Lorena Muñoz-Alonso, Climate Activists Occupy Tate Modern In Dramatic Protest Over BP Sponsorship of the Arts, artnet news, 15 June 2015
On Saturday, activists occupied Tate Modern and staged a 25-hour “textual intervention” at the museum’s Turbine Hall to protest against Tate’s ongoing sponsorship agreement with BP.
The protest performance consisted of covering the sprawling hall with quotes from books about, and reports on, climate change—including Margaret Atwood’s sci-fi novel Oryx and Crake, the UN’s latest climate science report, and Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate—which participants wrote with charcoal on the concrete floor.
“We’re filling the Turbine Hall with a tide of ideas and narratives of art, activism, climate change, and oil,” Eva Blackwell, of the arts activism group Liberate Tate, told the Guardian.
Since beginning its crusade to rid Tate of its association with BP back in 2010, Liberate Tate has staged a total of 14 performances at Tate Modern and Tate Britain, including pouring oil on a naked man (see Liberate Tate Plans Mass Protest Over BP Sponsorship) and tossing £240,000 in fake money notes from Tate Britain’s members room to the main entrance.
