The emotional outreach of climate direct actions: alterations of art and space. Stopp Oljeletinga's alliance building strategy from an activist geographic approach

Abstract

Stopp Oljeletinga (SOL), Norwegian climate activist campaign, has in late 2022 performed two closely timed protest actions which saw the momentary alteration of Edward Munch’ “Scream” and Gustav Vigeland’s “Monolittplatået” as forms of civil disobedience direct actions. This study has been concerned with understanding and explaining the effect that these direct actions have on art student from Bergen’s Art Academy (KMD) as well as on alliance building efforts by part of the activists to reach out to their possible allies.

This project’s goal was to produce critical knowledge in close critical collaboration and co-production of research goals with the climate activists in question, while pursuing the enhancement of this group’s success in their political struggle. Such an activist methodology was performed through a human geographic qualitative approach. The qualitative database of this research was composed by data gathered through a series of semi-structured interviews with both activists from SOL and art students from KMD, as well as from video material provided by the activists. The thematic analysis of this database has been filtered through a theoretical framework composed by merging the concepts “eventful protest”, “amplified public space” and a human geographic relational understanding of place.

This research project argues that the temporary alteration of public art as a method of protest has a positive effect on alliance building between climate activists and art students in Norway. SOL actively seeks to trigger an emotional response in a specific target audience, so called possible allies and “green people”. The activists bond with their compatible others through the alteration of art and manipulation of place, and enact the amplification of emotions through space, thanks to the eventfulness of their direct actions. This thesis argues that SOL’s alliance building process is functioning, on the base that art students from KMD probed by this project show to fit the “green people” identikit of the activists and display proof that the SOL’s emotional amplification has in fact reached them, providing conflictive but constructive feelings about their own positionality and the issue of climate change and developing more supportive stances towards the activist group and their actions.