing from floral skirts, spilling elegantly from giant white eggs, jetting from paint tubes across the floor of the iconic Tate Turbine Hall, the flood of oily resistance that followed has generated a fierce debate in the art world around oil, ethics and sponsorship.

Impressed, PLATFORM stepped up to argue the case, launching the campaign Licence to Spill, with support from over 171 artists. We argue that the oil corporations’ stamp on these hefty cultural institutions buys it a badge of acceptability, a social licence to operate. This quietly smooths over decades of ecological damage and devastating impacts on communities that are living with oil extraction.

The Project

In January 2011, during five days in a Central London art space, we will exhibit artifacts, images and videos from the work of the Liberate Tate collective, and host workshops to actively engage the public. We will explore the power of aesthetic interventions to disturb, re-vision and re-form the relationships between artist, institution, sponsor and viewer. This project is about celebrating resistance to big oil sponsorship deals. It’s about creating a dynamic and exciting space for people to learn, discuss, make, plot, strategize and empower themselves. We believe art is not just a mechanism to reveal the world, but also a force to change it. We will widely promote and advertise the event to ensure that the mainstream art world engages with the issues, and that their is a visible point for new people to get involved in whatever way they can.

In a time of massive public funding cuts in the we know this campaign is going to face critics. But if artists fold at the feet of big oil when they flash their cash, who exactly do we expect will stand up to them?

SUPPORT THE PROJECT:

Licence to Spill? — IndieGoGo.