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| PLATFORM |
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"Artists should be at the centre of society keeping alive 'a utopian vision', because society will not improve if the people envisioning a better society are politicians".
Peter Sellars, theatre director, in ‘Artists, the cities and hard times’ in the New York Times 4.7.1992
"...it's serious, it's politics, it's economics, it's everything. And art in that instance becomes so meaningful both to the artist and to the consumers of that art."
Ken Saro-Wiwa, 1994 interview
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| Ways of Working
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Practices
social practice art, littoral art, performance and art, collaborations, dialogues, workshops, educators, ritual, activist performances, liveart, music, storytelling, celebrations, happening, combined arts, Local Distinctiveness, guided walks, publications
Places
urban sites, streets, workplaces, schools, industrial sites, pubs, protest sites, River Thames, London, Lower Thames Estuary, international, Germany, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Ireland, Canada, USA, Netherlands
Recent Themes
democracy, imagination, creativity, transnational corporations, global trade, corporate crime, social and environmental justice, fossil fuel use, renewable energy, ecological footprint, rivers, sense of place, community development
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| Vision
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PLATFORM : LONDON Promoting creative processes of democratic engagement to advance social and ecological justice
Envisioning futures with Communities of Place, Communities of Interest, Communities of the Dead and Unborn
Founded in 1983, Cambridge
Since 1986, London-based
Since 1983 PLATFORM has established itself as one of Europe's leading exponents of social practice art, combining the talents of artists, scientists, activists and economists to work across disciplines on issues of social and environmental justice. Its projects have been recognised for their innovation and imagination not just in Britain but internationally. Since 1997, it has made major presentations of its work in Germany, Yugoslavia, Canada, Bulgaria, Ireland, and the U.S.A.
In 1992 PLATFORM won the Time Out Award for Still Waters which proposed the recovery of the buried rivers of London. Growing out of the success of Still Waters, the DELTA project involved sculpture, music, performance and the installation of a micro-hydro turbine in London's River Wandle, and has in turn led to the creation of an innovative community urban renewable energy scheme based in south-west London - RENUE. RENUE has recently formed a partnership with SEA making SEA/RENUE London’s largest and most exciting such initiative.
Another strand of PLATFORM's work began in 1993 with HOMELAND, a commission from London International Festival of Theatre, which investigated Londoners' links to producers through international trade systems.
HOMELAND led into its most ambitious, multi-faceted project to date - 90% CRUDE - focussing on the culture and impact of Transnational Corporations and their dependency on oil, with particular reference to London and Londoners.
90% CRUDE (1996 - ) is a ten-year enquiry now comprising 11 strands. The performance events and campaigning research that form the current projects killing us softly and Unravelling the Carbon Web are acclaimed for raising critical questions regarding responsibility in the context of corporate impacts on human rights and climate change.
The work of PLATFORM has been featured in numerous books and articles, among these the recent essay ‘Imagination is the root of all change’ by Jane Rendell in Bridge: The Architecture of Connection, Lucy Blakstad, et.al. (eds), published by August/Birkhauser in 2002, and Phaidon’s 1998 publication Land and Environmental Art, edited by Jeffrey Kastner.
PLATFORM is the author of Some Common Concerns, Imagining the Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey Pipelines System published in 2002 by the Corner House, Kurdish Human Rights Project, Campagna per le Riforma della Banca Mondiale, CEE Bankwatch, and Friends of the Earth International; and of Degrees of Capture, The Oil and Gas Industry and UK Higher Education, published in 2003 by Corporate Watch and New Economics Foundation. PLATFORM members are on the editorial board for Corporate Watch and on the management committee for Black Environment Network and RENUE. In 2000, PLATFORM was part of a Working Group for the UK Government’s Review of Policies relating to the Historic Environment, leading to the publication The Power of Place.
In 1997, the Environment Foundation (UK) awarded PLATFORM’s 90% CRUDE project,Carbon Generations, with their Travelling Scholarship. In 2000, PLATFORM subsequently received one of Britain’s most prestigious environmental prizes, the Schumacher Award. In 2001, having been selected for a Bridge Program Award, the group was resident at the Headlands Center for the Arts, San Francisco.
“PLATFORM's combination of artistic and ecological sensibilities is truly leading edge, and their work has a national - indeed planetary - significance."
Robert Hewison, The Sunday Times
PLATFORM creates projects that produce dialogue around key ecological and democratic issues. Interactive participation is at the core of our practice - encouraging carefully identified social groups to find voice.
PLATFORM is a collective core of 5 individuals - a sculptor, a writer, researcher/campaigner, and an educationalist, supported by Systems and Development Directors. For projects we draw in individuals from other disciplines bringing the group to between 5 and 10 people.
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Productions and Projects
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And While London Burns
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2006 - 2007
And While London Burns is a thriller, opera and guided walk through the financial district of London.
The MP3 soundtrack, composed by Isa Suarez, evokes London’s financial history and its relation to the oil industries through the eyes of a financial worker concerned by the collapse of civilisations.
This requiem for a warming world stars Olivier Award nominee Douglas Hodge, Josephone Borradaile and Deborah Stoddart.
The opera is produced by PLATFORM and the libretto is written by John Jordan and James Marriott.
Robert Butler reviews And While London Burns here on ashdendirectory.org.uk.
The soundtrack is downloadable free on the internet at www.andwhilelondonburns.com and the tour starts from the Starbucks at 1, Poultry, EC1.
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killing us softly
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1999 - 2003
By shining a light into the world of the bureaucrats, planners and businessmen who contributed to Nazism and the Holocaust, killing us softly raises a critical question as to whether such an event can be viewed as a finished, historical episode or whether the psychology and behaviour that
enabled genocide to occur then is not only still present today, but exists quite specifically both in the institutional culture of transnationals corporations and in the mindset and activity of many individuals working for such corporations.
killing us softly, conceived by Dan Gretton (writer and artistic co-director of PLATFORM), was first made public through a series of eight performances between 1999 and 2003. These were, by the end, ten-hour events devised for a small interdisciplinary audience of nine people who were invited from fields such as industry, business, the arts, education, psychology, environmentalism, and campaigning. The performance itself is an intensive durational experience, combining lecture, poetry, autobiography, live music, slide and video. The audience sits in a semi-circular series of personal
darkened spaces, enabling them only to focus on the ideas and the images/sounds presented to them. Food, refreshment and warmth is important to provide a sense of safety and privacy.
After the performance (which for the ten-hour version, lasts seven hours), participants leave the performance space and walk to the ‘after-space’, a floating discussion, where a conversation begins. Here begins an ongoing dialogue about the issues in the work, as well as the form (if desired). Later, the participants also give written or one-to-one oral feedback.
The intention of this form is to create a highly acute environment where deep personal reflection is unavoidable, and where, as a result, new revelations and insights may occur, which can then be shared immediately if desired, or reserved for another time. The model differs from certain notions of performance's potential in making a political effect in that it is apologetically for a small strategically selected audience, concentrating on profound private impact and the ensuing ripple effect, rather than mass impact through mass access. Some months after the event, participants from a number of performances are invited to a group feedback day where reflection on the ramifications of the performance and the issues it tackles can be discussed in a more formal environment.The feedback and ideas generated from this work has been exceptionally engaged and provocatively useful.
On the recommendation of writer John Berger and others, killing us softly is now being written as a book which will combine the textures of the performance – personal narrative, factual research, analysis and prognosis. Considerable interest is being shown in this book and a leading literary agent has taken this forward to mainstream publishers.
killing us softly is one strand in 90% CRUDE, an ongoing investigation into and provocation around the culture and impact of transnational corporations.
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More About
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Other productions include:
Ignites 1 and 2
Vessel
RENUE (Renewable Energy in the Urban Environment)
PLATFORM is a founder Trustee of this pioneering community renewable energy initiative which comprises a solar-assisted school and further education college, an eco-landscaped school grounds, solar shops and a new-build self-sufficient community resource centre.
RENUE was conceived by a group of local organisations in Wandsworth and Merton in south-west London who came together as a result of the MERTON ISLAND and DELTA projects.
RENUE is now working in partnership with SEA to form London’s largest renewable energy initiative. For more information, please contact SEA/RENUE on 020 7582 9191.
Ways of Working
We see all our work as an overlap between activism, art and dialogue. We are not interested in oppositional art / or activism but more how critical activist practices relate and create useful tension with propositional and inspirational art. We don’t like activism if it is about ‘them-ing’ people: making others a problem. We want dialogue. We try to be invitational. We work by consensus, which TAKES TIME.
Within a ‘Beuysian’ concept of art, the whole is ‘performance’ but also ‘life.’ Work can seem to merge with everyday life when it is in the street, and can appear as everyday ‘invisible art’ strategies, or even ‘non-art’ simulating life.
Dialogue
We judge our work by the quality of dialogue. Dialogues create the projects. All our visual or ‘theatrical’ strategies are aiming at provoking dialogue - between us and ‘audience,’ between us and participants, us and collaborators, or NOT us - between other groups.
Collaborations
We collaborate in an interdisciplinary way.
The initial ideas have to come from the ‘core’ members, who then ‘let go’ once the collaborators are on board. When we have established the basic concept and a rough form, we try to locate project participants who would bring commitment to the issues plus specific skills.
Together we then evolve the concept and develop the form to a final stage. We do a lot of walking in the place, a lot of conceptual workshops, visits.
Practical Environmental Projects
Our projects aim to inspire or catalyse practical real changes.
Usually projects begin with a ‘listening’ phase - where propositions and assumptions are tried out. Then out of these experiences grow projects which make practical changes - for example, DELTA created a sculptural installation of a micro-hydro turbine in the River Wandle. The electricity from this lights a school.
Sense of Place
London is integral to our work in that we see it as a microcosm of many issues. Also by working ecologically we can examine the ‘organism’ of London in a variety of ways - geographical, social, cultural, economic.
Transformations
Our work seeks to transform participants' perceptions, responses and connections with nature through visual or sensory entry points into intimate dialogues or conversations. Trust and the desire for real relationships characterises our work.
Documentation
visual documentation: slides, photos, video, drawings, maps, charts, diagrams, objects (if appropriate).
written documentation: responses, feedback, brainstorms, evaluation
public feedback: through lectures, talks and workshops for students who wish to consult our archives
Funders
Include: Arts Council England, the Ashden Trust, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, Headley Trust, Network for Social Change, Rausing Trust, Roddick Foundation, Tedworth Trust, private individual donations
Commissions
London International Festival of Theatre 1993; Common Ground - Tree of Life Exhibition 1989
Awards
Time Out Performance 1992; Environment Foundation 1997; Schumacher Society Award 2000 Origin 1983
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