Three individuals targeted National Gallery paintings an hour after Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland were jailed for similar attack in 2022
Climate activists have thrown tomato soup over two Sunflowers paintings by Vincent van Gogh, just an hour after two others were jailed for a similar protest action in 2022.
Three supporters of Just Stop Oil walked into the National Gallery in London, where an exhibition of Van Gogh’s collected works is on display, at 2.30pm on Friday afternoon, and threw Heinz soup over Sunflowers 1889 and Sunflowers 1888.
The latter was the same work targeted by Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland in 2022. That pair are now among 25 supporters of Just Stop Oil in jail for climate protests.
Imagine if these activists spent more time going after companies benefiting from fossil fuel production rather than throwing soup in museums…
Imagine if all the people I disagree with did the thing I wanted…
Then they would be in cages already.
I brought up Karen Silkwood and Erin Brockovich elsewhere. They were not put in cages. They were just willing to do some very hard work rather than just stunts.
Then we wouldn’t be talking about stopping oil production right now.
We’ve literally been talking about it for decades. An Inconvenient Truth won the Oscar in 2006. What has talking about it accomplished?
That’s not my point. Everytime they deface something, we start talking again about stopping oil production. Sure we talk about it without that push too. But this means we start talking about it more.
Bit we’re not talking about stopping oil production. We’re talking about how stupid and pointless defacing art is.
FTFY.
Right, I see you must have trouble reading.
We’re now talking about whatever i am talking about, which is reading comprehension, not how dumb this protest is.
When has talking about ending reliance on fossil fuels ever stopped? I don’t remember it stopping.
Most people are aware that the Earth is warming and fossil fuels are the cause. There’s nothing you or I can do about that. It’s the corporations that have to be stopped. I can’t stop them. You can’t stop them. Talking about them won’t stop them and neither will throwing cans of soup.
In fact, I have no idea what will stop them, but talking sure as fuck won’t.
So we should just stop trying anything and do nothing?
There is a massive, massive gulf between “never try anything” and “throw soup at paintings in the hopes of making people aware of a problem they’re already aware of and not just get pissed off at you.”
Throwing soup in art galleries is worse than doing nothing.
Pat yourself on the back then.
They’ve done that too, and have encountered media blackouts.
As nice as it would be if they could simply fix the climate problem with the disruption a handful of protests cause, they can’t, and need to draw public attention to the problem.
These demonstrations open up the conversation in threads like this - you agree there’s a problem, you agree these protests don’t fix the problem, so let’s talk about what will.
I feel like we’re kind of entering an era where direct action and ecology-motivated terrorism are going to start becoming a thing. And I’m honestly not sure that would be a bad thing.
Peaceful protests have not worked, disruptive protests have been widely villified and the protestors jailed for very long sentences. If you are facing 2-3 years for holding up a banner or throwing some paint seems like criminal damage of a fossil fuel facility isn’t likely to net more years. As many have said in the past governments ignore peaceful protests at their peril, because once its clear that doesn’t work they become not peaceful.
If everything is illegal, nothing is illegal.
If you’re gonna get thrown in jail if you’re caught regardless, why not go for broke?
Assuming there’s no collateral damage to speak of, I’d argue it would be an act of self-defence for the benefit of all of us. In principle, I’d struggle to find reason to be upset by it.
There will be collateral damage. There always is. The idea there wouldn’t be collateral damage is already setting the bar higher than is feasible.
Well, clearly not throwing crap at paintings. Now I want to see these guys arrested and thrown in jail.
Seems to me that it would be pretty difficult to encounter a media blackout to do this sort of thing at, for example, global climate summits, oil company shareholder meetings, etc.
But I’m not seeing much soup being thrown there.
In Germany, protestors repeatedly shut oil pipelines off and locked themselves to the valves to prevent their reopening, blocking oil flow for several hours every time. I consume a lot of news, both mainstream and in my leftist bubble. That story barely registered anywhere.
The exact same protestors threw mashed potatoes at a Van Gogh. They were the main headline for over a week.
Hell, some guy set himself on fire a few years ago and it was in the news for half a day.
The media blackout is real, but it’s not a huge conspiracy. It’s just that the media reports on what gets them clicks, and nothing generates clicks like outrage. That’s why so much reporting also conveniently forgets to mention that the paintings are protected by plexiglass and nothing ever got damaged. But all the controversy gets people talking, and some people will inevitably question what drives people to do something like that. That is the real objective. If they wanted to be popular, they’d to greenwashed recycling videos on YouTube instead, or whatever else is hip with the neoliberal peddlers of personal responsibility at the moment.
And how will this get corporations to stop drilling for and selling and taking advantage of fossil fuels? How do you get from throwing soup to that?
You stop the problem from being buried under the fact that everyone is struggling to get by, or distracted by whatever the fuck the likes of the Kardashians are up to. You bring it to the forefront and prompt conversations like these - conversations where someone might realise that to stay the course on this one is to roll down the road to the apocalypse, and maybe they’d like to do something about that.
When has it ever been buried? When? Point out a time when climate change was not a major issue being discussed in the last 20 years. And I don’t mean just for a day or two like after January 6th, 2020.
By ‘media blackout’ they mean ‘it was a blip on the radar like this is, but this is NOW and thus relevant and important’
The people who talk about ‘media blackouts’ also seem to forget that everyone has an internet-connected video camera in their pockets.
What are you even trying to say here? That any bastard with a camera and something to show will magically be seen, or that everyone with a smartphone is going to be aware of everything that affects them? Because neither of those things is remotely close to the way the world works.
You were aware of the JSO protesters shutting down the oil pipeline? If and that’s a big “if” so, do you think the average schmuck is? No. But chances are that they’re aware of the stunts like the soup.
Yes.
Agreed.
Which helps how? Does it end the reliance on fossil fuels? The world has been aware that fossil fuel dependence is causing global warming. What can you or I do about it? Nothing. We don’t control the fossil fuel companies.
This whole idea that somehow “awareness” is going to do anything about this problem after decades of people doing these sort of stunts is ludicrous.
Right? Go throw soup at Darren Woods or one of the oil execs, not at a painting
Remember when famous assholes used to get pies in the face? What happened to that?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tHGmSh7f-0
Then they wouldn’t get their five minutes of fame, though. And even worse, they couldn’t even claim their five minutes of fame was some self-righteous moment that they should be lionized for. A fate worse than death, basically.
I see shit like this and I think about people like Erin Brockovich and Karen Silkwood…
Sounds a lot like boring work that has no grand trumpets or asspats at the end of the rainbow, or that requires specialized skills and education. Can’t we just draw some attention to ourselves, cry out “Climate change!” and call it a day?
Nah - let’s just feel superior by whining about people doing something to defer the apocalypse - both stunts to draw attention, and shutting down oil pipelines directly.