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The River Resurfaces – reflecting on politically engaged art from the 1970s to today
I’m sitting talking with Caroline Tisdall, a friend who has known Platform since 1986. We first came into contact with her via the producer and curator Richard Demarco: along with him, she was among the first to champion artist Joseph Beuys in the English-speaking world. Beuys’ art and politics were critical influences in…
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BP funds homophobia: an open letter
BP has built a reputation for itself as a LGBTQ-friendly employer, with Pride floats, a Stonewall top employer badge, and recruitment events for LGBTQ students. But BP’s donations and deals also keep in office notoriously homophobic politicians, from US Congressman John Culberson to Egyptian dictator Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. We started this open letter to call on…
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Fight BP’s Pinkwashing
A briefing for LGBTQ rights campaigners by No Pride In BP, Platform and People & Planet Download briefing as pdf Pinkwashing: (n.) a public relations tactic, involving an appeal to LGBT-friendliness, in order to offset or ‘wash’ over other questionable practices Is BP a queer-friendly company? “proud to be a business where you can be yourself”…
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UK-based and angry about #MuslimBan? Here’s 5 things to do.
UK people. Are you angry about Trump’s attempts to deport people from the US? Did you perhaps go to the Women’s March, or sign that oddly-worded petition about cancelling Trump’s visit? Well, we’ve got more work to do (join a protest against the #MuslimBan this week), and more importantly, more work to do at home. Muslim lives, the…
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‘Art – Possibility – Action’ – creating spaces that are equal, democratic, free and luminous.
The storm of political events tosses us this way and that – first the election of Trump in the wake of Brexit, then the rejection of the far right Presidential candidate in the Austrian elections and the inspiring victory at Standing Rock in Dakota. Somewhat becalmed in the midst of the roaring gale, my mind…
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“Art is direct, it challenges the authorities, the power structure” Ken Saro-Wiwa jr, 1968 – 2016
Yesterday at All Saints Church in Fulham, London, we attended a celebration of the life of journalist, government special advisor, and digital tech innovator Ken Saro-Wiwa jr. His life was suddenly cut short at the age of 47. We are sorrowed by this profound loss to the Saro-Wiwa family, and of a talented man invested in…
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We took the stage for jailed Egyptian activists at British Museum’s BP-branded big lecture
Today, at the BP sponsored British Museum, we remembered political prisoners and friends jailed in Egypt. In particular, we remembered Alaa Abd El Fattah, Aya Hejazi, Ahmed Maher, Ahmed Douma, Yousef Shabaan, Mahmoud Shawkan, and Abdullah Al Fakhrani, who are amongst the tens of thousands of dissidents imprisoned by Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s regime. Holding larger-than-life…
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Egyptian political prisoners remembered in unsanctioned performance at British Museum’s ‘Sunken Cities’
24 November 2016 Unsanctioned vigil held for jailed human rights campaigners at ‘Curator’s Introduction to the BP Sponsored Exhibition Sunken Cities: Egypt’s Lost Worlds’ Exhibition displays objects from ancient sunken cities in the Nile Delta, where BP is now drilling for fossil fuels. Community opposition successfully halted BP’s gas plant plans – the North…
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For Lucy Fairley, founder of Helix Arts and Crossings
My friend and Platform ally Lucy Fairley has died, aged 70. We’ve known her and her work for nearly 25 years and worked especially closely with her in the late 1990s. She founded Artists Agency in Sunderland in 1983, and in 1987 appointed Esther Salamon to join her initially as Placement Officer, then as in…
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Strip away the carapace – the Ice Age, BP, and the British Museum
It pushes me quickly to tears. I’m kneeling on the cold stone floor of the Great Court, legs tucked beneath me, one foot crossed under the other. I’m listening to a rendition of A Requiem to Sinking Cities – an agit-performance in the heart of the British Museum. Silent figures hold up two banners, ‘#DropBP’…
