Platform launch their latest publication ‘Not if but when – Culture Beyond Oil‘ this evening. Here’s the full version of some commentary I contributed to their 2010 leaflet, Licence to Spill:
download the full leaflet here
Shitting in the Palace – 8/6/10
During the 2009 C Words artist-activist season at the Arnolfini gallery in Bristol I heard several versions of a story about a legendary character known as “the Shitter”. The Shitter, as one version of the tale went, was a disgruntled visitor whose method of protest was to take a dump in the corner of the gallery.
The Shitter’s medium of choice reminded me of the Bill Hick’s quote:
“You do a commercial – you’re off the artistic roll call, forever. End of story… You’re another whore at the capitalist gang bang… there’s a price on your head. Everything you say is suspect and every word that comes out of your mouth is now like a turd falling into my drink.”
There have been a lot of oily turds falling into drink-water of late.
There is however, one pleasing aspect to this latest oil spill – it directly affects rich people. As such the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster is big news and some action is thus being taken to mitigate its effects. We can only fantasise that oil is discovered, drilled and fracked on the Rockefeller family estate; huge coltan reserves mined under the Pentagon; a massive plutonium store tapped in the grounds of Windsor Castle Continue reading
