COP 21 Questionnaire: Thom O’Sullivan and Katherine Ball

Thom O’Sullivan and Katherine Ball (of Tools for Action)
May 27, 2016

1. How were you involved in art activism during the COP21?

KB: As a collective group of artists, we received a Global Green Grant, which funded our involvement in Paris during the COP21. In collaboration with/as Tools For Action, our intention was to facilitate workshops and skill shares, where attendees could learn how to build inflatable sculptures. The inflatable sculptures were then to be used in various actions and demonstrations in so called “soft blockades.”

As a group, we established a public fabrication studio at a social center called Jardin d’Alice in Montreuil, Paris (a suburb located on the outer ring of Paris). Jardin d’Alice opened their doors to members of the public, and housed many traveling activists. In their downstairs warehouse space, Jardin D’Alice hosted the main art build space for the people’s mobilization surrounding COP21. (Upstairs Jardin d’Alice had converted an office building into a housing collective of 25 people, complete with a kitchen, rooftop dining table, bedrooms, bathrooms, shared computer room, library and play area for kids). There were several different groups that shared the downstairs warehouse space including Tools for Action, 350.org (art production led by David Solnit with help from Mona Carron, among others), a collective of French artists hired by AVAAZ to make art for the march at the start of the COP, Climate Justice Alliance / Our Power Campaign, Indigenous environmental artists from the USA and Canada, Alternatiba, and many other activists groups that came in during the course of November and December. Here people had the opportunity to participate in various creative acts, such as banner painting and inflatable making, which would contribute to the efforts in Paris.

There was also a people’s kitchen, free shop, info center (including legal information), hackspace, bar, a private meeting room (for affinity group and action meetings) and public speaker events, primarily organized by Jardin D’Alice (including one on the geopolitics of oil that had a packed house). There was no central heating in the space and we were very lucky it was not a cold December. In general, the Jardin d’Alice space had a very positive vibe that passed between the many people that came to visit and participate in collectively making the artwork. At minimum there would be 20 people making art in the space at one time, at maximum probably around 400. The climate art build space opened at the beginning of November, and ended shortly after December 12th. (Jardin d’Alice has since resumed running the warehouse space, and uses it for public events, performances, and concerts. They are highly involved with the climate movement, so they are continuing as a movement building space).

fap11-lrA major focus in the art-building space was creating a positive social environment, so people could get involved in direct action in a genuine way. Tables and chairs were built, lots of tea and coffee was made, and a small kitchenette was created, from which many people were fed. On the walls surrounding our section of the space, we hung large sheets of silver foil (the same foil we use for making inflatables), giving a visual effect that our corner of the warehouse was wallpapered with a shiny, reflective, pulsating, material energy. That was the context from within which Tools for Action facilitated the public fabrication of inflatable barricades for actions during the UN Climate Summit (COP21).

2. What did you or your organization/collective accomplish during COP21? And how do you measure the success of that accomplishment?

KB and TOS: The main visual accomplishment was the fabrication of 40+ huge inflatable cubes, used to build blockades during the demonstrations. The giant silver inflatable cobblestones were a major symbolic spectacle, and drew attention when released onto the streets of Paris during the D12 demonstration and other actions. However they were more than walls, as when thrown into the air they instantly turned the street into a playground, involving all in their area.

fap14-lrBehind the scenes, as it were, we felt like we had a very positive presence in the social center, a main focus being that people felt welcome. Not only could they participate, but they could also relax in our fabrication space, meet other activists, form new relationships, and share essential conversations about climate change. Undoubtedly, there were many radical friendships formed and deepened whilst building inflatables. The fact that hundreds of volunteers, ranging across all ages, and from many diverse countries, speaking different languages, assisted in the creation of the cobblestones, felt like a huge success. When the cobblestones were unleashed on December 12, the response we had was overwhelmingly positive, and people on the streets were immensely proud and happy to see these creations in action.

fap15-lrWhen Tools for Action won a Climate Games Award for the cobblestones, there was an immense outburst of celebration from the crowd. The award was not just for its core organizers, but for all the people who helped fabricate and choreograph the cubes, and the many behind-the-scenes organizers in the climate movement who supported the project in so many ways.

3. How did you respond to the limitations put in place by the French government during the “state of emergency”? How did these limitations affect the actions you took part in or planned?

KB and TOS: Obviously after the attacks in Paris in December, our plans drastically changed. One of our initial tactical goals was to take the inflatable cobblestones and surround La Bourget, the conference center of COP21. After the attacks, there were major discussions as to whether we should continue with what we were doing, especially as the authorities were cracking down on activists. People were coming to our public fabrication studio and telling us that we should stop making the inflatables because they looked too dangerous, or that we should put a clear plastic window in the sides of the cubes so police could look in and know that they didn’t contain a bomb.

We took people’s feedback into account, but in the end a decision was made to proceed with the building project and do it in a way that was deemed safe for us and sensitive to the situation. Many long meetings took place to decide the further movements of the cobblestones. The Tools for Action core team held meetings, but there were also large brainstorming and strategizing meetings called by other organizers that brought together many people for intragroup discussion (one meeting we participated in after the emergency declaration banning protests had over 50 people, gathered within an hour’s notice).

stoploggingcarbonsinks1-Portland

One outcome of these discussions was that the distribution of the inflatables was decentralized. Six inflatables were sent to New York, and six to Portland, Oregon, to be used in solidarity actions. There was also a group fabricating cubes independently in London for a series of actions around the British capital. The action in New York was a blockade of a proposed natural gas pipeline. The action in Portland blockaded the US Forestry Headquarters in Oregon to stop the logging of the Mt. Hood National Forest, the largest carbon sink in the USA.

fap4-lrFor Tools for Action, our main tactical response was to bring the cubes to an unauthorized demonstration on Paris’ Avenue de Grande on December 12 with over 10,000 people. We collaborated with 70 activists to bring 30 cobblestones to block the street for the D12 Redlines demonstration. The cubes helped to break the tension surrounding the situation, with the silver inflatables being used throughout the action like giant beach balls and transforming the demonstration into a festival-like atmosphere.

4. What was the goal of art activism during the COP21? What role might it play in the broader context of the growing prevalence of government-imposed “states of emergency” during key times of convergence?

KB and TOS: Some of the goals of Tools for Action’s art activism during COP21 were:
– To speak truth to power
– Even though our actions may not have a direct result on the signed Paris agreement, someone has to be there to say “NO”. No to bad deals that commit us to a fate of climate collapse.
– We were also there to say “YES”. Yes to collective action, yes being a part of nature and defending ourselves! Yes to bringing people together, bridging new relationships and forming radical friendships!
– To use the cubes as a spectacle that draws media attention to the issue of climate justice.
– To create dilemmas for the police and politicians, bringing to the surface the contradiction between what is (or is not) being done to stop climate change and what needs to be done, and the reasons for that disconnect.
– To suspend disbelief and provide the necessary social stimulants for people to dream about what might be possible.

During the “what should we do now that there is a State of Emergency protest ban” discussions, David Solnit recalled his experience with the anti-war movement during 9-11. He said that the movement was going strong, then 9-11 happened, and the movement decided to pause while people grieved and the dust settled. David said that that pause drastically weakened the movement. He encouraged us to keep working, to keep going to forward with what we were planning, to try to respond and adjust, but not to stop. The inflatables take so many hours to create, we needed to keep making the inflatables so we could have the choice of whether or not to use them. If we stopped making the inflatables and the situation changed and protest was allowed, then we would be stuck because we wouldn’t have any inflatables to use. So we kept going, and in the end it was clear that that was the right decision.

Many people attending COP21 had the desire to be involved in whatever way they could. Creative projects give people an instant feeling of contributing to the movement, and also provide the opportunity to share stories, to meet other activists, and form radical friendships and alliances. In this way, the climate justice movement can become a meshwork rather than a network.

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5. What alliances did you build? And were any across divisions of race, class, and gender? Did you form alliances with NGOs, Indigenous activists, or other organizations beyond your own?

We now have a stronger network of friends and activists around the world. We met a vast numbers of activists from many different places, who all came together to fight for climate justice. We formed some key relationships with our D12 collaborative choreographers from People and Planet, Reclaim Power, and the French climate justice student movement. We also got to meet and work side by side with Climate Justice Alliance / Our Power Campaign and indigenous art activists. We hope to expand upon these relationships and work together with these groups in the future.

6. What are the lessons of COP21, and where do we go from here?

KB and TOS:
— ‘Never trust a COP’, a fantastic slogan seen on a banner at D12 Redlines.
— If a State of Emergency is called, continue working. Try to respond and adapt without stopping.
— One lesson of Paris was the importance of centralized and decentralized actions. When protest was banned in Paris, we decentralized by sending inflatable barricade kits to climate activist groups around the world. This tactic addresses the fact that climate change is a global problem that needs site-specific direct responses. These decentralized interventions, coupled with the D12 action in Paris, represent a strong strategy for the climate movement, realizing impacts at multiple levels in multiple places at the same time.

From here, there will be more demonstrations, and so there will be more inflatable cobblestones, more banners, more radical actions. There will be more governmental decisions made that will affect us and our world, so we as a collective of humans, artists, activists, people, will need to keep dreaming up inventive and creative ways of protest that give us voice and agency in the decisions that affect our lives.

In May 2016, there will be an inflatable barricade action at Ende Gelände in Germany to stop lignite coal mining in the Lusatia region (near Berlin). In June, there will also be an inflatable barricade action to block a Neo-Nazi rally in the town of Dortmund, Germany. Funding permitting, inflatables will also be a part of the No Borders camp in Thessaloniki, Greece in July.

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Below are 3 texts that Tools for Action, and Katherine Ball and Thom O’Sullivan, wrote about what we did in Paris (The first text is from the fold out publication we produced whilst we were in Paris, “Fabriqué à Paris”; the second and third are formulated for a grant report back form)

#1
Mylar insulation foil, double stick carpet tape, and velcro – these are the materials of contemporary barricades. In Paris, the city where the concept of a barricade originated, Tools for Action has invented a new type of inflatable blockade in preparation for protest at the 2015 UN Climate Summit. The inflatable barricades were made in Paris and sent to different locations around the world.

The word “barricade” comes from the French word “barrique” meaning “barrel”. The first barricades were hollow barrels rolled out into 16th century streets, filled with stones and secured with metal chains. Barricades were also constructed in Paris during 1944, used for the liberation of France.

barricade_paris_2ndworldwarIn November 2015, Tools for Action, a Berlin-based arts collective, developed a barricade with a similar construction principle. Modular lightweight sculptures made of insulation foil are filled with air and attached together with velcro. A set of cube-shaped units (like cobblestones) can be quickly inflated at different locations, forming a line that hinders sight and movement when brought together en masse. They can be more than walls though – when people throw the individual cobblestones into the air, they turn a street into a spontaneous playground. In past interventions with inflatable cubes, some cubes landed on the police line during the 2012 May Day demonstrations in Berlin. The heavily armed police threw the cubes back, unwillingly entering into an absurd game of catch.

“Red lines are not for crossing”
A red line is drawn across these inflatable barricades, symbolizing the demands drawn up by the Coalition 21, a network of 130 civil-society organisations. The red line entails a drastic and immediate reduction of greenhouse emissions and a recognition of the historical responsibility of industrialized countries. It also demands the installation of a monitoring system with the authority to penalize transgressors, and sufficient financing from more economically developed countries for a global transition to clean energy, including compensation for the suffering and loss that climate change has caused.

The original idea was to form an inflatable blockade in front of the UN conference in order to strike a mark for the demands of the Coalition 21. But when terrorist attacks struck Paris on November 13th, plans changed.

A state of emergency was declared and the right to protest suspended for three months, spanning the duration of the UN summit. These measures banned a march for climate justice that had anticipated the arrival of more than 200,000 people from all over the world, and allowed the government to put many political organizers under house arrest.

In the aftermath of the attacks, Tools for Action sent inflatable barricade kits to climate activist groups around the world, in places such as New York, Portland and London. This tactic addresses the fact that climate change is a global problem that needs a site-specific direct response.

The barricades were assembled by hundreds of helping hands, connecting French farmers opposing a destructive airport, locals from the Montreuil neighbourhood in Paris and solar panel engineers from California. The construction studio in the social center Jardin D’Alice was a meeting point for discussions, skill sharing, and imagining how this simple tool can be used.

Working with inflatable objects over the years, we still find ourselves intrigued by the moment when a small bundle expands to large proportions, floating in the air and defying the laws of gravity. With the inflatable barricade we want to provide a concrete tool for direct action and to create space for wonder and enjoyment. This instruction manual will help you to get started. For more information, contact us!

Yours,
Tools for Action
Paris, 8.12.2015

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#2
As part of the Climate Games, this project brought together a team of young artists to make artwork for public demonstrations and actions during the UN Climate Summit. The team was selected by the grant coordinators, and operated under the moniker “Tools for Action” and called their project “Fabriqué à Paris.”

Working collaboratively with local and international youth and diverse activists who mobilized in Paris for the UN Summit, they made inflatable barricades. A thirty foot long inflatable barricade was used to help block the street during the Redlines Action on December 12. For the action, 10,000 people peacefully assembled as an act of civil disobedience on the Avenue des Grandes Armées leading up to the Arc de Triomphe. During the action, Tools for Action collaborated with sixty youth activists to choreograph the inflatable barricade. The youth were from a Paris-based climate group associated with La Sorbonne and UK climate groups People and Planet and Reclaim Power. The youth set up the barricade at the front of the demonstration to protect peaceful protesters from riot police. When tensions rose, the youth “exploded” the barricade by throwing it up in the air. As the barricade broke apart mid flight into individual inflated cobblestones, people in the crowd pushed the cobblestones upward like a spontaneous game of giant volleyball. This helped transform the protest into a celebratory event, an explosion of endorphins and suspended disbelief that other worlds are possible. In this way, the inflatables helped create crowd cohesion. When foghorns blew to mark the ending of the Redlines Action one hour later, the youth group turned the standing crowd into a spontaneous march, by bumping the inflatable cobblestones around the riot police and into a network of streets leading all the way to the Eiffel Tower.

Other inflatable barricades were mailed to international locations, including New York, Portland, and London, where climate justice activist groups performed solidarity actions, blocking sites of extraction of fracked gas and logging. The youth group in London fabricated their own inflatable barricades with materials Tools for Action sent to them and via a workshop they broadcast over skype.

In Paris, all of the inflatable barricades were fabricated with people who came to mobilize at the UN Summit. There were special fabrication workshops held for youth at the Conference of Youth. Tools for Action also set up a public fabrication studio where 250 people participated in making the inflatables over the course of two months. This public fabrication studio was located at the main art build space for the mobilization, Jardin D’Alice, a housing collective and warehouse space in the Montreuil suburb of Paris. The public fabrication studio became not just a place to build inflatables, but also a social space where people could gather, meet, get to know each other, learn about climate change, and also enjoy food together. The social petri dish evolved into a space for cross pollinating ideas and sparking collaborations on actions. Over a warm bowl of soup or a hot cup of coffee, people brainstormed ideas, designs and strategies. They formed new alliances in the climate justice network that continues to stretch beyond the Paris UN Climate Summit and supports a vibrant climate movement.

Several videos were made and posted online to help mobilize people for the Redlines Action and to communicate what happened during the action. The “Fabriqué À Paris” project was also made shareable and documented on an ongoing blog (toolsforaction.net). Tools for Action also produced a publication documenting the inflatable barricade project. 2,000 copies were printed and distributed at the UN Summit and continue to be distributed. The publication contains a text about the project, an instruction manual, and a poster. It is available for free via a pdf download on the Tools for Action blog. They also created an instruction manual and an instruction video so people can learn how to make their own inflatable barricade and put it into action.

From the beginning, the long-term goal was that this nucleus of artists would expand and form an ongoing collective of climate art-activists that would continue collaborating into Spring 2016 and beyond. As part of the transdisciplinary, international network catalysed by the Climate Games, this ongoing collective would fuse art and popular education to create global political engagement on climate change. (written by Thom O’Sullivan and Katherine Ball)

#3
Months before COP21, Tools for Action held many group discussions regarding what we wished to accomplish and what our roles and involvement would be in Paris. The initial team Tools For Action team included Katherine Ball and Artúr van Balen who had participated in previous UN climate summits in Copenhagen, Mexico, Warsaw and New York. Fellow artist Thom O’Sullivan also joined, and this was to be his first climate summit. Further members of the team included filmmaker and documentor Jakub Simcik, Nick O’Sullivan, Tomas Espinosa and publication co-designer Dominik Krauss.

A small but dedicated team, Tools For Action put in place a strategic plan prior to arrival, and over the course of two months, activated this plan, with the help of hundreds of fellow activists.

Eventually the decision was made to utilise the existing expertise of some of the group in the form of the inflatable sculptures. This model already had a proven track record (Mexico, New York, Barcelona), yet was still considered to be fresh and innovative in the activism and protest movements. With this in mind, our intention was to facilitate workshops and skill swaps where we could offer participants the chance to learn how to build inflatable sculptures, use their creations in live demonstrations, and take away new ideas of alternative and creative protest.

Paris is the city where the barricade originated, the term barricade deriving from the French barrique meaning barrel. The first of these were barrels rolled out into 16th century streets, filled with cobblestones and secured with metal chains.

During COP21, a new type of inflatable blockade was invented, a playful take on this historic method. Individual inflatable cubes (symbolically shaped like huge cobblestones) could be discretely transported in bags, and in less than two minutes, inflated and attached together forming a makeshift barrier that hinders sight and movement. However, they can be more than just walls— when the cubes are thrown into the air, the street is transformed into a spontaneous playground.

During the UN Climate Summit, the inflatable cubes not only helped bring people together, but also broke some of the tension created by the shocking events. After a wave a terrorist attacks struck Paris, a state of emergency was declared. The right to gather and politically demonstrate was suspended for three months, conveniently spanning the duration of the UN Summit.

On December 12, 2015, as part of an act of civil disobedience by over 10,000 people, the inflatable barricades were mobilized to block the road leading up the Arc de Triomphe. Dubbed Red Lines are Not for Crossing, this act called attention to the need for drastic and immediate reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and a recognition of the historical responsibilities of industrialised countries and corporations.

The inflatable cobblestones were fabricated by hundreds of activists mobilising for the climate summit, and some were sent to different locations around the world. Six were sent by hand made shipping crate to Portland, Oregon, to be used in a protest action at the Department of Forestry headquarters. Another six were transported in a handmade translucent bag with silver trimmings, to New York, where they were used to protest the building of a gas pipeline and for an action in Times Square.

The fabrication workshop where the cobblestones were put together in the social centre Jardin d’Alice (in Montreuil) became a gathering space for discussion, skill sharing, people’s kitchens, and imagining how these simple tools can be used to draw attention to critical causes. The social center was also a housing collective, and as a result of this, there was already a strong sense of community amongst those inhabiting the space. This sense of community was shared amongst those that visited Jardin d’Alice, a feeling that was so necessary at a time of hypertension.

As an extension of the project, an instruction manual titled Fabriqué À Paris was produced to spread ideas for alternative forms of protest. The publication features a brief history, a how to guide, and a poster sized image of an action undertaken during the time in Paris. Fabriqué À Paris was created during our residency, 5000 copies were printed, folded by hand and then distribution began immediately.

All members and extensions of Tools For Action stayed in a small apartment in Paris, in the 11th arrondissement, where we cooked, cleaned and existed in the space together. The Global Green Grant was divided up appropriately into various sections; housing, transport, food, stipend and materials. The apartment was a 45 minute bike ride from the workspace in Jardin d’Alice, and exceptional seasonal weather meant that there was only a few days when we actually got wet on our commute. For us as a collective artist group, it was very important for us to share a living space, as this established a strong sense of comradery and was a small glimpse into collective artistic living. (written by Thom O’Sullivan)

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Thomas O’Sullivan (UK) and Katherine Ball (USA) collaborate on works that concern the infrastructure of everyday life. During the Container City residency program they lived in a house without running water and constructed sinks that used plants and mushrooms to filter water. Conducting field research in Denmark, they visited communities creating their own infrastructure: wind power cooperatives, neighborhood­owned district heating systems, and local food distribution networks. Out of this research, they produced the book Utopia Walks Away: Oral Histories of Infrastructure in Copenhagen, Denmark. Then there are the ongoing projects of daily life: baking bread, grinding peanut butter by hand, making salt from evaporating seawater, all bound in the process of living.

Part of their continued working process examines the basic systems and components used in our daily lives, and establishes whether we can fabricate them ourselves. A push and pull of infrastructure as malleable material, not fixed monolith. Their works are part of the collection at the Museum of Modern Art, the Herbarium at the Bell Natural History Museum, and the National Security Agency Archive. They have been recipients of the Fulbright Fellowship and Danish International Visiting Artist Award, and Observer Delegates at the United Nations Climate Change Summit COP16.