Tag Archives: travel

Finding space to critique C Words

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As one of five C Words Co-Realizers one of my jobs is to reflect on the events which take place in the gallery. Yet, within the walls of Arnolfini I find it hard to find intellectual space or critical distance from the work.

Fortunately, I shan’t be based in Bristol for the whole of our two month run of events. Each time I leave the city – it seems – I can begin to clarify my thoughts on the provocative discussions, films and story-telling I have absorbed.

I climb aboard a stopping-train which makes slow, meditative progress through the Wiltshire countryside. Autumn sunshine is a gift to these rolling chalk hills and I cannot help but smile as I take in the view.

If an artist sets themselves the task of creating beautiful objects it is hard to imagine that any human creativity might match the beauty inherent in the ever-changing view from the window of a railway-carriage. A rail journey is a unique screenplay, different each time the film is played.

For the first week of the C Words show a banner hung on the far wall of gallery three at Arnolfini: “The measure of the new days is a love of the surface of the earth like the skin of a lover.”

Just as there are certain curves of a lover’s body which captivate one’s imagination, which form indelible memories, I believe that each of us may love the earth with similar specificity. We need not love the whole less, merely because we find a certain spot captivating. For me, perhaps my greatest love is these chalk hills, an archipelago of downland running variously through Wiltshire, Hampshire, Surrey, Sussex and into Kent.

C words sets out to address the questions “How did you get here, and where are we going.” A pair of questions which may be as banal or as profound as the reader makes them. There is a deliberate geography in these questions, Here and There may be metaphorical but need not be.

PLATFORM’s intention is to catalyse long-term thinking, to address social and environmental concerns over generational time-scales. I believe that a sense of place is important in addressing such questions. A two month residency in Bristol is a departure for PLATFORM, which has – over the past 25 years - rooted the bulk of its work firmly in the Thames valley.

Yet PLATFORM has always been outward-looking, in the 1990s PLATFORM’s Homeland project addressed issues of Home and of identity with expatriate communities in London amid the conflicts which tore apart Yugoslavia. More recently, campaigning has focussed on justice for minoritised communities in Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey as BP has constructed and operated a hydrocarbon corridor through these countries in the form of its Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline. Current PLATFORM projects: Unravelling the Carbon Web and Remember Saro-Wiwa highlight the significance of London as an oil-city while focussing on the needs of oil affected communities in the Canadian province of Alberta and in the Niger Delta in Nigeria.

C words takes place within this context, less a part of the contemporary art world, more a manifestation in the worlds of political transformation and environmental defence. Perhaps it is this positioning which leaves me unable to digest the content of C Words whilst standing in a gallery. Similarly, we invite our audience less to look at the work, more to talk about the issues it raises. While events in the gallery have given me much to think about, it is autumn sunshine on rolling chalk hills which reminds me of my lover.

Benjamin,
C Words Co-Realizer.

Feral Trade: a different value system

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This evening I went to hear Kate Rich and Rasha Shaheen present the Feral Trade project. Kate and Rasha are about to embark on a trip to Iran, attempting to open up a new grocery trade route.

The Feral Trade project trades goods along social networks: transporting consumables like coffee from El Salvador, sweets from Iran and grappa from Croatia through ‘couriers’ on existing journeys. Each item has been sourced through friends of friends and its transportation is recorded in extreme detail on the website: www.feraltrade.org

The people purchasing Feral Trade goods back here in Bristol get full information on the source and journey of their groceries – the opposite to what Kate describes as the ‘false surfaces’ of most food packaging. The project offers a different set of exchange values – although products are bought and sold, their value is in the stories of their journeys, and the social networks that allow the goods to travel. This is not a model to solve the problems of commercial shipping, but a playful way of making visible of the true stories behind international trade.

There was a mischievous glint in her eye as Kate described her delight in finding ‘wormholes’ to operate outside the regular commercial systems. Feral Trade is an attempt to put into practice pre-capitalist models of trade, relying on social relationships to physically transport and exchange goods.

Kate was frank about the different methods of transport she employs, including flying, and had a refreshing approach to responsible travel. She asked: ‘Is intelligent disengagement a good idea?’ Should we refuse to travel, out of an acute awareness of our own carbon footprint and others lack of freedom of movement? Or can thoughtful journeys challenge all the thoughtless ones?

Becky B

The Bristol bus boycott & other stories

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On Sunday afternoon, Virtual Migrants presented a performance and talk: The Centre Cannot Hold, Part 1. The performance examined the social inequalities around the issue of climate change. The following discussion looked at why those most effected are largely not the industrialised economies causing it; the connections between environmental crises and migration; and local Bristol history that connects to these wider issues.

A crowd gathered in the gallery where an installation of projected video, text and audio formed the backdrop to a live performance of spoken word and song. The voices become increasingly layered so that only glimpses of their content emerged. It felt quite overwhelming in the small packed room, with so much information spilling out – on top of an already information-heavy weekend. I let my mind relax and noticed certain fragments float to my attention: the woman’s feet picking their way gracefully along a pipe over flood waters, a reference to the 1980s miners strikes, a slave auction poster, resonant singing voices.

Kooj Chuhan of Virtual Migrants introduced their guest, local black activist Guy Baily. He spoke of his childhood in Jamaica and told the compelling story of his involvement in the Bristol Bus Boycotts of the 1960s in response to the blatant racism of the bristol bus company. Conversation followed on life in contemporary Jamaica and the difficult contradiction between the economics of tourism and the visible impact of climate change, with hurricanes dramatically increasing in their frequency.

This multi-layered, rich discussion brought to light many issues that lie at the heart of this season, from the social implications of environmental change, to whether diverse communities around Bristol can access spaces like the Arnolfini.

http://www.virtualmigrants.com/
http://centrecannothold.wordpress.com/

Living in Palestinian Yarmouk

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We moved to Yarmouk Camp the other week.

The first month in Damascus, I lived in an ancient house in the middle of the Old City in Damascus, half a block from the enormous Omayed Mosque. Sitting on our roof terrace at dusk, I blogged while watching the bats swoop and dive around the Bride’s Minaret and Jesus’ Minaret, chasing bees only slightly smaller than my thumb. The mosque was the academic and political centre of the Omayed’s empire, as the armies rode west, conquering all of North Africa and Spain (even reaching the Rhone valley in France) in the 7th and 8th century.

But now I’ve moved to Yarmouk – a Palestinian refugee camp in southern Damascus. I can still watch the bats swooping from my balcony. Though here they circle over streets packed with shoppers and kids at 1am, out shopping till late to make the Ramadan fast that bit easier. Palestinian camps – whether in Lebanon, Syria or the Occupied Territories – are densely-crowded suburbs with high buildings and narrow alleys. Good for escaping invading soldiers, but bad for avoiding damp walls – those living on the ground floor can easily feel that the sun doesn’t shine in the camp.

Population estimates for Yarmouk vary widely – it was already the largest camp in Syria with 150,000 Palestinians and a similar number of poor Syrians living here as well. Then the arrival of tens of thousands of Iraqi families after the 2003 US invasion probably doubled the residents.

Our flat is on the permanently jammed up main thoroughfare through the camp, right next to the large Waseem Mosque (“Handsome Mosque”). The call to prayer feels at points like it will shatter my eardrums, though the hour-long amplified chanting at 3am is surprisingly soothing. The shop below us specialises in coffee and chocolate, so coming home I’m invariably greeted with the smell of freshly-ground Brazilian and Guatemelan beans – lovely if only I didn’t have a deep distaste for coffee.

As anywhere, Yarmouk is a jumble of different tastes, noises, emotions and people: mosques surrounded by jasmine bushes, fancy clothes boutiques, many scrawny little kids begging, sweet shops selling delicious Nabulsi knaffe, 24-hour internet cafes, 24-hour weed sellers, 2 alcohol shops that close for the whole of Ramadan, trees full of turtle doves gobbling berries, leftist film-screenings and parties, pious men in white jelabiyas heading to the mosque, crazy cyclists careening the wrong way down the road without brakes, Fateh, Hamas and PFLP posters, and a longing to go home to Palestine.

Dodging tankers in the Bosphorus

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We wake up to a view of corn and sunflower fields fast giving way to rows upon rows of apartment blocks in Istanbul’s outlying suburbs. Unlike the crumbling towers of Eastern Europe, many of these are new and shiny, as Istanbul spreads into the agricultural land to the west.

Our Belgrade-Istanbul sleeper curves down to the Sea of Marmara, as we chug through the outlying suburbs. As we get closer in, I can spot tens of tankers queued up, waiting to pass through the narrow Bosphorus. Many of these will be heading for Supsa in Georgia or Novorossiysk in Russia, to fill up with Azeri Caspian crude pumped across the Caucasus, destined ultimately for European or American cars.

Waiting at Sirkeci station is Memedali, a close friend who interned with PLATFORM and did a lot of work with us on theBaku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline this last year.

Once off the train, we cross the Bosphorus on one of the many city ferries bustling back & forth, in between tankers and cruise ships. Little round jellyfish float past our taxiing ferry, while over fifty fish churn up the water, competing to devour a piece of bread a passenger threw over the rail.

In Kadikoy on the Asian side, Memedali takes us to a restaurant serving home-cooked meals run by four women imprisoned for several years in the 1990s for leftist activism. Vines trail over the patio, providing shade from the intense sun. A poster of Marx in a hard-hat marks 160 years since the Communist Manifesto, while Lukacs and Zizek fill the shelves. Swifts diving over our heads, screeching as they zoom above the café tables. Large gulls flap slowly above the rooftops, two air-storeys above the swifts. Cats snooze, spread out on top of nearby bookstalls.
Take the last ferry back to Karakoy on the European side. As the boat pulls out, it passes 850 cormorants huddled together in single file on the Ottoman pier that juts out from Kadikoy harbour.

I meet an old friend on Istiklal Caddesi, the central pedestrianised shopping street. The last time I was here the air reeked of tear gas as heavily-armed riot cops and water cannons patrolled the streets, trying to stop us reaching the symbolic Taksim Square, site of a massacre of trade unionists in 1977. Now the street is packed with young trendy people, spilling out of bars and cafes everywhere.

My friend M had to leave Turkey to avoid compulsory military service – due at 34 if not fulfilled before. Joining the armed forces of a state conducting aggressive operations against Kurdish communities is not appealing to many young people living in Turkey, particularly activists. Avoiding it can be hard – and many ultimately have to leave the country. M can only return now that hes has found work in a university abroad – but only until he’s 38. Then he must either pay (about £4k) and serve a reduced term, or stay abroad.

He takes us to a back street in Tarlabasi, where some friends are shooting a feature length drama about trans sex-workers in Istanbul. The community is well-established in the area, with specific shops (eg selling wigs) catering to them. While being gay is not illegal, the queer community still faces repression. Tension is high on set, with everybody is worried about possible attacks.

Romanian Nodding Donkeys

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While the train passes through fields of shiny windturbines in Austria, after descending through the Hungarian mountains down towards the Black Sea, the Romanian plains are full of ‘nodding donkeys’, an ancient means of extracting crude from shallow fields in small quantities. As each ‘donkey’ can only extract so much, fields are littered with hundreds of these wellheads, packed close together.

The Romanian Ploesti oil fields have been in production since 1861. They provided 1/3 of the German war machine’s fuel during World War II, and were repeatedly targeted by US and British bombers flying out of Libya in 1943. With almost no exploration potential, Romania’s production is currently only 115,000 barrels per day — about 10% of BP’s Azeri-Guneshli-Chirag field.

Especially after the gleaming windturbines of Central Europe, the rusting industrial landscape appears unexpected in theEU. But a longer look actually shows that many of the nodding donkeys are not old and in need of decommissioning, but rather blue & yellow new installations – aimed at capturing every last drop of crude. Who makes this choice to continue to drive the fossil fuel donkey as long and as hard as possible?

It is not the Romanian government alone – the rail tankers lined up to collect the oil and export it abroad are labelled OMV– the Austrian national oil company.

BP’s extraction operations in Brussels

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Only in Brussels for 90 minutes, so not long enough to visit BP’s office on Rondpoint Schumann, adjacent to the European Commission.

This provides the company’s easy access for major EU lobbying of various EU institutions. BP — Extracting Influence at the heart of the EU, a report published earlier in 2009 by Corporate Europe Observatory and PLATFORM unmasked BP’s attempts to harness EU foreign policy and legislative power for its own benefit.

The report reveals the oil giant’s close relationship with decision makers and highlights how the company has convinced Commissioners and others that BP’s interests are in the EU’s interest – allowing it to promote profit-driven approaches to climate change through emissions trading. The company has also exploited the EU’s diplomatic muscle in Russia encouraging risky dependence on Russian gas.

Howard Chase, BP’s Head of European Affairs, chairs the Industry Advisory Panel of the Energy Charter, while BP Chairman Peter Sutherland chaired the Foreign Economic Relations Working Group at the European Roundtable of Industrialists. BPEurope’s efforts regularly pay off, with the European Commission and other EU institutions regularly intervening on behalf of the company. Arguments between BP management and Russian shareholders of TNK-BP led to several EUCommissioners pressuring Russian President Putin to make BP’s case.

BP Europe staff know their company well. Rather than relying on career lobbyists, BP rotate staff from their flagship producing regions into Brussels. One of the key BP figures in Azerbaijan responsible for creating the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline and the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli oil field has been working for BP Europe the last few years.

Waiting for the first train

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I’m waiting at Kings Cross – St Pancras with my rucksack for the 12:57 Eurostar to Damascus. The train isn’t quite direct yet — need to change at Brussels, Munich, Belgrade, Istanbul and Adana.

I’m leaving London – oil city and finance capital where BP and Shell extract knowledge, loans, social legitimacy and political power, where corporate executives sit in high offices building pipelines on flipcharts and hard-drives. Moving closer to the sites of physical extraction, where oil corporations pump crude out of the ground, to spend time with social movements, fossil fuel workers and local communities.

As part of PLATFORM’s Civil Society Project within Unravelling the Carbon Web, I will be based in the South, investigating the social, economic and environmental impacts of oil and gas projects. For the next three years I will travel slowly, by train, boat and bus, between the Middle East, Europe, the Americas and Asia.

Our project is pretty experimental: a tiny collective organisation basing a staff member abroad, planning visits, stays and workload so as to avoid any flights, basing a project around reactive work guided by needs and desires of affected communities. We’ll see how it develops.

This blog will probably include postings on BP and Shell’s attempts to break into oil & gas frontier regions, wider struggles against fossil fuel extraction, random cultural references and my attempts to travel slowly whilst working. We’ll see how often I blog — I plan to write most days, but at times posting may be erratic, with variable internet access. Writing style might also be a bit experimental …