Liberate Tate

Vivienne joined John Sauven – executive Director of Greenpeace – at the National Portrait Gallery on Saturday for Liberate Tate’s performance protest against the corruptive influence of BP in the art world.

Vivienne writes:

I prefer my naked body without tattoos. And I don’t like the fashion for it because people cover themselves with such rubbish. My friend Luca has his arms tattooed with cream buns and red lip print kisses and two great fat black numbers, one on each calf.
In today’s protest 12 people got tattoos. The tattoos were the parts per million in the Earth’s atmosphere in the year they were born. For me it’s risen sharply, by over a third since I was born in 1941. The protest was organised by art collective Liberate Tate who recently sent BP packing at Tate galleries. In the group getting tattoos there was a climate scientist, Simon Lewis, a woman who had worked at both Tate and the British Museum as a gallery invigilator, Diana Segura Pineda, and my good friend John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace. It was his first tattoo and he was worried he’d squirm, but he tells me he sat like a rock!

These are all brave people because they are activists trying to save the world.

We are outside the National Portrait Gallery – there’s a photo of me in there.
I am here because I’m an activist too. We have just formed a movement called Intellectuals Unite (IoU – We owe you a world) and we join in protest with other movements. We are particularly friends of Greenpeace. Our enemy is the Rotten Financial System.
The most virulent form of this financial system which is now called Neo-Liberalism was introduced into Europe by Thatcher, backed by Reagan and is now global. The system, based on fossil fuels, is the cause of climate change and of poverty. It is in its final death throes and the wrecking has gone viral. We are all caught up in the disintegration of our rich Earth.
It is the most murderous irony that BP one of the major earth wreckers should try to cover itself by supporting the high culture of the human race. Take the tattoo of BP off the National Portrait Gallery.

The Climate Solution (according to Greenpeace)
• Developed countries must make cuts of 40% on their 1990 carbon emissions by 2020
• Developing countries must slow the growth of emissions by 15-30 percent by 2020, with support from industrialised nations
• Protect tropical forests with a special funding mechanism – Forests for Climate
• Replace dirty fossil fuel energy with renewable energy and energy efficiency
• Reject false solutions like nuclear energy