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2015 – The End of the Eternal Present
Notes after a conversation with Doreen Massey, which took place ten days before the one-year anniversary of Syriza’s landslide victory of 25th January 2015. We were reflecting on the past year. What an extraordinary set of events has unfolded in those twelve months – the Syriza election, The Green Surge of last Winter, the transformational…
4 Mar 2016 james -
Breaking: The Struggle to Free the Bus: The Twists, the Turns and the Conspiracies
BREAKING Guest Blog by Ken Henshaw, Social Action, Nigeria The extraordinary behind-the-scenes story of the Bus memorial seizure and the struggle to release it, on the day of the 3rd Hearing to release the memorial to Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni 8. Show your support – follow and tweet @GreatOgoni, @Kenn_Henshaw, @S_DouglasCamp. Support the Movement…
24 Feb 2016 jane -
Possession – the Boxing Day Floods and the recommoning of the rivers
We wake in a B&B in Kilnsea, the last village before the shingle bar of Spurn Head that juts out from Holderness in East Yorkshire. All night a South Easterly wind of Force 6, gusting to Force 7, has buffeted the farmhouse. From the windows we can see white horses on the River Humber and…
13 Jan 2016 james -
Artists to take over Tate Modern during Paris climate talks for 3-day unauthorised festival
For immediate release Unauthorised festival to take over Tate Modern spaces during next weekend of climate talks Contact: Mika Minio-Paluello / +44 7733466038 Full programme available on deadline.org.uk/programme Deadline Festival @Tate takes place exactly a year before Tate’s BP sponsorship deal expires Full programme is now available online. Including poetry, video installations, Caryl Churchill play,…
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We will Remember them – those who were hung and those who executed the hanging
Here again. Standing before the white Portland Stone cenotaph of the Shell Center. A crowd of fifty or more in silent attention as the names of the dead are read out: Saturday Dobee Nordu Eawo Daniel Gbooko Paul Levera Felix Nuate Baribor Bera Barinem Kiobel John Kpuinen Ken Saro-Wiwa The chief mourner is Lazarus Tamana,…
19 Nov 2015 james -
Vigil on 20th anniversary of Ken Saro-Wiwa and Ogoni 9 execution demands Shell clean up in Niger Delta.
Vigil on 20th anniversary of Ken Saro-Wiwa and Ogoni 9 execution demands Shell clean up in Niger Delta. The Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People, and Platform held a vigil outside the Shell headquarters in London November 10th, 2015 on the 20th year anniversary of the execution Ken Saro-Wiwa. Artists, activists and…
10 Nov 2015 admin -
‘Return’ – new poem for the Bus by Sai Murray
This summer, Platform commissioned Sai Murray – poet, writer, and spoken word supremo – to write a poem about the Bus’s journey to Ogoniland. Sai made some stunning political connections to other struggles, connections in all these years we had not made ourselves. John Ruskin once said “The best response to a work of art…
6 Nov 2015 jane -
Release the Bus memorial NOW: Artists, campaigners and others speak out!
Twenty years ago, on 10th November 1995, the Nigerian writer and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa was executed, alongside eight colleagues, for crimes they did not commit. They were campaigning against Shell’s exploitation and environmental destruction of Ogoniland in the Niger Delta of Nigeria. As a Living Memorial, The Battle Bus, a large-scale mobile interactive steel sculpture…
6 Nov 2015 jane -
Nov 10th Artists on why Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni struggle matters
The Bus memorial to writer and campaigner Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni 8 has been seized by Nigerian military. On Nov 10th it will be 20 years since the executions of Ken and the other Ogoni men by Nigeria’s then military government for protesting against Shell and other oil companies. Shell still have not started…
5 Nov 2015 jane
