Good points.
I guess all I can say is that several levers are at work in Government & Politics, and while money controls many of those levers, you need to pull all the levers that are available to those without money.
This'll probably have to be one of those things that you review on a case by case basis. I just think we should err on the extreme side of caution - museums are full of statues without faces because of iconoclasts and political purges which seemed perfectly reasonable at the time but posterity has condemned as acts of barbarism akin to the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas or ISIS raising awareness in Syria. That's why I take a hardline stance on destruction of stuff for momentary political reasons; a political movement is here today and gone tomorrow, but a destroyed thing is destroyed forever
I would also add that while the painting is owned by the Museum, the Museum is funded by Rich People that don't want their status symbol tarnished.
So threatening artwork threatens rich people, just not directly.
Except that it doesn't threaten rich people, unless the painting in question is directly owned by aforementioned rich person. It threatens the museum, and the nerds that maintain the pieces. There are cases of private collections that are loaned to museums but still directly owned by a rich person, and in such cases I still would defend the art because I don't really care who owns it if it's important to humanity. It would be like destroying Trojan artifacts because the museum exhibit was sponsored by Shell. The destruction of the artifacts would be a crime of utmost vandalism against humanity itself, which is inherently unjustifiable. Like the time where Greenpeace ran over the Nazca lines to raise awareness - a good cause cannot justify bad action. For rich individuals, you can reject their money, revoke their honours, rename your buildings you've unwisely named after them, freeze their loaned items in perpetuity, but for institutions and corporations there is the problem that you are no longer dealing with a human entity that has emotions. You're dealing with raw money, and nothing which touches their money bothers them
As to this particular strategy, the Protesters glued themselves to the arguably replaceable frames. Glue which comes off with solvent. I'm not as much in favor of the more risky changes to the art pieces, and hope they have someone that actually understands the risks involved.
There is no risk-free way to mess with really old pieces. This case was lucky, but it won't always be so
I only support rhe art gluing protest if it's oil paintings.
This joke is criminally good
Sixty-four percent of people believe climate change is a global emergency, despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic
No roads were hurt in the making of this protest.[/quote]That's one of the other issues, which is actually turning awareness into action. I'm reminded of the train strikes that have happened and are ongoing here. I've had so many colleagues complain about the strikers for wanting more pay when they themselves receive very little in the way of pay rises. I try to point out the obvious that we should demand more, not demand that they stop demanding. Imagine instead if the train strikers continued operating the train services but allowed everyone to use the trains for free. They would gather much more public sympathy whilst costing the rail operators serious money. Meanwhile in the Universities the professors and research staff have been going on and off on strikes since 2015. They haven't gotten very far despite disrupting years of education and exam marking, and the big big cheese people have just continued docking their pay every time they've gone on strike. The student body already supports the staff but no meaningful change is being impacted. Or the extinction rebellion guys - much publicity was paid to those gluing themselves to roads, and I saw one where they had glued themselves outside of parliament. But the one I was most intrigued by was one where they had taken over the traffic intersection around Bank and were just jammin, with musicians and everything. That protest was full of working class pensioners and affluent young hipsters who were very gregarious and keen to involve members of the public. The only amusing thing was that basically everyone walking past already agreed with their goals, and they couldn't really find anyone who disagreed with their aims. What impressed me the most was that despite the media portrayals of them being ecolunatics their goals were actionable with clear win and fail states - like ending fossil fuel subsidies from taxpayer funds. And yet despite not seeing a single soul who actually disagreed, still we're here. There is a real point to be made here that certain forms of protest don't work, and it's not entirely clear why forms of protest which did use to work, just don't work anymore. I suspect it has much to do with the real mechanisms of power becoming conslidated in piles and piles of billions $$££.
In the Australian "mining versus culture" front, there was this destruction of ancient aboriginal caves that received one or two sentences on the BBC that embedded itself in my memory as "the mining company blew up it so the protesters would have nothing to protest about". Wikipedia described it as "known primarily for a cave that was the only inland site in Australia with evidence of continuous human occupation for over 46,000 years".
As an "interesting protest", I'd say the mining company was protesting the protestors.
I metaphorically vomit blood when I read this and see for what small a sum of profit so absurd an act of genocidal vandalism was carried out
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Topic: Interesting Protest Thread (Read 1281 times)