Man dressed as Viking arrested outside British Museum for carrying a cardboard shield,
but “flash-horde” protest against BP sponsorship goes ahead undeterred
Around 200 people – many dressed as Vikings – create mobile longship in Great Court of Museum in vocal performance protest
Today, hundreds of people invaded the British Museum to stage a Viking “flash-horde”, complete with a 15-metre longship. The performance was organized by theatrical protest group “BP or nor BP?” in protest at BP’s sponsorship of the Museum’s popular Vikings exhibition.
Around 200 people, many of them dressed as Vikings, gathered in the Great Court of the Museum at 3.15pm. Several actors were prevented from entering the building by security, but the vast majority of participants entered without a problem, despite bag searches by security leading to long queues outside the Museum.
One man, who was carrying a cardboard Viking shield painted with a large BP logo, had his shield confiscated by security guards outside the Museum. Several witnesses describe how he handed the shield over calmly, but was then approached by several police officers who told him he was breaching the peace. He asked, calmly, what exactly he was doing to breach the peace; he was simply standing quietly in a queue. Two officers then grabbed him, pushed him against a wall and arrested him without explaining exactly what offence he had allegedly committed. An observer asked the arresting officer to give his name, but the officer refused. One witness described the event as “clearly an unlawful arrest”. The man was held for a few hours and released without charge.
The group have held a large number of theatrical protests in the past, including six at the British Museum. None have ever resulted in arrests before.
Meanwhile, inside the building the flashmob was launched with a series of co-ordinated “Viking poses”, which saw the crowd wielding imaginary swords and shields against BP. Fifty members of the crowd then used pre-painted props and banners to erect a fabric longship, in order to give two BP-branded Vikings a “Viking funeral”.
The longship was decorated with a series of shields, graphically depicting BP’s misdeeds around the world: oil spills, tar sands extraction, climate change, human rights abuses, and blocking clean energy and environmental laws.
The longship and the rest of the funeral procession then moved around the Museum, singing and chanting, watched by hundreds of surprised museum-goers. Hundreds of leaflets were distributed to the public, and a solemn ceremony was held to “sink the ship” and commemorate all the damage done by BP around the world. The protesters then re-erected the ship outside in the courtyard and spent a long time singing, chanting and cheering about BP’s demise, in front of a large crowd on onlookers.
Sarah Horne, who took part in the flash-horde, said: “Despite over-the-top security and an outrageous and unnecessary arrest, we sent a clear message to the British Museum today: we will not sit by and let our cultural institutions be used as a cheap PR tool by destructive companies. BP provides less than 1% of the annual income of the British Museum, and yet gets enormous branding and public relations benefits in return, allowing it to hide its real activities around the world.”
She continued: “We’re shocked about the extraordinary and unprecedented arrest – this has never happened at one of our performances before. Are the Museum so scared of people hearing the truth about their sponsor that they’re willing to condone these kinds of police tactics?”
The flash-horde had been advertised in advance with the public invited to take part. Many people heeded this call, and a large proportion of those who attended the protest had never been involved with the BP or BP? group before.
This was the latest in a series of performance protests by the group, who have also made a spoof Viking film based on the exhibition’s promotional trailer, launched a petition against the sponsorship deal and invaded the Museum itself three other times whilst dressed as Vikings and Norse gods. The first of these performance, on April 27th, was the subject of in-depth coverage by Channel 4 News.
The British Museum continues to defend its controversial sponsorship relationship with BP, despite the Deepwater Horizon drilling disaster, the company’s decision to start extracting highly polluting and destructive tar sands oil in Canada, its enormous contribution towards climate change, and its recently-announced partnership with Russian state-owned oil company Rosneft in order to exploit the hazardous and vulnerable Arctic.
BP provides less than 1% of the British Museum’s annual income. The company receives a large amount of high-profile branding in return, as well as the use of the largely publicly-funded Museum for its corporate events.
Pressure on cultural institutions to consider the ethics of their sponsorship deals is currently high. The veteran human rights campaigner Archbishop Desmond Tutu recently said “People of conscience need to break their ties with corporations financing the injustice of climate change”. Following months of pressure, the Southbank Centre suddenly ended its long-running sponsorship deal with Shell earlier this year. Pressure is also growing on the Tate over its refusal to reveal details of its BP funding, and last month, a new group called “BP Out Of Opera” (BOOO) performed a surprise flashmob dance against BP sponsorship at a Royal Opera House screening in Trafalgar Square. Meanwhile, campaigners from the Reclaim Shakespeare Company believe that their onstage protests contributed to the recent downgrading of BP’s sponsorship of the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Help remove the taint of destruction from our national treasures – join us as we tell the British Museum to end its sponsorship deal with BP!
You can see a film of our recent surprise Viking performance at the British Museum here.
And here’s a film of the public flash-mob performance we held at the BP-sponsored Shakespeare exhibition at the British Museum in 2012.
Much disruption was caused to visitors, many of whom were foreign. The protest itself was silly, noisy, infantile, and largely incoherent and incomprehensible. Most of all it was deeply embarrassing.
Heaven knows what impression it will have on those who came to visit one of the greatest cultural centres in the world.
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