Oil ethics and funding of culture

OIL ETHICS THE FUNDING OF PUBLIC CULTURE AND THE POTENTIAL FOR THRIVABILITY BRIDGET M C KENZIE

OIL FUNDS GALLERY EDUCATION

ETHOS OF OIL CONTRADICTS THAT OF GALLERY EDUCATION • • • •

BP funded Tate 25 yrs including education projects. Still BP funds several education projects in science, galleries & performing arts.

Gallery educators commit to develop capacities of critical thought, empathy for others and imagination of a better world.

Some have radical goals for their work, public galleries can offer them an uncensored forum for critical dialogue.

I conducted a survey of 20 gallery educators in 2014 and published article in engage. Their views remind us of our ethical obligations: “Children can see the inconsistency very clearly…[they] have a range of experiences and it could be isolating and silencing to ask a child who knows the harmful impact of a company in their own…or their family's country to participate in a project sponsored by that same company.”

FOSSIL FREE CULTURE MOVEMENT Art Not Oil coalition is UK umbrella of several groups, share goal of ending oil sponsorship. Joining up with divestment groups, unions & international campaigns to form Fossil Free Culture movement.

COUNTER ARGUMENTS INCLUDE: ISN’T THE ARMS INDUSTRY WORSE?

WHY NOT TACKLE THE WHOLE CAPITALIST EDIFICE?

WHY DO WE BANG ON ABOUT OIL? Actually, many of us bang on about those too.

But fossil fuels in general, oil in particular, are the major resource behind: Our industrial system

Our ecological collapse

OIL IS AT THE HEART OF TANGLED WEB •

Most wars in 20th & 21st centuries fought over access to oil as a key driver amongst others

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And increasingly as a result of resource insecurity caused by climate change.

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Most global finance revolves around oil-based commodities and oil-fuelled industry.

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Most farming is now fed by oil-based products e.g. nitrogen fertilisers.

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Fossil fuels are the most damaging of all the extractive industries, due to both direct ecocide such as in the Tar Sands, or via oil spills, or due to the devastating impacts of climate change and ocean acidifcation.

THE HYPOCRISY ARGUMENT: AREN’T WE ALL IMPLICATED? Yes, we’re all caught in the oily matrix.

Is that a reason not to study it, reduce dependence on it, and resist its places of control?

THE POVERTY ARGUMENT “Oil helps lift people up out of poverty.

Don’t you care?”

FUTURE OF PLANET: NOW IN A CRITICAL STATE SHIFT

BREACHED PLANETARY BOUNDARIES

POOR SUFFER FIRST AND WORST • The clock is ticking on all planetary boundaries.

• Every part of Earth’s atmosphere now registers 400+ ppm of CO2 • Breaching climate change means, if we don’t take massive radical action over next 5 years & ramping up beyond that, this will be the last human century.

• Also, the last vertebrate century.

• People in lands vulnerable to drought, storms and sea level rise are already suffering first and worst.

ALL FUTURES DEPEND ON A FUNCTIONING PLANET Science & Tech

Economy

Planet Culture & Education

CLIMATE CHANGE IS A HYPEROBJECT • Tim Morton describes climate change as a hyperobject, so massive and complex it diminishes human agency • Rebecca Solnit in talking about media coverage says you’d need all the paper in the world to show scale of the actual importance of climate change when all the other stories could be printed on nano scale to reflect their comparative importance.

• Art about climate change and nature can be a distraction, a solace, can be part of ‘constructive denial’.

OIL INDUSTRY KNEW C.36 YRS AGO

AND BP, SHELL & UK ESTABLISHMENT

SOCIAL LICENCE TO OPERATE Oil industry complex lobbies for continued reliance on fossil fuels and suppresses climate news.

Reduces size of climate change as an issue, while tokenistically acknowledging it.

Deflects attention onto its ‘good works’ using cultural brands Seeks ‘social licence to operate’ both - in countries where it extracts/exploits it uses education & infrastructure investment - In countries that can subsidise, normalise and legitimise oil, it uses cultural & science sponsorship

GLOBAL ECOLOGICAL COLLAPSE‌

‌means that no organisation or community can sustain itself, financially or ethically, without the survival of vertebrate life on the planet as its mission.

BUT TO SAY THIS‌

...and to attempt to resist this projected future with radical solutions (e.g. alternative global governance and a truly open cultural commons) brands one as way beyond the mainstream of public discourse.

IT’S NORMAL TO SAY: ‘WE SHOULD TAKE THE MONEY FROM THE VERY DEVIL’ • Joan Littlewood (envisioner of Fun Palaces & ‘Oh What a Lovely War’) said this • But the context has changed since then • Allowing oil sponsorship is letting your brand, art and audiences do their work for them – destroying a liveable planet for profit.

• It’s in direct contradiction to the values of arts and heritage.

• IF cultural organisations

put ethics and sustaining the future first, and help shift mindsets, they will sustain themselves

THIS IS A BIG ‘IF’. HOW TO GET OVER THE FUNDING CRISIS NOW? • Be much more participatory and increase crowdfunding • Form an ethical register of sponsoring companies, trusts and individual donors – analyse & codify their sources of wealth • Grow revenue from ethical & ecological products, services and spaces • Form co-operative co-investment partnerships with ethical companies • Local commissioning: Seek contracts for social & wellbeing services • Use the 31 tools here to workshop the shift in your organisation http://futureactionculture.tumblr.com/

CONSIDER TAKING THE FOSSIL FUNDS FREE PLEDGE

AND TRY TO SHIFT MINDSETS If fascism could sweep Europe in the 1930s, what positive shift could we achieve now that we are so connected?

How can artists and cultural organisations help?

• Help for, social systems that aid renewable energy and restoration of biodiversity?

• Healing & wellbeing: work with intelligence of nature, and offer cultural therapy as people suffer change?

• Politics and law: Resisting ecocide and encouraging natural infrastructure?

• Working with data/tech + aesthetics + open-ended enquiry to enable all of this?

SHIFT NORMATIVE THINKING ABOUT ETHICS IN CULTURAL ORGANISATIONS

ETHICS

⍯ BUSINESS CONTINUITY

• Tate now not renewing BP deal.

• Unclear if this is because escalation of protests are damaging its reputation (i.e. within its ethical criteria.)

• Tate’s ethical criteria are reputation management. Is that ethics?

• Previously, Tate ethics committee upheld oil sponsorship as ethical.

• It did not consider links of oil to climate change.

• Did not consider views of artists and audiences.

• Said that “taking a moral stance on the ethics of the Oil and Gas sector remains outside of Tate’s charitable objectives”

ART ITSELF CAN CHALLENGE ETHICS Blued Trees by Aviva Rahman. Copyrighted art on trees to prevent felling for gas pipeline. Legality based on moral rights of art as a public good.

What role can artists play in asserting moral rights of art in unethically sponsored cultural institutions?

SHIFT MODELS OF CULTURAL ORGANISATION To

‘Sociocratic’ From

Bureaucratic

Plutocratic See more in my essay Towards the Sociocratic Museum http://tinyurl.com/jeyxnuc

BUREAUCRATIC IS THE NORM: RISK OF BEING COMPROMISED BY PLUTOCRACY. Paradox: If cultural organisations are more influenced by power will audiences lose perception they are neutral and benign? So, ess able to effect ‘artwash’?

CHALLENGE WHERE MONEY GOES WHILE CUTS FALL ELSEWHERE: CAN WE STILL AFFORD GRAND PROJECTS?

Paradox: If cultural organisations are more influenced by power will audiences lose perception they are neutral and benign? So, ess able to effect ‘artwash’?

CULTURE OF SCIENCE ENGAGEMENT: SHIFT MINDSETS‌ From

To

Enlightenment

Engagement

Narrative of progress

Questioning narratives

Technical solutions

Social & creative solutions

Science as knowable

Science as paradoxical

Ecology as non-human topic

Ecology as key to thriving

Understanding how things are

Influencing how things are

Celebrating universe & all its contents as a wonder beyond us

Seeing ourselves as intimately connected to everything else

FINALLY, WORK TOWARDS THRIVABILITY

Bridget McKenzie http://aboutbridgetmckenzie.wordpress.com @bridgetmck