25 ms·
Activist glues his head to glass covering 'Girl with a Pearl Earring' painting
- LinuxBender 4y agoWould it significantly degrade the visual appearance of the art if it were behind riot-proof glass? [1] [1] - https://www.riotglass.com/ https://www.riotglass.com/
- Someone 4y agoFTA (right at the start): A climate activist glued his head to glass covering the world-famous "Girl with a Pearl Earring" painting at a museum in The Hague on Thursday, though the artwork was not damaged, gallery staff said. ⇒ probably not.
- LinuxBender 4y agoWell in that case, perhaps I would give them some more glue to adhere their hands to the glass and make them temporarily part of the exhibit. It might attract more visitors. [Edit] The more I think about this, there could be some learning moments. Provided there are physical security present, psychology teachers and professors could bring in their students to interview the activist and photography students could take pictures. Students could be given critical thinking exercises to theorize the thought process of the activist and postulate what might be their perceived goals vs. what may actually be accomplished.
- jfengel 4y agoThey seem to be deliberately choosing art that's behind glass. That gets them maximum visibility without causing priceless damage. I still think they're probably doing more harm than good, but climate inaction has gone on so long it's unsurprising that a few people would resort to something showy, stupid, and useless. I get their frustration, and wish I had something more useful to say to them besides "Please don't make me look stupid for supporting your cause."
- Beltalowda 4y ago> They seem to be deliberately choosing art that's behind glass. That gets them maximum visibility without causing priceless damage. In the video they say "don't worry, it's behind glass", or something along those lines, so the decision indeed seemed deliberate. Besides, kind of hard not to notice whether you're glueing in your to glass or a painting.
- boppo1 4y agoAs a painter, yes, putting paintings behind glass makes me significantly less able to evaluate and appreciate them. What these protests will accomplish will be to make art harder for common people to see.
- ls15 4y agoProbably airport-like security checks before entering a museum.
- luckylion 4y ago"Sorry, can't let you in with that head and those hands."
- Biganon 4y ago...and that glue/paint
- amelius 4y agoPut visitors in an exoskeleton that guides them through the exposition in a preprogrammed way.
- ls15 4y agoI think I'd enjoy that, actually.
- boppo1 4y agoIn the early Halo books there's a bit about the development of the mjonlir armor: they put a marine in who didn't have augmented bones/muscles like the Spartan IIs. He moves his arm, the suit accelerates it and dislocates the limb. Then it accelerates all the reactions he has from the pain and more or less turns all his joints to a pulp. Just thought I'd share.
- 4y ago
- chatterhead 4y ago
- kelseyfrog 4y agoCan you explain where this feeling of yours comes from? I've always wanted to engage with someone who feels that retributive justice is actually justified, but not everyone is licensed to be so bold.
- stjohnswarts 4y agoBecause it's performance art with no real purpose beyond the narcicism of the individual doing it. I think it should be rewarded with a felony conviction.
- uoaei 4y agoThat description also applies to your comment.
- kelseyfrog 4y agoRight, I understand that it influences your perception of events. What I want to understand is the mental machinery and inner psychology that serves as a basis for those feelings. Like do you feel a stronger sense of justice than other people? Some specific catalyst in childhood that you can look back on that influences this feeling? Something else?
- sib 4y agoWhy wouldn't it be justified? They are inflicting costs on the museum and museum goers (monetary and in reducing the quality of the experience). "This is why we can't have nice things..." They (and others) should be disincentivized from doing so.
- kelseyfrog 4y agoInteresting, I guess that means some people default to all actions are justified and then carve out exceptions vs others who default to unjustified and carve out justifiable exceptions? What's your null hypothesis of justifiability?
- constantcrying 4y agoWhat is the point though? Is there a single person who changes their mind on the issue of climate change because some lunatic does a bit of pseudo-vandalism?
- noobermin 4y agoIt garners attention and has people talking about climate change, like in this comment thread, like in the attached article. It has in fact already achieved its goal. Many other tactics have not so far. It's for example why people block traffic, it's an effective manner to gain attention.
- thinkingemote 4y agoThey are playing the attention game now and are beholden to the rules of the game and the organisations that control the playing field. In terms of climate change the media organisations support these activists. However where the media do not support the cause the attention game is the wrong thing to play. It's all spectacle now. No actual change of a person's heart just ideology mediated through images. It does indeed get people thinking about it but only until the next news item is shown.
- selfhoster11 4y agoOK, what are the alternatives? - Bribing the politicians to do something (with what money)? - Having someone run on the political platform of building a greener future, while competing with turbocharged, lobby-backed candidates that want the exact opposite? - Having those companies clean up their conduct (with what effective regulators)? - Having better coverage in the media of matters related to climate change, to raise awareness and convince people that this is an emergency (with what media that's not owned by old pro-fossil billionaires)? Raising awareness in this way may be stupid, but it's an avenue to at least get people talking for a few seconds.
- DwnVoteHoneyPot 4y ago
- pvaldes 4y ago
- nisegami 4y agoLooking into the funding of "Just Stop Oil" really makes it seem like the most likely situation is enabling insane and ineffective "activism" by well-meaning but misguided folk as a way to discredit the larger movement. Not quite a false flag op, but meaningfully the same.
- pvaldes 4y agoInteresting. Who is funding stop oil? Maybe Museums should start hanging art at more than 2m high so stupid children are unable to reach it.
- boppo1 4y agoI read it's the daughter of an energy mogul using inheritance to try to undo her parent's legacy. But that seems like a cover story to me.
- daniel-cussen 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- draw_down 4y ago
- rnd0 4y ago>False flag operations against ecologists in my opinion that are shown as crazy people. This dimwits would do anything for ten seconds of fame, but the police should focus into finding the puppeteer. I agree 100%, it's a shame you're being down-voted into oblivion. Of course I suspect that rather than some shadowy villian you'll probably find a right-wing think tank but apart from that, I agree with you.
- uni_rule 4y agoThese protests are all symbolic nothingburgers done by out of touch european teenagers. So far the only thing they seem good at doing is revealing how uncomfortably common whackjobs who respond to these symbolic generally reversible "damages" with calls for actual fucking pogroms are. British tabloids should give these kids a commission for writing their "destruction of our glorious heritage" ragebait for them.
- awinder 4y ago“arrested three Belgian men in their 40s for damage to public property”
- uni_rule 4y agoWait, everyone just assumed it was the same people?
- e12e 4y agoSeems to generate more discussion than lighting oneself on fire - with less damage (loss of life) - as mentioned by another commenter upthread. https://edition.cnn.com/2022/04/25/politics/supreme-court-climate-activist-dies-fire/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2022/04/25/politics/supreme-court-cl...
- joemazerino 4y agoI wonder why only Western art is being targeted?
- selfhoster11 4y agoWestern people are more likely to care about it than other art.
- joemazerino 4y agoStopping oil is a Western problem? That is news to me
- 1ris 4y agoThe most solvable to these people, anyway.
- 323 4y agoBecause the press would destroy them if they would dare to target art created by a black woman for example. Not to mention that they would probably be arrested for hate crimes too in that case.
- stjohnswarts 4y agothey should love him for a couple of days.
- thinkmcfly 4y agoI love all of the comments complaining about how ineffective these people are - when the demonstrators goals were purely to raise attention. From where I'm sitting, I'd give this at least a George Bush level mission accomplished commendation
- luckylion 4y agoDepends on the mission. Do they want to raise attention for or against their cause?
- schnable 4y agoDoes raising attention accomplish anything other than raising attention?
- jlokier 4y agoYes, for the same reason that advertising works.
- lawn 4y agoMaybe they should change their goal to stopping climate change instead of purely raising attention on how ridiculous their stunts are?
- larksimian 4y agoIf these idiots hate climate change maybe climate change isn't so bad after all. (/s) There is such a thing as sabotaging the cause you claim to support.
- karaterobot 4y agoYou mean it's a feckless promotional stunt? Okay, maybe the world needs to learn for the umpteenth time that raising awareness is not the same as advancing your cause. To the extent that I know some dipshit is in the process of ruining a piece of our shared cultural heritage, I guess that raises my attention to the existence of dipshits to world record levels. To the extent that I do not know this person's name, or remember the name of his organization, I would say it's a failure.
- luckylion 4y agoIt's because they're oil paintings, isn't it?
- thot_experiment 4y ago
- slothtrop 4y agoNature isn't sacred.
- nerpderp82 4y agoThings are more important than the planet.
- slothtrop 4y agoThe planet isn't going anywhere, according to the IPCC. We have an impact on it, we alter it, but in and of itself that doesn't matter if survival isn't threatened.
- nerpderp82 4y agoThe future of [-500m,30km] is not certain. We have no certainty that the regulatory mechanisms in the ecosystem have strong enough feedback to recover.
- giantg2 4y agoIf that was truly the point, then wouldn't they be attacking the sources and not some static, non-emitting object?
- squeaky-clean 4y agoIt's about making people realize, "if you're so upset about 1 painting being destroyed, why aren't you upset about the entire planet being destroyed?"
- giantg2 4y agoWhich again, is ineffective communication. Only the people who accept the planet's destruction are going to understand/interpret that statement. The people who don't, aren't going to make that leap.
- assbuttbuttass 4y agoThis stuff is just so ridiculous that I have a hard time believing that stopping climate change is the real goal here. Things start to make more sense when you learn that the group funding these protests, The Climate Emergency Fund, is founded by oil heiress Aileen Getty
- TremendousJudge 4y agoThat's an interesting claim. Do you have a source where I can read more on this?
- stronglikedan 4y agohttps://www.google.com/search?q=The+Climate+Emergency+Fund%2C+is+founded+by+oil+heiress+Aileen+Getty&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS975US975&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=The+Climate+Emergency+Fund%2...
- yunohn 4y agoSo the reporting claims that she is an oil heiress who hasn’t worked in and appears to not like the oil industry. Makes sense that she’s funding them?
- barbazoo 4y agoEven if that's true, who cares? Shouldn't we judge an organization by its actions and not by who founded it?
- sosborn 4y agoHonest question - do you think actions such as will draw more people to act on behalf of the planet? Personally I think acts like this have the opposite effect. "Those environmentalists are loons" is probably a common response. If you want to discredit a movement, giving attention to most extreme people is a good way to do it.
- klyrs 4y agoLeading image caption > An attendee draws on a tablet as she copies the famous painting by Vermeer 'Girl with a Pearl Earring' using THQ's uDraw Game Tablet which works on PS3 and Xbox 360 at E3 in Los Angeles, California June 7, 2011. REUTERS/Fred Pouser/File Photo Is this product placement??? Surely there were other pictures that could have been used here... like... what I wanted to see is a person with their head glued to a painting. Not an ad. To the naysayers (tongue in cheek): this isn't just any old vandalism, this is an oil painting. The symbology checks out.
- jameshart 4y agoPhoto is from 2011. More plausible explanation: it's just the first file photo that comes up when you search for 'girl with a pearl earring' in reuters' news photo archive. Or it's what the AI language model subeditor chose because its temperature was set to 'cute' today. What bugs me most, though, is that the image has a Wiimote in it, but the caption only mentions PS3and Xbox compatibility.
- jankeymeulen 4y agosound like just the caption of the stock photo copy/pasted, they typically have these kind of very specific descriptions
- etrautmann 4y agoI need to pedantically point out that the oil in oil paints is derived from Linseed oil (and thus carbon negative, potentially locally sourced, organic, and shouldn't be protestable)
- 4y ago
- WFHRenaissance 4y agoThis is just performance art. Change my mind. Institutional critique has been the latest hotness for a while in the art world... this is just the next phase.
- rr808 4y agoGluing yourself to art - so hot right now.
- agilob 4y agoGluing yourself to expensive cars, so cold and dark when employees leave. https://www.autoblog.com/2022/10/21/climate-protesters-glue-themselves-to-porsche-museum-germany/ https://www.autoblog.com/2022/10/21/climate-protesters-glue-...
- rad_gruchalski 4y ago> a group called Scientist Rebellion took the sticky route when nine members glued their hands to the floor of the Porsche pavilion at Volkswagen's Autostadt museum in Wolfsburg Gluing yourself to the floor.
- MerelyMortal 4y agoI like to imagine at least one of the instances is insurance fraud, and the owners are finding a creative way to cash out. Much easier to convice someone to destroy it under the ploy of climate change than to steal it.
- hypertele-Xii 4y agoDestroy what, the glass protecting the painting? Title is clickbait, no paintings were actually harmed in any way.
- JPKab 4y agoYou're right. It's narcissistic, self-aggrandizing performance art for people who desperately seek attention and validation, without putting in effort or sustained, deliberate sacrifice.
- 323 4y ago
- lawn 4y agoIn Sweden activists recently blocked a larger road by gluing themselves to the road. The thing is, they also managed to block an ambulance that was rushing someone to the hospital. That person later died, and now they're all on trial for manslaughter. How in the world does this help stop climate change?
- TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
- amelius 4y ago> How in the world does this help stop climate change? This is a bit like saying: how in the world will advertising make people buy stuff on a massive scale?
- r3trohack3r 4y agoI’m using Kagi and can’t find any reference to this using “activists glue hand to road charged with manslaughter” Do you have a link handy?
- thraway54321 4y agoI doubt you will get a link and if you do it will not be from a reputable source. A group calling themselves "Återställ Våtmarker" did glue themselves to a road in Sweden and an ambulance was delayed for a few minutes, however nobody died. The people responsible are charged with sabotage, not manslaughter.
- jagaerglad 4y agoThey are not on trial for manslaughter but sabotage and disobedience to law enforcement, which twelve of them were convicted for⁰ 0: https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/stockholm/domen-mot-miljoaktivisterna https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/stockholm/domen-mot-miljoa...
- fourseventy 4y ago
- donatj 4y agoI feel like if anything this would just turn people against your cause.
- bell-cot 4y agoYes, in many cases. Assume that their real objective to is to quickly (1) score points for high-profile performative activism, and (2) vent their emotions.
- 1ris 4y agoIt's like telling people you are burning a puppy with napalm "for demonstrating the effect" at an anti-viet-nam-war-protests. First people get crazy angry at you, then they change their attitude about napalm.
- bell-cot 4y agoPerhaps. But convincing the military to replace napalm with a variety of other weapons - also designed to hellishly maim and kill people - is not exactly a huge moral victory, nor a big defeat for them. Vs. the big oil companies, culture-war conservatives, etc. might be considerably more invested in giving little ground on climate change.
- unglaublich 4y agoNot caring about the cause is effectively the same as being against it. So there is nothing to lose, much to win.
- renewiltord 4y agoConsidering the this seems like a straightforward outcome to you, what would you do if you desired that outcome?
- hotz 4y agoJust more eco warrior crazies by the day.
- holyBatmans 4y ago
- grej 4y agoThese people are uneducated anti-human Malthusians. In their world, all fossil fuels projects are bad, and all solar/wind projects are good. That is an uneducated and unscientific framing of the problem that will yield a terrible solution space. In their view, it's a great win to block a natural gas or shale oil project, even though the result of that is Germany chain-smoking lignite coal, and Germany and other European countries shutting down energy intensive fertilizer plants that help feed the world.
- CamperBob2 4y agoeven though the result of that is Germany chain-smoking lignite coal Or buying more fossil fuel from Russia. Things that make you go "Hmmm."
- throwawayoaky 4y agoI mean what do you want em to do, go all FFVII? Seems like the paintings were fine; very strange to see all the triggered in the comments. Guessing it's because young privileged hippies are an easy target for ire.. but idk it's a common trope: "stop protesting like that, you're making us look bad! You're playing the exact role the bad guys want you to play!" which is funny because those lines are right out of the bad guys' playbook. I'm not saying I know the right way to protest, just saying you're all kinda falling in line exactly the way you're expected to when you say that. And you could argue that fine art is a better target than say petrochemical facilities where you're just going to piss off people trying to make a living: fine art museums are strictly optional/luxury/rich spaces. To those supporting retributive justice against the protesters: weird. But if you're into that kind of thing can't you see the attempt to exact a kind of symbolic retributive justice here? Like, "we can't enjoy nature cause you're blowing it up, so you can't enjoy your precious art safe space."
- insanitybit 4y ago> "stop protesting like that, you're making us look bad! You're playing the exact role the bad guys want you to play!" Well, sorry, but sometimes that might be true. Like, IMO this isn't a case of "you're making us look bad", that would be giving it too much credit in terms of impact. I would say this is effectively neutral - the people who already understand climate change will go "yep, climate change is a huge crisis, this is dumb", and the people who don't will go "wow they're stupid and climate change is fake". Just because "the bad guys" like to delegitimize a form of protest doesn't make the form of protest any more legitimate. Yes, it's out of their playbook, but also this is dumb? > And you could argue that fine art is a better target than say petrochemical facilities where you're just going to piss off people trying to make a living: fine art museums are strictly optional/luxury/rich spaces. Two things. 1. No one is saying "go protest a petrochemical facility". 2. Art museums are not a luxury/ rich space. They're almost always free or very affordable, they're one of the few places I could go to with friends as a young teen in NYC because of that. School field trips to those museums were frequent. This idea that art is just for hanging on the wall during fancy galas is quite silly. Art in your home might be a luxury for the rich, that's totally different. > To those supporting retributive justice against the protesters: weird I'm very against that fwiw. At least to the degree people are talking about - it's pretty insane how people will say these people should be physically attacked over this or whatever. > "we can't enjoy nature cause you're blowing it up, so you can't enjoy your precious art safe space." This is the sort of thing children think of though. Like, you broke my toy so I'm breaking yours, and now we're both sitting here crying? IDK. I think a few things can be true. 1. Climate change is a global crisis and we need to address it 2. Getting more people talking about climate change is a good thing 3. This form of protest is stupid
- ck2 4y agoFor everyone calling these people crazy, you are talking about these stories for way more than a day now, I've seen them everywhere and I don't even read the news anymore. But I agree it's not going to lead to any policy changes so yeah I don't get it either.
- yamtaddle 4y agoMan. They keep this shit up and everything at museums is gonna be behind glass. One of the few remaining sorts of place that don't treat everyone like a probable criminal and lock everything up like a pawn shop in a bad part of town, these days.
- kylehotchkiss 4y agoThe security in the video is very passive about resolving an obvious vandalism in front of them, why don't they like... Check bags at the door for Cans of Soup? Try getting between the painting and the glue people? Try saying "Stop" with authority? What are these security people going to do when somebody walks up to the wall and just takes the painting with them?
- zasdffaa 4y ago
- ars 4y agoThey tried that at a Porsche museum, and the staff just turned off the lights and heat and left them there: https://www.autoblog.com/2022/10/21/climate-protesters-glue-themselves-to-porsche-museum-germany/ https://www.autoblog.com/2022/10/21/climate-protesters-glue-...
- lolpollo 4y ago
- nerdjon 4y agoI have conflicted feelings on this one. While I support the cause obviously, we seriously need to be more serious about climate change. I think they are taking the "any publicity is good publicity" in the wrong way. There are a lot of people very passionate about art (or at the very least find these pieces very beautiful and want to preserve history). I worry that things like this could do more harm than good. Especially given this is now the third? Most of the reporting I have seen on it focuses on the art itself and is it ok. But very little on the actual cause. If they make enough people mad about the art I worry it could undermine any progress on getting people to care about the climate and instead will just react with something like "well look at what these immature children are doing so the cause must not have any merit". We already have enough deniers out there, I worry that this is sending the wrong message.
- kingTug 4y agoA guy literally self immolated on the steps of the Supreme Court in the name of climate change and it was barely covered. Anyone who is getting riled up over these glue stunts has lost the plot. Don't look up!
- cwkoss 4y agoWhen did that happen?
- kingTug 4y agoAbout 6 months ago. It barely got one day of coverage from the media. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/24/us/politics/climate-activist-self-immolation-supreme-court.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/24/us/politics/climate-activ...
- drak0n1c 4y agoAs it should be. The media should not reward such delusional and dangerous self-harm. Coverage of such selfish perpetrators leads to copycats.
- nemo44x 4y agoSomeone should glue their hands to an activist.
- colechristensen 4y ago> An attendee draws on a tablet as she copies the famous painting by Vermeer 'Girl with a Pearl Earring' using THQ's uDraw Game Tablet which works on PS3 and Xbox 360 at E3 Uh, is this ad copy in the image caption?
- legitster 4y agoSay what you will about the original protestor, they clearly spawned an entire genre of performance art in their own right.
- kennywinker 4y agoA question for people who don’t think this is a good way to drive climate action: what are you doing? These actions are coming from a place of desperation, and they aren’t going away until actual action happens. Don’t like them? Do something about climate change.
- pelasaco 4y ago
- kennywinker 4y agoMock-destroying a piece of artwork is not terrorism by even the most wild stretch of the imagination. As for your link - that’s not what YOU are doing, that’s a plan agreed to by your government. It’s also nowhere near enough to actually halt climate change, if they even manage to hit that target. We collectively need to do much much more than outsource emissions to places outside europe.
- pelasaco 4y agowell, by defintion you are possible wrong. The definition of terrorism: the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims. The definition of violence isnt so easy, because its not just physical right? So to destroy the human heritage is in my opinion a violence. A violence against the european and world history. The most sad part on that is that the countries which are more cooperative and sensible to the cause are those suffering more. China, India, US won't change their plans because Hans and Melanie destroyed a Monet.
- uxcolumbo 4y agoI think most people would agree that violence includes force to harm someone. The paintings were behind protective glass and the demonstrators knew about it. I would say the way allow this system to destroy our biosphere and create a miserable future for future generations - that could be classed as terrorism.
- spoonjim 4y agoIf you’re trying to wrap your head around this: keep in mind that being really loved by a small group is more profitable than being broadly palatable to the entire world. The people who pull stunts like this get the most donations, have sex with the hottest activist chicks, and obtain the highest status in their in-group, something that you cannot get by writing position papers arguing “we should find a reasonable path forward to address climate change while keeping the oil rampdown slow and cautious.”
- unglaublich 4y agoWe tried the paper way for 3 decades. Nothing changed and politicians started flirting with anti-science scepticism instead. These people are trying a last few tricks to get the public to realize the severity of the situation. If they don’t succeed, at least they tried. The alternative is slipping quietly into an abyss.
- spoonjim 4y agoNo, that’s where you’re misunderstanding the situation. These people are trying a few tricks to achieve high status in their ingroup. My guess is that it’s working. They see this as Mission Accomplished which is why they are continuing to do it.
- LeoPanthera 4y agoTo quote Matthew Todd: "We just had another warning from the UN that we are essentially on course for the end of the world - it was hardly reported in the media, not heard anyone talking about it on the radio. Please do not moan when people block roads. This broken society deserves everything it gets."
- legitster 4y ago> "We just had another warning from the UN that we are essentially on course for the end of the world" The UN Report said no such thing. A world past 1.5 degrees is going to be very unrecognizable to us, but referring to it as "the end of the world" is complete hyperbole. > Please do not moan when people block roads. Consumer resistance to nuclear (spearheaded by environmental groups!) has been a larger contributor to climate change than even the automobile.
- inglor_cz 4y ago"This broken society deserves everything it gets." If this idea gets developed further, it may develop into outright terrorism one day.
- r0uv3n 4y agoMaybe the world needs that (Kim Stanley Robinson's Ministry for the future also more or less makes that point, and I think it's one of the better ideas in that book)
- rad_gruchalski 4y agoIt was on CNN some 5 hours ago.
- fleddr 4y agoI think the problem in today's world is that we're so overwhelmed with daily doom stories that we've normalized a persistent inner apathy, cynicism, fatalism. It translates into it being impossible to make people care about anything, no matter how existential. You could predict that without change, the world will be an unlivable hell hole and people will just accept that. It could directly jeopardize their children's future and still nobody cares. It's a kind of crisis fatigue that has made everybody numb. On top of that, volatility in living conditions forces people into short term self-interest. These "luxury long term beliefs" can wait. Easier said than done, but as humanity we need a better story for the future. One that is more optimistic, has tangible benefits, something to get behind and fight for. "Everything's is going to get worse" is not a narrative, people will instinctively reject it at any and all costs.
- legitster 4y agoStop giving money to any non-profit whose only goal is to "draw attention". They will use your money to "draw attention", and spend all of the intellectual capital debating the value of "drawing attention".
- puyoxyz 4y agoThese are getting more and more ridiculous each time and I love it
- delecti 4y agoThese protests are fantastic. They're keeping it in the public consciousness, doing effectively no damage since the art is all behind glass (beyond probably being incredibly annoying to the museum workers, who are likely ideologically aligned anyway), and doing so incredibly efficiently (for the cost of only a bottle of glue, a ride to the museum, and maybe bail). Point to any social issue and protests are divided into those that nobody pays attention to, and those which people disagree with the methods of. The world is at stake, better to be annoying than ignored. Can anyone remember any other climate protests recently? I couldn't when this happened, but I'm sure I'll remember the Van Gogh soup and this Pearl Earring incident longer than anybody remembered the guy who burned himself to death 6 months ago. https://www.denverpost.com/2022/04/24/wynn-bruce-climate-change-self-immolation/ https://www.denverpost.com/2022/04/24/wynn-bruce-climate-cha...
- gambiting 4y ago>> doing effectively no damage since the art is all behind glass There was an interview with the director of the london museum where other attacks took place recently and he said that what these people don't realize is that as a result of this action museum will need to spend few hundred thousand pounds in security over the next few years(hire few extra guards and pay their salaries). It's money which could be used so much better. The damage this does to the museum is huge, even if the painting isn't affected. >>They're keeping it in the public consciousness The only thing they are keeping in public conciousness is how incredible dicks they are being and how their organisation deserves literally zero support.
- malnourish 4y ago> The only thing they are keeping in public conciousness Do you have a source for this claim? I see plenty of people, in this post even, who approve of these methods.
- gambiting 4y agoYeah, and it's so weird to me. Who looks and this and thinks "good for them, go guys"??
- hypertele-Xii 4y agoGlue is made of oil or animal and isn't recyclable. The irony.
- Biganon 4y ago
- honksillet 4y agoPeople should understand that when uninterested or marginally interested people hear about these destructive stunts it make them NOT want to support their cause, whatever it is.
- unglaublich 4y agoExactly, there is nothing to lose! Those uninterested people would not give anything more about this cause than they did in the last decennia. Those people will simply continue messing around until it’s too late. That leaves those that will finally open their eyes. Pure gains.
- Lonestar1440 4y agoDon't you think that this discredits the environment movement in the eyes of at least a few "Uninterested"'s? Nothing's free in this world.
- Aleksdev 4y agoSome people have a lot of free time.
- LatteLazy 4y agoWhat's that quote about insanity being the only sane response to an insane world?
- ankaAr 4y agoI'm seeing how society is going to something like Idiocracy film every day and it is terrifying
- OhNoNotAgain_99 4y ago
- simonblack 4y agoThese vandals should be blinded in one eye for destroying cultural heritage works that belong to all of humanity. It's in the same league as the Taliban who blew up carved stone Buddhas that were hundreds of years old. Calling them 'activists' is a poor excuse for their actions. Let the punishments fit the crime. Deface something irreplaceable permanently, let them also be defaced permanently.
- jagraff 4y agoAs far as I know none of the activists doing this have damaged any art. It was all protected by glass.
- toss1 4y agoAgree if that is what they were doing. But it is not; the paintings are shielded by glass, and it appears that the "protesters" are specifically selecting artworks with such protection for their stunts. That said, while I feel very strongly about the need to fix anthropogenic climate change, I can hardly think of anything more stupid and counter-productive. I have no idea how this is supposed actually change anyone's mind or even get the attention of anyone to the issues of climate. Sure, it makes headlines, and there's the adage that any publicity is good publicity. But that's not true, e.g., while 'everyone knows that sex sells', actual research showed that if the adverts were too sexy, people did remember the advert just fine, but couldn't remember the product at all. Similarly here, it's a shocking crime and puts "climate" in the headline, but all anyone remembers is the awful behavior of these people, so it is a 99% distraction from their intended point.
- club_tropical 4y ago
- njdvndsjkvn 4y ago
- black_13 4y ago
- theflyingelvis 4y agoNow that’s using your head
- Flatcircle 4y ago“I didn’t agree with your political stance, but now that you’ve destroyed some priceless art, I’m starting to come around to your point of view.”
- toomanyrichies 4y agoI've seen commenters saying that the intent of this action is to get people talking about climate change. So far, all I've seen here is a discussion around the actions themselves. I'd be willing to bet that the same effect is observable outside of HN. To my knowledge, no one is saying "Hmmm, on the one hand this stunt inconveniences me, but on the other hand it also makes me wonder how much harm I'm doing to the planet." If anything, people are probably saying "I'm now going window-shopping for an SUV, because fuck these assholes." I'd be lying if I said that's not what I'm thinking. Climate change is real, and we need to defeat it. But you can't do that without winning hearts and minds, and you can't win hearts and minds by alienating the people whose actions you want to change. I understand the frustration these activists have, but they need to ask themselves whether their actions are doing more harm than good, given what we know about human nature and behavioral change. If they continue down this path, I have to question whether their real goal is to reverse climate change or gain notoriety for themselves.
- Mikeb85 4y agoCan't tell if these people simply have a mental illness or are being funded by pro-oil groups to discredit the environmental movement. Because vandalizing artwork made long ago really makes no sense in the context of climate change and it's definitely discrediting the movement.
- tomcam 4y agoI find these protests to be absolutely compelling. As soon as I understood the vital connection between Vermeer masterpieces and climate change, the scales were lifted from my eyes. I have turned my life around, sold all my possessions, reduced my carbon footprint to below zero (people actually give me carbon because I'm so zealous), sold my Porsche EVs, and am gluing myself to the statue of Lenin in Seattle at 4pm PST today. You'll be able to recognize me because I'll be the one with a nose ring and pink hair, wearing all black.
- jonnycomputer 4y agoNot climate change. TikTok.
- ALittleLight 4y agoThe true activism is the media that highlights this kind of thing. In college, we had a news story, that a friend had found, pinned to a wall. The story was about a man who had lit himself on fire, in protest of something, but people hadn't realized that he was doing it and his body was only discovered days later. We kept the story as a kind of dark joke, but it highlights, i think, that the effectiveness of a protest is related to how much attention it gets - not what you are doing or why. An extreme action, like self-immolation, that nobody pays attention to, is not nearly as influential as a mild action, like gluing yourself to a protective cover, that lots of people pay attention to. Someone glued themselves to a glass covering. Okay? Did I need to know this? Why is it in the news?
- aaroninsf 4y agoFor everyone who disagrees with this form of protest/activism/vandalism campaign: independent of all other factors, it is a successful exploitation of the outrage media chain in exactly the fashion its architects intended. By that measure at least it is a clear success. I am asserting that whatever else you or I may believe about the premises, we all now have repeatedly in our collective consciousness that "there is some set of young idealists/fools/vandals/you-name-its, who believe that climate change is enough of an existential threat that it warrants this sort of attack on collective cultural heritage." Whether you or I agree with the premise, or more debated, the strategy or its presumptive justifications, we are now in a world in which such actions are now a repeated knock knock knock on the door by the zealous demanding that we attend to climate change. That some of us may respond vindictively or merely become enraged is an acceptable cost—one I assume the architects of this campaign couldn't care less about. I expect this and similar campaigns will only become more active and more common as our various perils and passions continue to overwhelm the premises of civil discourse and proper channels.
- lovich 4y agoThese art protests have had the most clickbait titles I’ve seen in a while. The art never gets damaged because it’s behind a glass protective layer. “Activist glues his head to ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’ painting in The Hague” is an outright lie when the painting was never touched. What’s the hn protocol on when titles are not just misleading but presenting falsehoods as facts?
- StanislavPetrov 4y agoAlthough it is unpopular among some, I sincerely believe we should bring back corporal punishment ala Singapore. None of the people who damage and destroy priceless artwork, or block highways and cause thousands of people to suffer an unknown array of discomfort ranging from being late to their job to being unable to get the hospital, are imprisoned or face any significant punishment for their transgressions against the rest of us, and society at large. Indeed, these people are rewarded by their peers and those in their social group for their perceived acts of heroism. Society cannot function as long as people are able to willfully break the law, cause destruction and impact the lives of countless people with their crimes without having some sort of substantive punishment for doing so.
- austinjp 4y agoThe absurdity here is the powerlessness experienced by citizens in a democracy that fails to address existential threat. Reciprocal absurdism is to be expected.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y agoPowerlessness? How much power do you want? You are one person, in a democratic society, with a whole lot of other people with wants and needs. Compromise and get along. All I see is narcissism and entitlement. As if they think they're more important than me.
- austinjp 4y agoNobody's arguing for "more power" than you or anyone else. It's about feeling powerless to enact change in the face of existential threat. The wheels are falling off the car while the driver refuses to stop. For anyone believing they're in that situation, compromise is no longer a rational option.
- 1letterunixname 4y ago