Liberate Tate: “Insides/Outsides” and “A How-to-Guide”

Liberate Tate: “Insides/Outsides”

WHEN: Tuesday, October 18, 2016, 6pm – 8pm

WHERE: Pelican Bomb Gallery X, 1612 O.C. Haley Blvd, New Orleans, LA 70113

Free and open to the public; drinks and snacks will be served

Presented by BUREAU of CHANGE and hosted by Pelican Bomb

BUREAU of CHANGE presents Liberate Tate: “Insides/Outsides“ a performance lecture on creative disobedience by the U.K. artist collective Liberate Tate on Tuesday, October 19 from 6pm to 8pm at Pelican Bomb Gallery X.

Come to hear Liberate Tate share the strategies, tactics and experiences of making unsanctioned live art in the Tate galleries—one of the largest and most influential art institutions in the U.K.—for the past six years. Liberate Tate performances have included spilling oil like substances in museum galleries, installing a 16.5m wind turbine blade in the Tate Modern Turbine Hall, occupying the gallery overnight in a durational performance transcribing texts in charcoal onto the floor, and giving permanent climate tattoos.

Liberate Tate’s Time Piece, 2015. Photo by Martin Lesanto Smith.

Liberate Tate’s practice has been at the forefront of a new wave of non-binary art-activism, blending creative collaborative practice with strategic campaigning goals and their performances have registered a global presence in the news and online. Their work is part of a movement of artists and activists who have moved beyond institutional critique into making unsanctioned artworks that reshape the institution.

Following the artists’ talk, BUREAU of CHANGE and Liberate Tate facilitate a conversation with Cristina DuQue (Fossil Free Southeast Organizer, 350.org); Jayeesha Dutta (Co-Founder, Radical Arts & Healing Collective, Coordinator, Gulf Future Coalition and Organizer, Another Gulf is Possible) and Chris Sullivan (Assistant Professor of Political Science, Louisiana State University) to discuss cultural divestment and creative protest both in Louisiana and the United Kingdom.

“A huge impetus for Liberate Tate’s early performances was BP’s Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico. Six years after we started as a collective, we’re journeying in the USA to deepen conversation with artists, activists and frontline folks about the devastating impacts of fossil fuel companies and the role that culture plays in creating the ‘social licence to operate’ that enable these companies to trash communities, ecosystems and the climate.” —Kevin Smith of Liberate Tate 

 “The art museum is global. The oil industry is global. The Fossil Free Culture movement must be global in our collaboration to end oil sponsorship of the arts and deny the oil industry the social licence it gains from the cultural sector in Europe, the Americas and Australia.” —Mel Evans of Liberate Tate 

Liberate Tate’s visit to New Orleans is part of a broader U.S. tour sharing the experience of successfully removing the oil sponsor BP from the Tate galleries with artists, activists, cultural allies, friends and publics in New York, Washington DC, New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Houston. Following the public performance-lecture at Pelican Bomb Gallery X, Liberate Tate leads an educational workshop “Liberate Tate: A How-To Guide” at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge on October 19, 2 – 5 pm. Workshop participation is limited; for more information on the workshop, contact rsvp@bureauofchange.org.

MEDIA CONTACT

Margot Herster, BUREAU of CHANGE

504.358.0012

office@bureauofchange.org

ABOUT LIBERATE TATE

Liberate Tate is an art collective that has been exploring the role of creative intervention in social change by making unsanctioned Live Art in Tate gallery spaces since 2010. Their aim, to free art from oil, initially focussed on the art museum Tate ending its corporate sponsorship with BP. The creative strategy used was successful, and in March 2016, Tate announced that from 2017 it would no longer receive funding from oil giant BP. Liberate Tate seeks to free the arts from oil because the oil industry uses its association with institutions to create a guise of social acceptability. The group believes that there should be no cultural sponsorship by oil companies in a time of climate change, and fits within a wider set of politics around decolonizing and democratizing the museum. www.liberatetate.org.uk

ABOUT BUREAU of CHANGE

BUREAU of CHANGE is an education-centric lab for real art practice in New Orleans. We create, curate and exhibit socially and politically engaged work. Our process commissions artists and non-artists to collaborate on creative works aimed at inciting institutional change while studying social technology, digital media theory, interdisciplinary research and artistic production. We present our work at art institutions and community-accessible physical and digital spaces, as well as US/IS, our public art space at Gravier & Magazine Streets in downtown New Orleans. www.bureauofchange.org

ABOUT PELICAN BOMB

Pelican Bomb is a contemporary arts organization dedicated to connecting you to ideas, events, and opportunities in New Orleans and beyond. Since 2011, Pelican Bomb has presented dynamic programming including critical reviews and digital artist projects on our online Art Review; thought-provoking exhibitions at Pelican Bomb Gallery X; a Community Supported Art initiative that commissions limited-edition works by local artists; and a critic-in-residence program that connects national thinkers with New Orleans’ arts communities. www.pelicanbomb.com