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Artwash: Big Oil and the Arts
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Jan 30, 2015
If you missed Take the Money and Run? – a discussion-packed day on ethics and arts funding – you also missed our sneak preview of Artwash the new book written by Mel Evans. Fear not! Mel recorded this short intro so you don’t have to miss out… 20 April 2015 is the fifth anniversary of...
Today is the 19th anniversary of the executions of Ken Saro-Wiwa and 8 Ogoni colleagues
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Nov 10, 2014
It is genocide. I accuse the oil companies of practising racism because they do in Ogoni what they do not do in other parts of the world. Ken Saro-Wiwa, 1993 On November 10th 1995, Nigerian writer and campaigner Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight colleagues were executed by the then military government for protesting against oil companies’...
Of Land & Power – energy before and after neoliberalism
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Nov 7, 2014
The mass of Ben Lui rises up. So much higher than all those ridges around it. We can make out our planned line of ascent up Alt Coire Ghaothaich, the mare’s tail of white water plunging down the mountainside. We cross Alt an Rund and begin the climb from 1,150 feet to the summit...
Possess the Bay! Taking control of the Oil Road in Falmouth
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Aug 29, 2014
Platform was invited to present to the Geohack workshops that are part of the Fascinatecon conference in Falmouth this week. A version of the following was given via skype by James Marriott to an audience of ‘artists, gamers, historians, performance-makers, seafarers, landlubbers, the flooded and the landlocked’ in the Performance Centre, Penryn Campus, University of...
It exists because it exists – Bioregional activism in the Chesapeake watershed
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Jan 28, 2014
Mika Minio-Paluello, Anna Galkina and James Marriott travelled in North America as part of a tour over September and October to promote The Oil Road – Journeys from the Caspian to the City of London. The tenth of a series of blogs on the journey comes from Maryland … St John’s Church, Baltimore, Maryland “Crabs...
Shale Gas Exploitation in Algeria: Interview with an Algerian Journalist and Anti-Fracking Campaigner
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Oct 18, 2013
Global Frackdown 2 will be taking place on Saturday 19th October. It is an initiative that is aiming to bring together community actions from all over the world to challenge hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, so we thought it would be good to hear from someone in Algeria about the situation there. Algeria has made some amendments...
Tribute to Nick Reeves, CIWEM – artist, environmentalist, activist
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Oct 1, 2013
“BP, Shell and all other petrochemical corporations must be denied control of our arts and cultural institutions, right now.” Nick Reeves Earlier in the summer, we heard the shocking news that Nick Reeves, the vigorous Executive Director of the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Managers, died after a severe stroke. He was only 60....
‘Art & Activism, Water & Oil, Then & Now’
Media coverage -
Sep 19, 2013
2 articles by Platform in ‘The Environment’ magazine, Sept 2013 (CIWEM) 1st by Jane Trowell on 30 years of Platform, 2nd by Kevin Smith ‘The arts must not be used to cleanse the reputations of dirty business’ on oil sponsorship of the arts
إدكو – مجتمع منسي يقف في وجه المزيد من التدهور البيئي
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Jun 25, 2013
(Guest blog by Reem Labib of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights. The original is here) إدكو المدينة الساحلية الجميلة بمحافظة البحيرة التي تطل على البحر الأبيض المتوسط شرقي الأسكندرية، يقطنها مجتمع رزقه منذ القدم في الصيد بين الماء العذب في بحيرة إدكو وماء البحر. وإلى جانب الصيد الذي يمثل النشاط الاقتصادي الأول للسكان، يوجد...
Photo story of Fares road blockades and resistance to Dana Gas
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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...
The Flooding of Fares – are oil companies destroying an Egyptian village?
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Feb 13, 2013
In the village of Fares in southern Egypt, seventy homes have collapsed. School corridors are underwater, the cemetery has become a swamp and acres of mango orchards ruined. Their river didn’t flood and there was no torrential downpour. Instead, the water rose out of the ground. Starting as a trickle, it worked its way into...
Contradictory docs for Cairo refinery reveal disdain for transparency by European Bank officials in first major IFI-financed project since revolution started
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Nov 9, 2012
A $3.7 billion PPP oil refinery expansion in Cairo is accompanied by contradictory project documents, making a mockery of claims by the public banks involved to be committed to “good governance” or democracy. Despite being presented as merely translations of one document, the Arabic and English “versions” are entirely different – with the Arabic markedly...
