More 'Liberate Tate' daftness
February 9 2012
Floe Piece - Liberate Tate from You and I Films on Vimeo.
Are Liberate Tate learning from their mistakes? Instead of chucking gallons of 'oil' on the floor at Tate Britain (and then running away, leaving someone else to clear up the mess), this time Liberate have left a block of ice from the Arctic to melt in the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern. They still ran away, but at least water is easier to mop up than molasses.
And Liberate have also figured out that arriving at a protest in a gas-guzzling taxi doesn't look good, for, as you can see above, the protesters piously carried the block of ice by foot from St Paul's Cathedral. But they don't mention the carbon cost of hauling a lump of sea ice all the way back from the Arctic, which is presumably quite high.
I have to say, though, that as a form of artistic protest, the illuminated ice looks rather clever. And yet, Liberate Tate just can't stop shooting themselves in the foot. Earlier this week, they put up a post on their site, called "Who has been a speaker at Tate on a BP sponsored platform?" This 'named and shamed' artists as eminent as Peter Doig, and Peter Blake. This silly post (not least because Liberate is an anonymous organisation, and its protestors wear veils) prompted much outrage on Twitter, and cries of McCarthyism. And so Liberate took the post down, leaving the page blank save for the ironic message: 'This is somewhat embarrassing, isn't it? It seems we can't find what you're looking for'. You can still see the original page on Google cache, here.
