Final call for proposals: artist-led funded projects with Platform & LADA
Apr 5, 2013
This Monday is the deadline for DIY 10 proposals. Get yours in now! DIY is an opportunity for artists working in Live Art to conceive and run unusual training and professional development projects for other artists. Platform’s call is for “Live Art, performance as protest and the online element.” Platform invites proposals that look at performance...
Asking all the right questions? Tate à Tate Audio Tour
Apr 4, 2013
Last Tuesday, a group of 14 students from Middlesex University’s BA Fine Art course visited Tate Modern to do the Tate à Tate alternative audio tour. The group are studying on the module ‘Art and the Community’ with Loraine Leeson and Alberto Duman, and were booked in to come to Platform’s space afterwards for a...
Egypt bails Jordan out with gas worth $2bn – despite own energy & financial crisis
Apr 1, 2013
Middle East Monitor reported that The Egyptian Ambassador to Jordan, Khaled Tharwat, has denied media reports which claim that Egypt intends to reduce the amount of natural gas exported to Jordan prior to cutting off the supply completely by June. In a press statement published by official Jordanian media outlets, Ambassador Tharwat said, “There is...
Rewriting the future: Achebe, literature, and activism
Mar 25, 2013
Nigerian write Chinua Achebe died last Thursday at the age of 83. He is a key figure in world literature and a writer who along with others utterly changed the way cultures pre- and post-imperialism – and pre-missionary – imagined representing themselves. In so doing, he bolstered the challenge to western and white supremacist...
Dealing with icky meetings where males largely talk to the other males present
Mar 22, 2013
The other week I went to a meeting in another organisation with a female colleague. We had arranged to chat with two other men, and over the course of the meeting, I was becoming more and more aware that the largest flow of the conversation seemed to be directed at me, even to the point...
Volunteer quits Bergen International Festival over Statoil sponsorship
Mar 15, 2013
Controversies around oil sponsorship of the arts aren’t confined to the UK. This is a translation of an article by Ragnhild Freng Dale printed in Bergens Tidende on March 1st, which you can find online here in its original Norwegian. The Bergen International Festival, an annual festival of arts and contemporary music in Bergen, released their...
Shell’s involvement in the arts targeted twice in one week
Mar 13, 2013
It was an embarrassing week for all of those involved in Shell’s sponsorship of London’s cultural institutions. On the evening of Friday 1st March 2013, a group of singers and musicians called Shell Out Sounds made an unexpected musical intervention at the Southbank Centre, during the interval of a Shell-sponsored performance by members of the Berliner...
Photo story of Fares road blockades and resistance to Dana Gas
Mar 11, 2013
Residents of the village of Fares near Aswan have suffered from collapsing homes, a flooded school and ruined orchards, after mysterious waters started rising out of the ground. The puddles and ponds started to appear after oil company Dana Gas began conducting seismic testing in the mango groves next to Fares. For several years, the...
التكالب على بترول مصر
Mar 7, 2013
فى مقر نادى مرتفعات القطامية، وسط المروج الخُضر المشذبة وملعب الجولف، ناقش مديرون تنفيذيون من جنسيات مختلفة، جنبا إلى جنب مع مسئولين حكوميين اتفاقيات من شأنها تحديد مآل مليارات الدولارات؛ هل تستقر فى خزائن خاصة أم تذهب للخزانة العامة. تغييرات بسيطة فى عقد واحد قد تؤدى إلى إحداث فارق يزيد على الخمسة مليارات من الدولارات،...
Shell suspends Arctic drilling for 2013
Feb 28, 2013
We’re celebrating Shell’s announcement that the drilling programme in the Alaskan Arctic has been halted for the year! Here are a few perspectives on why this has happened and what’s going to happen next… 1) Company public relations describe this as an effort to ensure the drilling is safe: “Shell remains committed to building an...
Art interventions – our presentation to Shake!
Feb 26, 2013
Last week Shake! shook it all up at the Stephen Lawrence Centre in Deptford – 25 young people tackling Arts, Media, Race and Power. Kevin and I were lucky enough to be invited to present to this inspiring and hyper-creative group of people on art interventions and oil sponsorship of the arts. We hope to...
Osborne’s tax breaks for North Sea oil and a Thatcherism flashback
Feb 25, 2013
Back in the 70s, the UK and Norway took two very different approaches to the roughly equal share of North Sea oil and gas that they had within their territorial waters. With state-owned oil company Statoil at the helm, Norway cautiously put aside profits and levies from other oil companies operating within its fields into...
