In a powerful act of artistic protest, the art collective Fossil Free Culture NL (FFCNL) unleashed a ground-shaking soundscape in the basement of the Groninger Museum, sending a clear message: the cultural sector cannot remain complicit in the climate crisis. The artistic intervention is a direct call to the museum, and particularly its incoming directors, to sever all ties with GasTerra and Gasunie. FFCNL’s message is unambiguous: “By accepting this sponsorship, the museum is complicit in artwashing the industries that have caused this crisis.” This is the sixth action with which FFCNL targets the Groninger Museum.
FFCNL is convinced that artists and cultural institutions have a crucial role to play in countering the climate crisis. They pressure the Groninger Museum to do the same by calling out its economic ties with GasTerra and Gasunie. FFCNL spokesperson Maria Rietbergen stated, “Groningen is being rebranded as a future green hydrogen hub, but GasTerra and Gasunie, supposedly ‘leading this transition’, are in reality still deeply involved in gas production, and are fast tracking infrastructure to expand international imports. This much is clear: we cannot trust the fossil fuel industry to lead us to a green future.”
Meanwhile, the Groninger Museum, in its search for a new director, describes itself as in a ‘phase of transition’. FFCNL urges the museum to embrace that spirit of transition, shuck off its old skin, and emerge with a consciousness that the perilous state of our climate can no longer withstand the deadening hand of fossil influence. “We need to envision a Groninger Museum and a cultural sector that dare to take a truly critical and creative stance on the climate crisis, not one that artwashes the disastrous activities of the fossil fuel industry by accepting their sponsorship.”
Soundscape audio mix played in the lockers area
With the help of Extinction Rebellion Groningen, FFC-NL filled the museum with a rumbling sonic wave that reverberated through the building. The artistic intervention, titled “This Is an Image of Your World Collapsing,” references the first performance of FFC-NL in Groningen. In January 2022, the collective projected a giant crack on the Golden Hall’s façade, symbolizing the decades of damage caused by the gas industry in Groningen. The title is a play on the first line of a poem by Subcomandante Marcos, spokesperson of the Zapatistas, and underscores that although the Groningen gas tap has rightly been turned off, the harm continues elsewhere. “We stand in solidarity with the Zapatistas and all grassroots organisations resisting fossil extractivism worldwide,” Rietbergen says, “People are standing up, together, and not afraid of the rumblings of a genuine transition, the rooting out of these vested interests embedded in the museum’s very foundations We therefore call on the Groninger Museum to immediately cut all ties with Gasunie and GasTerra.”
FFCNL, true allies of the cultural sector, call for an end to oil and gas sponsorship of public cultural institutions in the Netherlands, and the terminal erosion of social license for the fossil fuel industry world wide. Following successful campaigns at the Van Gogh Museum, NEMO and the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, a collective of Groninger artists and activists formed to focus on the Groninger Museum.
Flyer distributed to the public during the soundscape artistic intervention at the Groninger Museum.