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Showing posts with label environmentalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label environmentalism. Show all posts
Sunday, June 23, 2019
Sunday, June 23, 2019
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We are currently living through the Holocene extinction event - the sixth and most dramatic mass extinction that has ever taken place on Earth. Previous mass extinctions, most famously the massive comet or asteroid impact that killed off the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous era, are thought of as quick cataclysmic events. Yet the extinction of the dinosaurs took place over a period of 10,000 years.
In the current extinction, humanity is the deadly asteroid smashing into the Earth - and we're doing a far more efficient job than some lousy space rock ever could. Overhunting, habitat destruction, disease, deforestation, global warming and pollution are decimating life on this planet at an ever-accelerating rate. One shocking piece of research claims that by 2050 there could be, by weight, more plastic than fish in the ocean.
All this brings us neatly to Xavier Velastin and Hannah Mook's Me And My Whale. This is an abstract, experimental piece of theatre that tells the story of a submarine captain falling in love with a lonely whale. While exploring the depths, she discovers the moving sound of his song and seeks to join him.
On paper, that story sounds twee as hell, but the narrative quickly proves to be more a vehicle for a series of auditory and visual experiments. Staged in traverse, the performance space is bookended by two enormous sheets of gossamer-thin plastic sheeting. Between these lie a series of objects that are more art installation than set. Between them are three dangling bowls of liquid, an overhead projector with liquid on top beams rippling waves on to the walls and a big bowl in which Mook dips her face into and sings through the bubbles.
Velastin and Mook use the stage as a giant musical instrument, combining the pleasingly low-tech (the old style overhead projector gave me flashbacks to school assemblies) with what I'm assuming is live digital audio manipulation. I don't know precisely how they're producing this soundscape, but it appears that their interactions and movements through the set become translated into sound. This creates a unique hour-long piece of music that's different every time its performed.
This music is variously dreamy, meditative, funny and horrifying. The long stretches without dialogue give time to lose yourself in the soundscape, realising that the stage is a microcosm of the wider ocean: an ecosystem hemmed in with plastic and gradually chemically polluted as time goes on. This is complemented by long, low synthetic wails, which take on a morbid quality, as if we're hearing the dying gasps of the sea. We also get an idea of sonic pollution, with simulated and disorientating radar pings and drilling encroaching on a natural peace.
Horror aside, there's also a scene where a woman has passionate sex with a whale, so the show is never in danger of becoming truly miserablist.
Me And My Whale isn't for everyone. You're going to have to come with this with a high tolerance for arty shit, combined with the ability trust that all this abstract noise and odd behaviour has a point. But I kinda loved it: it takes gumption to try and capture on stage the destruction of the oceans and the environmental calamity that mankind has wrought. Perhaps the only way to manage to communicate the sheer existential terror of what is happening right now is through arty shit.
Here's hoping Me And My Whale is performed more in future: we need more shows like this ready to push the boat (or submarine) out.
Further performances of Me And My Whale will be announced on their website.
Wednesday, January 21, 2015
Wednesday, January 21, 2015
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In 1627 Francis Bacon published his utopian novel New Atlantis. Here he laid out an optimistic vision of humanity's future where "generosity and enlightenment, dignity and splendour, piety and public spirit" thrive. It sounds lovely, but reality has fallen somewhat short of his dream. This is where LAStheatre steps in with New Atlantis, this event, part of the Enlightenment Cafe series, is an educational, interactive theatre experience that examines the consequences of climate change and and forces us to grapple with the consequences of our actions
Step through the glass doors of The Crystal and it's 2050 and you're in the headquarters of 'New Atlantis'. This organisation, replacing the defunct United Nations, was created to implement solutions to environmental catastrophe or, ultimately, to save the human race. But New Atlantis is undergoing some changes; its leader, the elderly Bryony Weller (Tricia Kelly), is stepping down due to ill health and the we must select a replacement for her.
The candidates for the job represent competing philosophies for dealing with environmental catastrophe. Representing Industry is Marcia Weiss (Nicola Blackman), whose technocratic free market politics promise prosperity without alterations to quality of life. Defence is headed by Major Simeon Giallo (Jonathan Jaynes), who explains that with resources dwindling we need collectivisation backed up by military might to ensure fair distribution. Nicola MacGloss (Nicky Goldie) leads Reform, arguing that we need to change the way we live, encouraging reduced consumption of meat and rethinking consumerism. Finally there's the mysterious Generation Alpha, a revolutionary group comprised of disenfranchised youth arguing that we need to rip it all up and start again.
Once this has been established we're left to explore New Atlantis at our own pace. The experience is subdivided department, various rooms exploring diverse topics like combating piracy on the high seas, the ethics of extracting Antarctica's natural resources, space exploration and debates on environmental social policy. This set-up rewards the curious, outgoing participant; there's a mix of actors and proper scientists milling about, all eager to draw you into a debate or explain some esoteric bit of climate science.
My first impression was that the amount of data on display was a bit overwhelming. I examined the blueprints of an experimental tri-hulled ship with interest, but had very little idea what to make of it. It's only when I threw myself into a couple of arguments that things really came together for me. In one of the Reform rooms, debates on possible future policies were taking place and so, to liven things up a bit, So I forcefully advocated mandatory veganism, state seizure of farmland, contraceptives in the water supply and the distribution of suicide kits to the elderly. Hey - big problems require bold solutions, right?
After exploring each department we head back to the main room to hear stump speeches by each candidate. These are painfully realistic, stuffed full of vague promises, fancy rhetoric and snide insinuations. The much discussed Generation Alpha makes a dramatic and timely appearance, 'hacking' the broadcast and giving us a fourth option of 'revolution'. We then vote on what we want to happen and, hearteningly, the crowd chooses to put its trust in the youth, rip up calcified power structures and start again.
In trying to both educate and entertain, New Atlantis is to some extent pulling in two directions at once. Repeated like a mantra is the phrase "of course, back in 2015" when discussing issues. This is of course perfectly understandable, the show's sincerely scientific bent means the further it strays into futurist speculation the less useful it is. Still, it does somewhat drain away the idea of immersing ourselves in the world of 2050.
Bigger problems lie in the extremely anticlimactic ending. Everything has been leading up to the big vote to decide the course of the future. By the time we come to press the button a lot of thought should have gone into our decision, which is largely about balancing the freedom of individuals versus the survival of the species. It's tense as the results are read and then finally a winner! Supporters of the other sides gasp. The winners cheer. And then? Well, the lights go up, we collect our coats and leave. It would have been nice to learn what the consequences of our choice were, some kind of reaction from the other candidates or speech from the victor.
Dramatic quibbles aside, at least New Atlantis succeeds at being extremely interesting, teaching me all about the sobering long-term effects of environmental damage. There's interesting background about the future desertification of the central United States (which results in mass immigrations to Canada), the rationing of London's water supply or energy company executives being convicted for damaging the environment. In a world this screwed (most climate scientists say we're even now long past the point of no return) the policies of all three positions are equivalent to rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.
The show is full of quiet, insistent explanations that the situation as it stands is unsustainable, and that as long as we labour under the delusion that globalist, consumer capitalism is indefinitely sustainable we're pigs blindly trudging up a slaughterhouse conveyor belt. It's not that that there's no hope, but in the course of our lifetimes anyone under 50 is going to have to re-evaluate their privileged geographical, economic and political position.
So what did I conclude from New Atlantis? Primarily that the human race is an instinctively greedy species that can't help but consume resources to the point of depletion and has little-to-no real grasp of the long term consequences of our actions. So are we boned?
Yup.
We're so boned.
New Atlantis is at The Crystal, Royal Victoria Docks until 25th January. Tickets available here.
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
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It's easy to overlook the omnipresence of oil. We know the traffic rolling down the street is powered by it, but we often forget just how much the black goo seeps into every aspect of our lives. We are all almost literally oil-powered. The price of the food we eat is governed in large part by the cost of the petrol used in the lorries transporting it, a large part of our economic and geopolitical power is derived from British oil companies. Oil infrastructure is what our banks invest our paycheques in, it’s what funds the museums and art galleries that we all enjoy. When you imagine yourself in relation to the oil economy, see yourself as a monstrous and insatiable tick, your mandibles locked into the earth's skin, greedily sucking her blood.
The two speakers tonight, James Marriott and Anna Galkina are experts in this field. James has spent the last ten years studying the oil industry; travelling around the world to investigate and expose the impact that the oil industry has had upon both the communities it operates in and the wider political stage. Anna has a similar set of interests, with a focus on Arctic oil exploration, speaking with indigenous people who will be enormously affected by the northern expansion of the oil industry. Both James and Anna are work for Platform London, a research, art and education organisation that campaigns for various social causes, with their current focus being the problems of the global oil industry, and tonight, specifically, BP.
James begins by explaining to us how oil reaches the streets of London. He paints a vivid picture of a bus as being powered by a “rumbling war of controlled explosions”. The bus refuels in a depot in Streatham Hill which in turn is supplied by the Coryton Refinery on the estuary of the River Thames. This refinery gets its oil from Rotterdam, which is shipped by tanker from Ceyhan, Turkey, which is supplied by an oil pipeline stretching across the Caucasus region, ending in the Caspian Sea oil rigs off Azerbaijan. So when we see exhaust fumes coming from the back of a Routemaster bus, what you’re looking at is the geology of Azerbaijan gently dissipating into the London atmosphere.
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| The 'Oil Road' |
As you can imagine, getting this oil here requires a colossal amount of physical, economic and political infrastructure, and it’s the insidious effects of this that James and Anna talk about. We’re shown a diagram explaining in relatively simple terms what BP needs to function. This ranges from close political support from government, to economic support and investment from banks like RBS and Natwest and even to popular mood being in their favour, which is achieved through targeted PR and arts sponsorship.
This huge network is apparently run by just 30 people, all men, and while the entirety of its impact upon society may be impossible to quantify we can discuss specific examples. One of the primary topics of the night was the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, a 1,099 mile long oil pipeline stretching from the Caspian Sea to the Turkish port of Ceyhan. The pipeline carves its way through a number of existing separatist conflicts functioning as an extension of Western power into an area traditionally considered Russia’s backyard.
One specific example that James told us about was a woman whose house stood in the path of the pipeline. One of the European Central Bank’s prerequisites of investment was the minimisation of relocation of residents and compensation for those that did have to be moved. For the majority of its route it bypasses most existing residences but there is the occasional house that the pipeline can't go around. In this case, rather than pay compensation to move the family, it was decided to tunnel underneath the house. Now the family has to live with oil rushing at 2m per second under their property, vibrations running through the building, cracks growing along the walls.
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| A burned out pirate skiff. |
We learn about the counter-pirate tactics of Operation Atalanta. When tankers venture into the pirate-infested waters of the Gulf of Aden they string razor wire over their decks and summon the protection of US ‘Reaper’ drones. These pirates have held the crews of tankers hostage, and ransomed thousands of tonnes of oil back to the oil company. So we see oil companies lobbying for development (presumably at public expense) of next-generation warships to protect their assets. Incidentally, this operation taking place on the other side of the world is controlled from a military base near Watford, just within the M25. The next time you’re sitting on the Metropolitan line consider that the twitchy guy next to you may have spent his day remotely killing Somalians.
Anna and James outline how the seductive qualities of oil render even the most disagreeable political regimes palatable to politicians. The government of Azerbaijan is rightly criticised for its human rights record. Journalists speaking ill of the government are routinely harassed, imprisoned and have acts of violence committed against them. Authorities are accused of arbitrary arrests, indefinite detentions, severe beatings, torture, threats of rape and sinister sounding ‘disappearances’. Unsurprisingly, Azerbaijan has high levels of corruption, with the astonishingly wealthy dictatorial President Aliyev being named the “Corrupt Person of the Year” by watchdog Transparency International. The country is so in thrall to oil that a popular health treatment among wealthy citizens is to literally bathe in crude oil for its restorative qualities.
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| Bathing in crude in Baku |
Azerbaijan is a repressive and corrupt country with such a poor human rights record, so why do we find it being feted by people like Mark Field, MP for the Cities of London and Westminster, who was being paid by pro-Azerbaijan lobby groups to promote the political interests of the country? Why do we see the US State Department describing President Aliyev not as a dictator but as “the leader of a country with an emerging democracy”? Why did Prince Andrew throw a luncheon for the man in Buckingham Palace in 2009? It’s doubtful they’d be cosying up to these people if Azerbaijan didn’t have massive oil reserves, so the inevitable conclusion is that they’re prepared to prostitute out their dignity in exchange for some of that sweet sweet oil.
It's fascinating how much effort BP puts into PR, making sure its considered friendly and green in the public eye. From the achingly facile rebranding from a shield to a green and yellow blossom and the laughable claim made by Sir John Browne that BP now stands for "beyond petroleum" and that "we are not an oil company". It's such an impressive display of gumption, one straight from the Karl Rove playbook of making hay from your weaknesses, that it's worthy of a grudging respect.
On a more concrete level, we see the BP logo propping up some of Britain's most respected arts institutions. From the British Museum to the Royal Shakespeare Society to the National Portrait Gallery to the Royal Opera House. They've got their oily fingers in all of our cultural pies. The inevitable defence to this is that they've got to get their funding from somewhere, money is money, right? The argument last night was that in days of yore you'd find exhibitions like this sponsored by British American Tobacco, a prospect considered so obviously 'wrong' now that these organisations have rules in place to specifically prevent it. My kneejerk reaction is to disapprove of oil getting into art, but if you consider BP's money dirty it raises the obvious question: what corporate money isn't?
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| Oil spilling from Deepwater Horizon |
All this positive PR proved to be a fragile and costly illusion, even though it seems you can indeed buy public approval (or at least tolerance) all it takes is one largest oil spill in US history and suddenly you're the epitome of evil. Watching oil spewing endlessly into clear blue waters, choking animals of all varieties to a miserable death proved instantly more compelling than a million glossy quasi-environmentalist adverts and made the claim that "we are not an oil company" risible. BP, with the help of their impossibly slimy and incompetent exec Tony Hayward slid all too easily into the role of the bad guy, an environmental villain straight out of 'Captain Planet'.
It's tempting to view the BP executives who go yachting in Cowes while the Gulf of Mexico fills with oil, and those who cosy up to the government of Azerbaijan as utterly lacking in morals: rapacious, capitalist oil-hungry monsters. But then, we enjoy the fruits of their labour. Every bite of food we eat is tainted with acrid specks of oil, almost every economic action we can take will support the oil industry in some way. We're a nation of addicts, hooked on a rapidly vanishing substance that's slowly killing us. We were told that BP nearly collapsed as a result of Deepwater Horizon, and I asked what the consequences would be if they had. James explained that Britain’s status as a major player in geopolitics would diminish, and ominously said that life would drastically change in the UK.
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| Heaven or Hell? |
So does this make those of us who both criticise BP and enjoy the fruits of Western life hypocrites? Is the standard of life we enjoy sustainable only through propping up despotic regimes and utterly destroying the environment? Depressingly the answer is probably yes, we’re all morally compromised. But this doesn’t mean we can’t hold the actions of the big oil companies up to scrutiny, we know they care about public opinion and we can at least try to ameliorate their worst excesses.
It was a fascinating talk that covered a hugely complex subject in a concise and interesting way. It's also a painful reminder of the consequences of our actions and the ways in which we contribute to world misery in the West merely by existing. Depressingly it's difficult to imagine a world without companies like BP, at least not without a hugely painful and devastating transformation in society, a transformation that would disproportionately impact upon those already in poverty.
Am I being too negative about this? Is there a viable way maintain our existence without the 'Carbon Web', a way to operate our society without propping up oppressive countries and destroying the environment? If there is, (and if I've got anything wrong in this article) please let me know in the comments.
Big thanks to both James Marriott and Anna Galkina for a fascinating talk, and for Don't Panic for arranging it.
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