“No doubt this is one innovation that the Tate feels it could do without.” Rebecca Armstrong, The Independent (19 April 2012)

“A tricky and thought-provoking topic, handled with imagination and a lightness of touch.” Rahul Verma, Metro (18 April 2012)

“Drilling the Dirt (a temporary difficulty) is the most devastating indictment of BP’s sponsorship. Of all the tours, it is the [one] that moves me the most, leaving me in no doubt that BP’s sponsorship needs to be challenged.” Sarah Cowan, Occupied Times (May 2012)

“This isn’t a lecture, or an ordinary audio tour. But it is a phenomenal way to spend a free weekend. The three artworks come alive through your participation only. Pressing play immerses you in a subversive world that six award-winning artists narrate. The listener enjoys a sensory experience beyond the curator’s wildest corporate-sponsored dreams, being led gradually through the galleries, spliced together with a cacophony of sounds, spoken word, rhythmic beats and poetry. The triumph is that this is a highly effective, unpreventable form of non-violent dissent – and also a sensual, personal work of art in its own right.” Tim Sowula, The Kentish Towner (6 April 2012)

“England and Welton’s Tate Modern piece is a note-perfect subversion of the standard form. What enables this process to be rerun without exhausting the listener is the wealth of information presented, the convincing way it cleaves to the artworks chosen and the use of the building’s own acoustic properties – the Turbine Hall’s echo and ambient gallery chatter – to create a seamless sense of place … Today direct action, text or speech – particularly if it relates to the UK – seems to be regarded as the unsophisticated sibling of criticality: that emasculated but institutionally acceptable state of political awareness where a certain bureaucratic aesthetic is de rigueur. Liberate Tate and Platform are encouraging us to look at things differently, and with Tate à Tate, a portable piece of cultural activism for the modern age, their message has the potential to reach, engage and politicise a much wider audience.” Morgan Quaintance, Art Monthly (April, 2012)

“Drilling the Dirt (A Temporary Difficulty) is a more playfully subversive guide, which employs selected artworks, as illustrations of, or metaphors for, aspects of BP’s operations. While touching on more sobering material, including BP’s history in Iran, Iraq and Azerbaijan and the human cost of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, Drilling the Dirt (A Temporary Difficulty) is also a bit more fun, managing to inject humour into the format and actively enlisting the listener in an occasional self-conscious subversion of gallery norm. I’m not going to walk into either Tate Britain or Tate Modern again without remembering what I’ve heard there before and nor am I going to see BP’s logo without immediately associating it with corporate irresponsibility. Tate à Tate presents a thought-provoking experience that asks its listeners to question the ethics of Tate’s acceptance of BP’s sponsorship and to consider this in the wider context of escalating global climate change. It’s well worth taking the tours, wandering the galleries and listening in. Increase the burden of your awareness of these issues, and then choose what your next step will be.” Dr Andrew Filmer, Red Pepper (10 April, 2012)

“An interesting example and provoking of cultural hacking. What I find interesting is the potential to redefine events, experiences, spaces and environments (in the ecological meaning and current meaning). There are similar examples of things in Wales that deserve a similar kind of project.” Carl Morris, Y’Twll ar (8 May, 2012)

“I downloaded Drilling the Dirt (a temporary difficulty), the audio guide for Tate Modern – an insightful and thought-provoking introduction to BP’s history, its record of causing devastation around the world, and how it has used sponsorship and marketing to create a responsible corporate image for itself … All in all, an engaging and educating experience which encouraged me to become active in the debate around BP.” Alice Turner, Peace News (May 2012)

Omar Robert Hamilton writes about this film on his Cinerevolution Now blog:

I am privileged to be working with a new collective of young film-makers in Cairo. Each dedicated to making their camera count. We call ourselves Mosireen, or We Are Determined. We work fluidly and interchangeably and with increasing efficiency and remarkably little ego.

Four days ago we finished a film on the martyrs of the Egyptian revolution. The film ends with a scrolling list of all the names of the dead. It is the first time they have been gathered and listed together. Three columns of names run across the screen for over two minutes. It is heartbreaking. We screened it on a makeshift cinema that we erect in Tahrir whenever we can.

BP’s cultural sponsorship seems to be spreading like a rash. They evidently feel they have a lot to do to win back the public’s confidence in their brand. In the latest twist they are sponsoring The World Shakespeare Festival. But fear ye not, as actors, directors and playwrights have piped up denouncing the fearful brand’s despoiling of the favoured Bard. And cheeky activists too, have taken the Bard’s lyrical language and exposed the dirty deeds of the ones that seek to profit from their association with such cultural treasures past. And lo’ did the audience think their performance and message was good… Follow their exploits here.

Even RSC writer-in-residence Mark Ravenhill’s new sonnet for Shakespeare’s birthday seems to be cursing the branding of the bard. See what you think…

Reclaim Shakespeare Company

Performer One:

Ladies and Gentlemen, there will now be a two-minute performance by the Reclaim Shakespeare

Company.

Performer Two:

What country, friends, is this? [raises programme]

Where the words of our most prized poet

Can be bought to beautify a patron

So unnatural as British Petroleum?

Strange association! [Performer One unveils image of BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling disaster]

They, who have incensed the seas and shores

From a dark deepwater horizon

Who have unleashed most foul destruction [Performer One unveils image of tar sands]

Upon far Canada’s aged forests,

Clawing out the lungs of our sickening earth

Who even now would bespoil the high, white Arctic [Performer One unveils image of

untarnished arctic]

In desperate search of more black gold

To make them ever richer. These savage villains!

And yet –

They wear a painted face of bright green leaves,

Mask themselves with sunshine.

And with fine deceitful words

They steal into our theatres, and our minds.

They would have us sleep.

But this great globe of ours is such stuff as dreams are made on.

Most delicate, wondrous, to be nurtured

For our children and theirs beyond.

Let not BP turn these dreams to nightmares.

Fuelling the Future? Thou liest malignant thing! [holding up programme, looking at back page]

Do we sleep?

I find not myself disposed to sleep.

Let us break their staff that would bewitch us!

Out damned logo! [rips out logo from programme]

Audience starts to applaud.

Performer One:

We invite you to join us in tearing the logo from your programme.

Please help us to free the arts from BP.

There will be people with buckets to collect these logos at the end of the performance.

We are the Reclaim Shakespeare Company.

We hope you enjoy tonight’s show.

Who should be allowed to fund our national institutions? Unless we’re willing to accept the sponsorship of fascist groups and foreign dictators, we clearly believe a line must be drawn somewhere. So the issue is not whether we draw a line, but where we draw it. In the case of BP, I believe there is a strong case for placing them on the wrong side of that line.

1) Oil companies in general, including BP, have a history of using PR tactics to discredit climate science, while lobbying governments not to reduce CO2 emissions. For instance, with other leading oil companies (and car manufacturers), BP was part of the Washington based Global Climate Coalition which staunchly opposed reducing greenhouse gas emissions late into the 1990s. To give an idea of the resources this group commanded, it spent $13 million on one anti-Kyoto campaign.

At a time when the world’s leading climate scientist, James Hansen, is telling us that “Human-made climate change is, indeed, the greatest threat civilization faces” and that “the continued exploitation of all fossil fuels on Earth threatens not only the other millions of species on the planet but also the survival of humanity itself…” we cannot afford to offer positive PR to those groups who cloud our understanding of climate change, or obstruct the implementation of steps necessary to mitigate its damage.

2) BP is exploiting Canadian tar sands – a highly controversial action due to the fact that the extraction process involved releases up to four times as much greenhouse gas as other forms of fossil-fuel extraction.

3) BP, in common with other oil companies, has a highly questionable human rights record, supporting human rights abusers in South Africa and Colombia among other places.

In the past it was acceptable for tobacco companies to openly sponsor national institutions – today there is a taboo against it (the BP Portrait Award was initially sponsored by a tobacco company). Our addiction to fossil fuels, however, is far more dangerous than our addiction to tobacco – there is no reason, therefore, the taboo surrounding tobacco sponsorship should not be extended to oil companies too. If society decides it genuinely values institutions like the National Portrait Gallery and Tate Modern, it can provide money to support them.

Though there are good reasons to challenge specifically the sponsorship of companies like BP (and Shell which sponsors institutions such as the Southbank), I think it’s crucial to situate this debate about sponsorship and funding in a wider context. As I see it, the problem with arts sponsorship is a symptom of a far greater problem of funding that stems from a system that concentrates vast amounts of wealth in the hands of a few. There are problems of funding and sponsorship in every area of society, from education and health, to the media and the arts. In the US, for instance, almost all forms of media are owned by one of just 5 or 6 corporations. In the realm of politics we see corporations in the US, especially energy companies, giving hundreds of millions of dollars to both parties in election campaigns and many millions more year on year to lobbyists and politicians, thereby exerting their influence in proportion to their wealth – a blatant subversion of the democratic process. The problem of arts sponsorship has to be situated in this wider context – a context that sees the logic of the market (one-dollar-one-vote) and its history of wealth-concentration, supplanting the logic of democracy (one-person-one-vote). And so if we advocate democracy, we must challenge the unaccountable power of corporations taking over every aspect of our cultural and political life. For me at least, challenging forms of corporate sponsorship of the arts is one, perhaps mainly symbolic, way of challenging the wider ‘corporatisation’ of society.

Like any artist I want my work to be seen, and having my work selected to hang in the National Portrait Gallery was a real honour. I did not face a dilemma in submitting a portrait to the BP Portrait Award, as a private boycott on my part, I knew, would achieve nothing. If, en masse, artists decided to boycott BP-sponsored institutions perhaps it could be a worthwhile tactic. However, right now, no such movement exists. The next best thing is for artists associated with these institutions to speak out.

As an artist I certainly don’t want my work to be part of a PR campaign for corporations that are a threat to our democracy and environment. What’s most important, it seems to me, is preventing such companies from benefiting from the good PR associated with arts sponsorship. The acquiescence of artists to corporate interests is a far more significant statement than anything that might be conveyed by their art. Our world is our biggest canvas, and our choices our most important brushstrokes.

The ‘corporatisation’ of society puts everyone, not just artists, in a difficult position. The journalist who must pander to media owners who make and break careers. The politician who must please the powerful corporations they depend on for funding. Professionals in all fields are in a difficult position. To earn a living many of us have to serve interests we strongly disagree with. Progressive change depends, however, on finding ways to challenge the forces that subvert our democracies and trash our environment.

14 May update: One of the artworks in our alternative audio guide for the Tate Modern (Braco Dimitrijevic’s “Resurrection of Alchemists”) has recently disappeared – the victim of a rehang. We will choose a new work and revise the piece accordingly by the end of the month.

Tate recently purchased eight million of Ai Weiwei’s porcelain Sunflower Seeds for an undisclosed sum.

In 2008 Damien Hirst donated the proceeds from the sale of one of his artworks to Survival International. With his new show opening at the Tate Modern, Damien Hirst has a powerful opportunity to make a public statement against the treatment of the Canadian indigenous peoples who have been impacted by BP’s interests in the tar sands.

For more on BP and Shell’s meetings with the UK government in the lead up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq see the minutes obtained under Freedom of Information by Greg Muttitt.

The CEOs of two oil corporations found guilty of Ecocide as a result of their exploitation of the Canadian Tar Sands are sentenced using the innovative process of restorative justice.