Direct Action Theatre

Munch museum Oslo, 15.11. 2021

Culture washing is one of many ways how oil companies are attempting to look friendly.

Norwegian cultural institutions can do better.

Serve and protect culture.

Serve and protect future.

Serve and protect nature.

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On the night of 15 November, the facade of the new Munch Museum alternately sported the words “Munch has blood on his hands” and “Munch is turning in his grave.” The projection – which was certainly not commissioned by the museum itself, but part of an action by the artist group Direct Action Theatre (D.A.T.) in collaboration with the relatively new gallery Høg Standard – also showed the logos of the three oil companies Idemitsu, Aker BP, and Equinor. There was no doubt, then, that the protest was aimed at the museum’s links to the oil industry. The action was part of D.A.T.’s ongoing series ‘Serve and Protect’, and later that evening the group also carried out a performance in front of the Parliament building, where the four men clad in riot police uniforms stood shoulder to shoulder and brushed their teeth with extreme thoroughness. Behind them, the façade of the Parliament building featured a huge projection of Prime Minister and Labour Party leader Jonas Gahr Støre accompanied by the headline: “Forgive them not / They know what they do” and the subheading “I have looked my two grandchildren in the eyes / and said that I will do everything I can.” The latter is a quote from Støre, who promised climate action as he was about to take over as prime minister. The preamble to the performance stated that “Jonas must wash his mouth,” and the fierce brushing of teeth was probably intended as a demonstration of how he might go about that. This part of the action was presented as a response to the Støre administration’s unwillingness to take decisive action against climate change during the recently concluded United Nations climate change conference COP26 in Glasgow. In a press release, Høg Standard refers to the 2021 report ‘The Fossil Fuelled 5. Comparing rhetoric with reality on fossil fuels and climate change’ by Freddie Daley (University of Sussex) and the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative. In the report, Norway is highlighted alongside the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, and Australia as a prosperous country with a high degree of responsibility for the climate crisis – and one of the countries in the world with the largest gap between rhetoric and practice. Even as these five countries officially promote the 1.5-degree climate goal, they are pursuing policies that run counter to this goal. The report points out that in 2021 alone, the Norwegian government issued more than sixty licenses for fossil fuel production and offered eighty-four new exploration zones on the Norwegian continental shelf including the North Sea, the Barents Sea, and the Norwegian Sea.