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Just Stop Oil activists throw soup at Van Gogh’s Sunflowers after fellow protesters jailed
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2024
83 points (95.6% liked)
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I think the most important thing is to not bother a single soul while trying to take action about a serious global issue, just really stay out of everyone's way if you want your point to stick in the minds of people. Its the only way to grab their attention.
I would guess that the vast majority of people who treasure art also care a great deal about climate change. So I'm not sure how getting their attention helps.
You're reading this in a newspaper. It's in no way limited to art enjoyers.
Not that I have any idea why you think art enjoyers are particularly climate conscious. Or that their consciousness extends to actually doing anything rather than just thinking it would be nice if the environment was cleaner.
The level of disdain you have for people who are already ideologically aligned with you is insane, especially considering that you believe that this kind of action, in addition, is just what is needed to win them over. Are we running on battered spouse rules or something?
You've come in parading around with smug posts about how dumb these kids are and how pointless the general idea of public protest is. You complaining about people being disdainful is very much worthy of disdain.
Me: "All I ask is that you don't attempt to damage historical artifacts. Other property damage or human damage is fine."
"WOW YOU DON'T BELIEVE IN PUBLIC PROTEST"
10/10
I'm sure that's how you see yourself in your mind. The rest of us read your posts that are definitely not just about historical artifacts and frankly smell of the white moderate concern of not having regular life disrupted by annoying activists. Your examples of valid protest are violence or vandalism against specific wrongdoers, not say the regular stuff like blocking traffic or vandalizing (non-priceless) surfaces in places that are visible to a mass audience rather than comfortably protected behind fences and security checkpoints.
This chain literally started with you responding to someone daydreaming about physically assaulting the young protesters with:
And paired with posts about how they're only doing it for attention and an activists very symbolic public suicide by a method almost exclusively used as a protest action was probably unrelated to his activism. Yes, very much a level-headed non-disdainful simple art enjoyer who respects protest. As long as the targets deserve it and no one cares.
The point of that, something that you seem to have still missed, was not "I want to hurt them for being idiots", though that may have been secondary, but "If the act doesn't matter, just the cause, by principle that leads to absurd things, like acts with no conceivable serious connection with the cause being touted as a great success for that cause simply for linking the name of the act and the cause."
I literally cite arson, riots, and general strikes as valid, but go off I guess.
I don't give a fuck about bothering people. I give a fuck about the potential damage to pieces of human heritage. Take a sledgehammer, hit the streets, hell, hit the oil execs, I don't give a fuck. But don't damage artwork or artifacts that are generations old and widely recognized as important pieces of human culture.
Like, fuck, when anti-colonial activists knifed that painting of some British twat a few months back, I was totally fine with it. Because it was:
I wonder if they got off, come to think of it.
Ok, then why are you complaining. There was zero potential damage from this act.
Not even close to true.
Priceless human heritage, purchased in 1999.
You'll notice how the only thing they can cite is "worry" by "staff" with no qualification for whether the worry was realistic. People worry about a lot of things and are willing to claim they worry about much more when it suits them. "I feared for my life" doesn't actually mean your life was in danger.
They're not mentioning "worries" of the people who actual design the protection, because those people either don't worry or should find a different job. A liquid leaking through to damage the painting is literally the purpose of the protection. Especially after such high profile events starting years ago, including literally this same painting.
I'm sure the staff whose job it is to caretake these priceless objects have no clue what they're talking about, sure.
So:
I find that argument that the onus is not on individuals to not damage paintings, the onus is on the gallery's security systems to prevent them from doing so, to be uncompelling
You cannot realistically protect a painting from its frame. If you really want to totally protect it, you could plexiglass the whole exhibit, frame and all, but that's just another step in the escalation of security measures vs. vandals, and does not address the underlying problem.
That such high profile events started and have continued despite repeated incidents of damage to artifacts (though thankfully nothing totally destroyed), as well as some near-misses like this one suggest that there is an issue causing these high profile events to continue. As these events have not led to any sort of climate policy change or mass change in climate change opinion, it is difficult to come to any other conclusion than the reason for the continuation of these high profile events is internal reinforcement from these social circles and activist groups. Or, if you will, asspats.
If they had the guy whose job it was to figure out how to protect paintings say he didn't do a very good job and the painting wasn't protected, they would have said that. Instead they just used the generic "staff", a descriptor which encompasses anyone from the ticket takers to the people who solicit donations from the rich and powerful who both have no special expertise in the protection systems and a very good reason to both want to discourage further direct action in their establishment and tell the rich people they're on their side.
LOL, what? I have a print in my room right now with glass between the art and its frame. And that's not even a publicly accessible priceless piece of art that's undergone past attacks. The external frame has no reason to actually touch the artwork.
Pug my guy, all bets are off, every polluting industry is grinding billions to keep this cart on its current track. I'm sure if they could strike at oil execs they would, but have you tried to locate these people? Which mansion are they in at this time of year? Its not realistic. We're burning alive right now. They need to garner mass attention now, and we're all sitting here arguing over the efficacy of paint on paper instead of talking about the literal destruction of all life supporting habitats, not even just human. Its that serious.
But it's the vandalism of art that's going to turn the tides against that? A few middle class kids getting a handful of months in prison for tossing soup around at an art gallery?
Fuck, if you're gonna be serious about taking this as a suffragist level crisis, you need suffragist level tactics. You need to riot. You need to attack the places the rich feel safe. Not toss soup on historical artifacts to 'raise awareness'.
I'm extremely doubtful of that. That wouldn't feel 'monumental' enough. They want to be part of a world-changing event, the bit that people look back and say "This is it, this is when it started!" without understanding the long and complex fight that led to that point. They want to be part of a notable event, not a mass campaign. But my distrust of their motives is beside the point; even if their motives were unimpugnable, this would remain a terrible way to go about things.
Man, the richest people in the world can be tracked with almost hilarious ease. Stunning amounts of information is publicly available. Flight logs, ship entry/exit to ports, publicly announced corpo meetings.
That's just the thing - it's not mass attention that the subject needs. The subject HAS mass attention. The issue is that people don't perceive the seriousness of issue, or believe more is being done about it than actually is, or fall for political rhetoric that promises environmental destruction under the guise of conservation. We HAVE mass attention. People KNOW. But they aren't on our side, or at least, rather, not on our side in the way that we need.
This is the grueling, ugly, thankless part that no one wants to do, the education, the politiking, the push to reorganize incentives to prioritize climate goals, the miserable prying of fringe supporters to a pro-climate position. And that doesn't suit people who prefer there to be a single isolated issue they can focus all their attention on and get accolades for - there's no point where the world collapses onto its knees, tears in its eyes, and cries out "I see now, I see, thank you so much!"
The most ideal realistic scenario is the scenario of women's rights - in a hundred years, multifaceted efforts may, if we fight for it, render the question of opposing climate change obsolete - but no one is going to admit in a hundred years, save the lunatic fringe, of being pro-oil or the environmental equivalent of the time, just as no one except the lunatic fringe questions women's suffrage now (I think if we presume that our efforts fighting the issue in the here and now are successful, at the very least the issue then cannot still be oil in 100 years, or we've utterly lost in that period of time, but I use oil just as a signifier of that 'kind' of position).
The fight will never end. And people get discouraged by that, so they try to hyperfocus to the detriment of actual progress on the matter.
People are just doing whatever they can. I mean what can you do? Nobody is gonna kick in the doors of the execs until the food runs out and the TVs dont turn on, and if you did that it wouldnt stop the machine from turning. Same as if the lizard that manages my company for his mother ship dies, I'm still showing up to work and fixing computers.
I'm not condemning them for doing something small, only trying to emphasize that my issue here is not damaging things in general, but damaging, specifically, historical pieces. It's just seems like throwing soup at paintings is the wrong approach on every level.