As if to beautifully illustrate my point earlier in the week about Greenpeace rather over doing the ‘climbing up high stuff and hanging banners from it‘ they kindly Tweeted a link to a video full of such shenanigans.
Thankfully, much of the banner hanging takes place on nasty environment destroying things such as whaling ships, power stations and bull-dozers, which at least has some practical application, even if short-lived. There is even some aerial art – though in rather inaccessible places (check out all the naked people on the glacier!) meaning most people cannot take part.
It is a nice promo of the stunts that Greenpeace organise, though does not really connect too well with the ‘Me2′ message at the end, unless they are giving free abseiling lessons to would-be activists? The whole thing is so macho at times that Greenpeace look like a special ops squad. Come to think of it, shouldn’t there be a warning, ‘Don’t try this at home kids‘, because the last bit where they hang off the arm of Jesus looks well dodgy. The whole banner thing may have become Greenpeace’s signature action now, but personally I would have preferred it if they had painted Jesus green (using organic vegetable dye, obviously).
I do not mean to single out Greenpeace, they are in many ways no worse than many other INGOs who increaslingly feed the media with numerous high profile visual stunts. My point of discussion is – are we now creating actions to be heard, rather than being heard because of our actions? For example, in the 1990′s environmental activists in the UK occupied land designated for road building by digging a network of tunnels and living in them, preventing construction work (at least for a while). They were neither photogenic, paid, nor had slick PR teams. But in this case the ‘hanging of high stuff‘ (they also occupied trees) served a purpose. These forms of direct action, although superficially may seem similar to stunts are exactly their opposite – they are interventions to the problem. Stunts are large Post-It notes to politicians and publicity for NGOs.
Check out this Greenpeace video. What looks like direct action is in fact a stunt. The occupation lasted 30 hours and begs the question on how seriously it was supposed to impact on the problem in a practical sense?
Inspiring visual products and actions are needed, especially those that anyone can take part in themselves. There will only be a few individuals with the time and dedication to take the type of direct action I describe above. But we need to be careful that our activism retains series content rather than just looking ‘cool’. Most activism is backed-up with other activities of more substance, and it is essential that this is communicated too.
Filed under: Campaigning, Video Tagged: | direct action, environment, visual stunts
I could watch about 30 seconds. It was like being at a happy hardcore rave.
Bollocks.