Visitors at Louvre look on in shock as Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece attacked by environmental protesters
Two environmental protesters have hurled soup on to the Mona Lisa at the Louvre in Paris, calling for “healthy and sustainable food”. The painting, which was behind bulletproof glass, appeared to be undamaged.
Gallery visitors looked on in shock as two women threw the yellow-coloured soup before climbing under the barrier in front of the work and flanking the splattered painting, their right hands held up in a salute-like gesture.
One of the two activists removed her jacket to reveal a white T-shirt bearing the slogan of the environmental activist group Riposte Alimentaire (Food Response) in black letters.
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I really hate the destruction or attempted destruction of art in order to bring awareness to a social cause. I get in this case the painting is highly protected,
but there have been plenty of other instances where this has happened to other art where that wasn’t the case.Not only are you a self-entitled piece of shit for tying to destroy something that is on display for public enjoyment, but you are virtually guaranteeing that anybody who didn’t already agree with you won’t take you seriously because you are acting like such a piece of shit.
Seriously, there are a lot of legitimate reasons for civil disobedience and public protest. This is not the way to go about that, and if you think it is then fuck you in particular.
Edit: I didn’t think this was going to be such a divisive issue. After some further research I am retracting my earlier statement about other art being damaged in these protests because I don’t see much evidence for that after all. It seems like these protestors are often targeting art they know will get maximum media exposure without causing lasting damage.
HOWEVER, I still think this type of action is counterproductive when you are trying to, hopefully, win over people that either do not support or are not aware of your message. Collective action is an effective means to make change in society. I am, again, not disputing that. I just think that if the goal is to gain broad support for your cause you need to choose targets that are more representative of that cause; rather than art, which does get media exposure, but which ultimately serves to obfuscate or overshadow the true purpose behind your protest. Being savvy about your target audience goes further and deeper into the social zeitgeist than simply getting headlines for being angsty.
There hasn’t really been many instance of art getting destroyed. This is legitimate imo, it gets in the news and no real damage is done. Personally, I think it’s not far enough.
If oil companies get their way, whole countries are going to be destroyed, not just paintings.
It’s also plain to see that any form of protest against oil companies is quickly villainized by the media. There’s an agenda at play when you can’t march, stand in traffic or just throw soup at glass.
If oil companies get their way, whole countries are going to be destroyed, not just paintings.
Relevance?
It’s also plain to see that any form of protest against oil companies is quickly villainized by the media.
LOL what? Maybe if by “the media” you mean Fox News?
Wasn’t even about climate change.
To think sustainability in agriculture is not about climate change is rather a narrow definition of climate change.
They were supposedly upset about food security. Yeah this right here is a great example of why these performative protests don’t work. No one can even agree why they did it.
Performative protests are a warning that things aren’t right. And French history has shown a penchant for heavy sharp falling objects to the back of the neck as the next alternative.
Yes French history, a week over two hundred years ago.
That’s the thing about a threat, it doesn’t have to lead to violence, but it is the performative act of violence. And the commitment to do violence or at least suffer the consequences, in this case arrest. That’s what this was. You can understand it or not.
Blocking traffic is pretty shitty though because you’re hurting working people as opposed to the people who have real power and status in society. These are people who depend on hourly wages and often have multiple jobs together with childcare scheduling commitments and the like.
Just wait until they find out how inconvenient widespread environmental catastrophe is.
This is not the way to go about that
What is your way to go about that?
If you aren’t doing anything, what way(s) would you deem acceptable? If you know acceptable ways, why aren’t you following through? Honest if-questions, not meant as assumptions.
Healthy and sustainable food seems to be a decent goal. People should be able to get behind this. So if all the disagreement is about the right approach, where are the people with the right approach, and where are all the people voicing their concern about art supporting them?
Please help me out. It feels as if people are more concerned about pieces of art which they may never see, than about healthy food, the climate, or other major issues which affect everyone.
I get why it puts people off, these points exist. I just wonder what the “right” alternative to these “wrong” approaches is, and wether the critics walk the talk.
What is your way to go about that?
If you aren’t doing anything, what way(s) would you deem acceptable?
They’re not doing anything except ruining the day of normal people around them. And after they give themselves morale immunity from any responsibility for anything bad that happens.
If they want to protest they should sink yatchs, ground private airplanes and drag billionaires by the hair out of their bunkers and execute them. That would actually be something. But they choose to disturb random working class peasants trying to enjoy a minute for themselves instead of being crushed by capitalism for one pretty moment.
Useless arguments are thrown around like hot garbage here. Of course they won’t do what’s excpected for change because they don’t want change. They want a free pass from any personal responsibility.
Raise money and awareness through non-destructive means, start a program, work on the problem yourselves and hope more people join in. Start a fucking tik-tok challenge, I don’t know, honestly.
But throwing soup at art is just cringey and makes you look weird. No one is going to be on board with that but other soup-throwers. Then you just have a whole group of people travelling around throwing soup at monuments and nobody knows what the fuck your point is, as evidenced by this comment section.
Raising awareness through destructive means is exactly what France is good at, and exactly why they have far more equality than most of the people on the planet
They take no shit
The Mona Lisa is behind bullet proof glass and everybody knows it. Relax.
I get in this case the painting is highly protected, but there have been plenty of other instances where this has happened to other art where that wasn’t the case.
Which ones? I’ve heard a lot of complaining about people destroying art that was protected and not damaged. The target of this kind of thing isn’t the art, it’s the headlines. They don’t actually want to damage the art, so they purposefully target famous art that is protected. The media will quickly try to minimize that it was protected and lead people to believe they caused actual damage though, so that often gets lost.
Ah yes it is the media’s fault for not providing free advertising for them.
No, the problem is that money decides which issues are important in the first place.
No, it’s societies fault for not doing what we need to do. It’s the medias fault that this gathers attention and makes it an effective and harmless method of protest.
Ah yes “society”. We used to have the devil but then we killed him. Now we are so smart we invented him again.
No art is touched in these protests. Its like y’all never heard of glass before.
I mean, I think it’s dumb how they’re going about doing it, and leads a general public to dislike them more than side with them, but in cases like this, it’s more of a dumb inconvenience to the artwork…and a waste of soup. Nothing damaging.
You nailed it. I’ve never heard of this group before, but out of principal I don’t support them. You’re a better ways to get attention. This is a kin to a child during a temper tantrum, destroying things to get attention.
So now they’ve caused no damage and you have heard of them, yet for some reason you don’t support them? What better way to gain your support should they have tried? Should they have just asked nicely?
This was a cheap and effective way to make international news. It caused no damage and no one was hurt in the process. This is what people who complain about protesting say the ideal outcomes are, yet still they complain. If they block traffic, that’s disrupting people’s lives. If they damage proterty, that’s bad because you aren’t supposed to cause damage. If they do neither, that’s bad because they aren’t supposed to make you consider them. Come on. What method is the right one in your opinion?
You can think of a single way to get a message out there outside of this act… Really…
Gosh if there was only a method to communicate with people all across the world… Perhaps social platforms or mediums of which to put forth an idea that could just naturally get shared with everybody else… Terrible shame nothing like that exists.
Saying that the painting wasn’t damaged is very shortsighted. What if these places determine that the risk just isn’t worth it. Sure it’s behind bulletproof Glass but not everything is. I really hate it when people assume that the repercussions for their actions are either immediate or they won’t exist.
Saying that the painting wasn’t damaged is very shortsighted. What if these places determine that the risk just isn’t worth it. Sure it’s behind bulletproof Glass but not everything is. I really hate it when people assume that the repercussions for their actions are either immediate or they won’t exist.
They specifically target painting that are behind glass. It wasn’t a mistake that they didn’t damage the painting. It was by design. If it weren’t protected by glass they almost certainly would choose one that is. The point isn’t to cause damage. It’s to get articles written about them. Social media posts won’t get anyone’s attention.
You have no proof of the claim that this was by design.
You have no way to prevent future idiots from targeting any random thing.
You think articles are going to be the big thing but social media is not. So they are at the behest of whatever is written about them instead of controlling the narrative and that somehow the appropriate route. Going to think group through soup on the Mona Lisa is probably not going to win you a lot of favors. Two years ago a different group of idiots tried the exact same thing. I don’t remember a single positive thing being said about them. And I haven’t seen a single positive thing about this group either. I feel like they’re hurting their message not helping their message.
I foresee these places putting up a replica of the paintings and not the paintings anymore. Because there’s far too much risk.
You have no proof of the claim that this was by design.
The proof is they hit the fucking Mona Lisa. Everyone knows there’s glass in front. Even if they somehow didn’t know, they would by the time the get up to it and could have changed plans. It wasn’t an accident that glass was “in the way” of the painting. How could anyone think it was?
You think articles are going to be the big thing but social media is not.
Everyone writes social media posts, and they go no where. I’m not saying this will cause anything to happen, but it got a lot more eyeballs on it than some tweet would, which would at best be seen by the people looking for that anyway.
I foresee these places putting up a replica of the paintings and not the paintings anymore. Because there’s far too much risk.
Lol. What would be the point of going then. The pictures are public domain and viewable online. They only exist to display the real thing, and again nothing was damaged. Hell, the Mona Lisa has been stolen before and it’s still on public display. Why would a little soup on the glass case make them change?
You seem to not have thought about this at all. Your thinking with emotion or something and not reason. Social media posts don’t get anyone’s attention outside the group that already agrees, these people caused no damage, and museums don’t exist for replicas. Calm down.
Wasting our fucking time. These shits keep breaking stuff and wonder why no one is treating their ideas worth of respect.
What did they break?
If they had broken something would your argument change?
I don’t see where my argument has anything contingent on damage not being done. Your argument was contingent on damage being done however, and none (besides a little cleanup) was done. If I said protest was only valid if it doesn’t do damage, then I’d need to consider your argument, but it isn’t. I’m perfectly OK with some amount of damage and never said otherwise.
You’re the one that has to reconsider their position as it was based on damage where there was none. Has your argument changed?
Charitable interpretation. Assume your interlocutor is logically consistent. If they support this on the grounds that nothing was damaged, it stands to reason that they would not support it if something was damaged.
What better way to gain your support should they have tried? Should they have just asked nicely?
Yes.
If they block traffic, that’s disrupting people’s lives.
And emergency vehicles. I don’t know why no one else thinks this is a big deal. Do you really want fire trucks and ambulances and people going to the hospital to be blocked? What about regular people? I have to pick up my kids from aftercare mon-friday why would it be a good thing that my kids have to spend who knows how many hours stuck there?
If they damage proterty, that’s bad because you aren’t supposed to cause damage.
I agree. Please don’t damage property.
Come on. What method is the right one in your opinion?
Peaceful protest, dialog, websites, YouTube videos, social media posts, pamphlets, books, seminars, lectures, speeches, letter writing campaigns, change.org…
This was a peaceful protest! No one was hurt and nothing was damaged. It also reached a lot more people than a post on social media would and way more than a picket would.
You think they don’t do these other things because you don’t hear about them. That’s why they do this. The other methods no one hears about.
No change has ever happened from purely peaceful protest. If that were effective it wouldn’t be legal.
Destruction of property isn’t peaceful.
It’s a good thing no property was destroyed then
And if it had been would the argument change?
Protestors will almost always allow emergency vehicles through their roadblocks.
People always bring this up, but the reality is they just don’t want protests to cause the most minor of inconveniences for them.
Even so, it’s just an objective fact that blocking traffic hurts the working poor far more than it hurts the wealthy and powerful high-status people who wield real power in society. It also, at least in the US, just further alienates blue collar people from the Democratic party and the political left, a demographic that they should own, but are losing and continuing to lose precisely because they are so tone deaf. The right does not block traffic, at least not as a tactic in itself, because they are smart enough to know that it just pisses people off. This difference is diagnostic of why the Democrats are steadily losing support from non-college-educated working people of all races.
Dude, these types of people are not working for the democratic party. The democratic party doesn’t want to change anything, which is the issue. That’s why other methods have to be used. Asking nicely and voting doesn’t cause the change that needs to happen. Sure, do it also, but don’t stop where the ruling class tells you to stop.
Protestors will almost always allow emergency vehicles through their roadblocks.
Load of crap. That group Just Stop Oil managed to delay a woman getting her kid to the hospital. And the peices of shit who run it refuse to apologize. It doesn’t matter anyway because when the road is blocked up it still delays everything. Also who the fuck made them god? When did they get permission to just decide for the rest of us who gets to go and who doesn’t? I didn’t vote for them.
People always bring this up
Yes people tend to mention when you do shit that hurts people. Maybe there is a fucking reason for it?
but the reality is they just don’t want protests to cause the most minor of inconveniences for them.
Oh look a bloody mind-reader here! Everyone stop we got a guy here who can read the minds of thousands of people across multiple continents across decades. Hey since you are a mind reader what do you think I am thinking about your cavalier attitude towards human life right now?
Oh look a bloody mind-reader here!
you’re the one claiming - in several comments, and without evidence - to know that:
- “no one even knows what it is about"
- “no one else knows what their cause was about” etc.
and the most tone-deaf comment bordering on self-awareness: “Someone completely unable to grasp that there are others around them and they got their own needs and wants.”
you’re the one claiming
Two wrongs make a right? Kinda “logic” I should expect from someone who blocks ambulances.
no one even knows what it is about"
You can read the comments for yourself. That is if you aren’t too busy making sure ambulances are blocked. You don’t need ESP to read.
without evidence -
Literally in the comments and in the article.
nd the most tone-deaf comment bordering on self-awareness
Tu quoque. Logical fallacy. Ding ding ding ding. The mind reader ambulance blocker committed a logical fallacy. Ding ding ding.
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Seriously, there are a lot of legitimate reasons for civil disobedience and public protest. This is not the way to go about that, and if you think it is then fuck you in particular.
They never said they ‘like every other civil rights movement except for this one.’
You did.
Isn’t that a fair assumption to make? Are there people that trash talk civil rights movements of the past or something?
Such a weird response. lol. Why would that need to have been said?
Re-read my comment and try to understand it this time.
“Found the lib”? This is Lemmy. We’re all libs.
A fair amount of people here are actually very much not liberal and dislike liberals heavily. I’m not sure what the right label is (Marxist perhaps) but they use “libs” just like the far right does.
If you look up the definition/political ideology of liberalism vs socialism, vs communism, they’re all significantly different.
I don’t think Marxist would be the right term. That’d be like calling all liberals followers of Adam Smith. That is to say, it’s helpful to know the history of your political ideology but it’s not entirely necessary
So socialist? Or communist? I hear Marxist a lot here but that is a good point, it’s about the only one I’ve seen named after one guy.
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So socialist? Or communist? I hear Marxist a lot here but that is a good point, it’s about the only one I’ve seen named after one guy.
The painting, which was behind bulletproof glass, appeared to be undamaged.
Wow, who would’ve guessed.
It’s bulletproof not soupproof.
Fair enough.
Also, it’s not the real Mona Lisa.
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I suspect the protesters knew about this.
If it’s anything like the other times, that’s exactly why they targeted it instead of something unprotected. They aren’t trying to destroy art, they’re trying to make a statement.
Well, they never said it was soup proof glass.
Now we know. Every article from now on has to call it bullet- and soupproof glass. It is the law.
yet they happened to prove it
It’s actually a fair point. Bullets move in straight lines. Liquids splatter and drip. The painting might not be safe from all directions.
Almost like the spectacle is the point, and now people are talking about it
yeah, they really advanced environmentalism with this dumb shit. 🙄
They did studies that demonstrated this kind of thing can make political progress more difficult because politicians don’t want to look like they’re weak to it and voters don’t want to be associated with it.
But they, and I guess you, don’t really care, it’s not about actually making positive change it’s about feeling like a hero and getting followers on social media.
It’s also probably not even the real one. They rotate it with several copies and never disclose which one is the original.
It just appeared to be undamaged.
Who knows, there might be some soup doing quantum tunnelling and plopping itself right in-between the canvas and the paint.
I love a good protest … But this isn’t a good protest.
What’s the most important thing?” they shouted. “Art, or right to a healthy and sustainable food?”
Yeah, no. I think in a civilised world we should be able to have both and that sort of argument is weak as fuck.
Destroy all art because it is more important that we conduct research into cot death. Oxygen is more important than art and yet look at you, with your galleries.
It’s infantile posturing of probably well off middle class kids who want their Rosa Parks moment for Instagram clout.
Further to that, attempting to destroy something that essentially belongs to everyone is just going to bring negative press. How about going after something owned by the head of Nestle? No? Is that too difficult and requires too much work?
I mostly agree but I mean it’s not like they were trying to destroy art or suggesting that all art should be destroyed. There’s plenty of unprotected art in the Louvre. In the same room as the Mona Lisa There’s a huge painting on the opposite wall that’s arguably more interesting than whatever view of the Mona Lisa you can get from 6 ft back and they didn’t go after it. They’re trying to get attention, like most protests.
I get that. And I broadly supported the stop oil protests that took a similar form. But I do take objection to the weird value judgement they are making.
What’s worth more, art or sustainable food…
If I wanted to get complex about it I’d highlight the numerous ways in which art and sustainable agriculture have traditionally interwoven through folk practices, but I’m going to keep it simple and say that the sort of false equivalence they just used is the rhetoric of fascism.
In the UK it is frequently used to defy art that may be oppositional to political and corporate interests.
And that’s it, art is, more than anything, a vector for public discussion and protest in its own right.
Their protest and the reason behind it is fine. The daft shit they said during it undermines everything else and could do easily have been avoided with a small amount of thought.
I recently saw someone on Lemmy point out that the UK has an emergency plan to move precious artwork to bunkers in the event of a nuclear attack, but no such plans exist for the people. Paintings can be replaced or remade. People cannot. The planet cannot. There are many things in this world far more valuable than art, in part because life is the source of art.
I’d actually say the reverse.
Our collective learning, as captured in our literature and art, is unique. It’s the result of countless human lives. It is what would allow us to rebuild a society after a nuclear war.
Populations are replaceable. As long as enough people survive, the population will recover. On an individual level, of course, each person is unique but most are unremarkable.
You may find what I’m saying abhorrent, but for the potential success of any post-nuclear society I think it’s more important that knowledge and culture survive than individuals.
I think an important consideration is who gets to decide what knowledge and culture get preserved. For example, I would say that medicine, agriculture, and human language would be much more important to preserve than computer science or economics, but I’m sure someone would disagree.
In general, I think art is very valuable and should be protected when possible (and not just European art), but if the choice is between a painting or a human life… the painting goes every time.
That’s like saying playing with unloaded guns is completely harmless. You don’t do that. All it takes is one accident or a crazed person to make it worse.
You want to protest? Go to the buildings of oil companies or politicians who are the reason for this or have the capability to make a change. The art is entirely irrelevant to this.
The only attention they’ll get is a bad one. And from whom? The same people you are advocating for?
And what did you do this week to prevent environmental destruction, recycle some sody pop cans?
You are talking about it right now.
That means it worked, regardless of how “good” you think it is.
We are talking about the protest, not the subject of the protest.
That’s one of the problem with protest stunts. They get attention but often the attention drowns out the intent.
How would you protest then?
Fair question.
I haven’t protested about this specific issue, but I have done about others. Specifically, the erosion of human rights in the UK.
Here’s a video of a performance protest we made last year:
It’s pretty blunt, it’s about how wealth is used to distort rights and the meanings of language. The full thing took over four hours to read out. We held a talk and a symposium as well as educational visits with schools. I’m a big believer in education as social justice.
Hypothetically then, in their case, I would make art that engaged with the subject. Just like picasso did with Guernica, an image that still resonates the horror of war.
I’m not usually inclined to conspiracy but I honestly think this group is planted by somebody to make environmental activists look bad.
They aren’t even protesting about (necessarily) environmentalism! It’s crazy the number of people outraged that soup was thrown on glass that was in front of a painting and didn’t even get to the part where it says this is about food security.
That just shows why this isn’t an effective form of protest. I’ve seen a lot of comments about how “this gets attention” but fail to see how no one is actually talking about the “point” these protestors were trying to make. Which basically ruins anything the protestors are trying to do as no one focuses on the issues expressed.
Although part of it might also just be the classic issue of people not reading that much past the headline. People see “protestors throw soup at Mona Lisa”, and not get much farther than that.
Or more likely that news doesn’t get paid to put it in the headline.
I would argue it’s a slightly effective form… but only if they advertise the point. There’s been plenty of times I’ve seen this for environmentalism, and people start talking about it in the comments. Not completely directly, but it gets them talking. Like when they would super glue their hands to the ground, in one video one of the protestors threw the bottle into a drain. So people started talking about how hypocritical it was because that’s bad for the environment. Which was a small thing, but the conversation was happening.
People used to make fun activists who would throw red paint onto fashion models wearing fur. But over the years, that slowed down because designers stopped using real fur. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of it was because they were afraid of getting their stuff ruined, but now most designers won’t use fur for ethical reasons. Because they realize animals don’t need to be bred and killed for their suits.
The only real downside is that it does make them come off as assholes, but also no real way to turn that around. Like black people would do sit ins at restaurants, and a lot of white people hated them for it… but then other white people also got to see them get abused for it. Things like that can help change people’s perspective. With this, they throw it, and then it mostly stops there. They’re just assholes. It gets the conversation going, but not enough, because it just stops at them being assholes.
I agree with everything in your post except them being assholes. What part of this makes them assholes? Nothing was damaged and no one was hurt or inconvenienced, except for maybe a few museum employees who had to clean up a mess. The whole setup for viewing the Mona Lisa causes far more inconvenience than these people did. It’s a tiny painting in a packed room. You can’t really see it anyway.
Been there. Guarantee the time it takes to clean it is less than the time it takes to get through the crowd to look at it. I know it’s a popular edgy opinion, but the painting across from the Mona Lisa is much cooler imo
What form of protest gets your rubber stamp of approval?
Well the guillotine seems super effective. Start there.
I love you types that add nothing to a conversation except “WhAt dO yOU ApPRoVe???” Like that’s a useful response to the conversation of “is this effective in getting a message across.”
If only you held yourself to the same standard before yet another generic “This isn’t an effective form of protest even though it made the news, and I’m talking about it, and I know what it was about” comment.
Or fuck, even in this reply, where your “useful response” was “you should protest with murder”.
Looks to me like you just didn’t like your opinions challenged, you just wanted to make sure everybody knew what they were.
Of course WE know what this is about. We’re both reading the article (and most likely have a similar view of how important food insecurity is across the globe and in our own countries/states/provinces/cities). I’m not concerned about you or I getting the messaging. I’m question if the general public will get the messaging. The people who don’t know about food insecurity, or food waste, if they get the messaging. Even next door in Germany DW interviewed the communications head of the organization that protested and they couldn’t really point out how this was beneficial for their argument. They talked about wanting access to high quality food, so they mysteriously threw high quality food on the Mona Lisa? Wouldn’t a better protest of the same variety to have been throwing shit food at it? Or maybe blocking deliveries of crappy food to markets?
So here we are, on the internet, having a conversation about the Mona Lisa being hit with pumpkin soup. The messaging isn’t clear from the protestors and the demonstration just goes to show why we need better organization amongst people who realize this is an issue. We need clear messaging to relay to the every man. The person who maybe doesn’t experience it themselves, or who maybe doesn’t see how good insecurity has a wider impact on people and keeping social-economic classes in the same groups.
Challenge my viewpoint, prove to me how this protest has brought attention to their cause that’s meaningful rather than just notoriety to the Mona Lisa (that it didn’t already have), and that the every man is viewing this as a reason to help stop food insecurity.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
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For-profit, neoliberal media will never fairly cover any protest that may impact the profits of other neoliberals. It doesn’t matter what form the protest takes, nor what the protest is for.
It’s been that way ever since “Occupy Wall St”, when news anchors feigned carefully practised bewilderment and asked "But what are they protesting. Of course if you asked any of the actual protesters, they were happy to make it clear.
So they just didn’t ask.
Measuring any act of protest by metric of “the media covered it in a way that will bring the great unwashed on side” ensures that no protest will ever meet your standard. You may as well advocate that people don’t bother and just politely wait for the end of the world. You won’t even be alone in doing it.
Fortunately, those media companies don’t control every method of communication just yet, so we can discuss it on social media or look it up independently.
What we can’t escape is the endless protest policing, where people complain “that’s not how I would have done it” on social media.
So maybe it’s time for those people to unveil their perfect protest strategy that gets international attention, doesn’t inconvenience anybody, gets fairly covered despite the millions spent to prevent it and doesn’t require 3 wet wipes to fix.
My money is on their big reveal being “do fuck all and try and die of old age before it matters”.
Shows how effective it was. People don’t even know what it is about
I know it’s a minor point and food security is an actual very practical concern and valid reason to protest, but I feel like one of the tenants of a successful protest is very much like advertising : make the target directly relevant to the message. “Art and historical conservation efforts aren’t worth your concern as much as (blank)” feels like it’s a muddy message when the whole point of art culture is that it is kind of frivolous. Quite frankly you could throw anything at a beloved historical conservation peice and make the news even if your reason was “I felt like it”. People are probably gunna treat it as a bare faced stunt for attention because it’s already been done and the response is predictable. Our society wide fascination with historical preservation is immediately hostile to anything that seems to be spontaneous. It’s the opposite of exploiting a weak spot in people’s thinking.
I understand and am sympathetic to their cause but I am pretty sure there’s some property damage or mischief stunt that could have been immediately more effective by being somehow tied more directly to food, convenience culture or contemporary targets.
The first line of the Guardian article says, “Two environmental protesters…”
Granted, I did assume that this was the same group that’s been throwing paint onto artwork and corporate headquarters and yachts.
You underestimate how dumb the average person is. Couple that with a good cause and a lot of drive, and you get the statistical certainty that from time to time someone is going to do something unproductively dumb, supposedly for the sake of a good cause that doesn’t get promoted in any way.
No true Scotsman would throw soup on the Mona Lisa.
It’s just the obvious trajectory of social media attention seeking within the disaffected aesthetic. Someone that loves to feel special and the center of attention picks a cause almost at random then throws themselves into the fray as loudly as possible.
It’s always happened, you can see them in every community and aesthetic - conspiracy theories, political types, sports fans… Protest communities are especially attractive to attention seekers, it’s great for social media clout to pretend that you’re doing these crazy things for a bigger cause
If you got evidence present it. I tend to take people at their word. If someone tells me they are religion x or fighting for cause y I run on that assumption. There are of course shills but internet shilling or talking on media is not going to land you in jail. It would take a very very large sum of money to convince me that I should do something like this.
lowhanging psyop spotted
my personal conspiracy theory is that these people are funded, if indirectly, by big oil. in the same way PETA smears the name of vegans, these mfs are designed to make you, the viewer, hate environmentalists.
the worst part? it works
In the Balkans, whenever people rise in peaceful protest against a corrupt goverment, that particular government sends 50 or so crack heads to join the protests and start demolishing stuff, so that an overwhelming police force can then disperse the legitimate protests. I’ve seen it play out times and times again.
That’s why trade unions in France maintain their own security forces, trained to spot troublemakers or hysterical militants and reign them in. Perhaps is this what makes for successful démonstrations.
Centuries of experience helps.
We do that here in the US too, we might hide it better though.
Makes sense, tbh. If you can’t control the opposition, you can instead try to defame them
That sure will encourage work on environmental issues. /s
It will make the climate crisis be covered in headlines and make it harder to ignore. This IS a legitimate form of protest. They didn’t do any harm and brought attention to their cause.
They weren’t doing it for the climate crisis.
Yeah the article is a bit strange. They call them environmental protesters but they seem to have been protesting food insecurity. Which I guess can be considered environmental but isn’t usually what I think of.
Especially when you consider the famines that yhe climate crisis will cause. And yeah that’s piss poor reporting, they call them environmental Protesters multiple times…
I think that’s fine. Unless we’re talking about greenhouses or urban indoor gardening, food grows in the environment. If you want to protect the food, you implicitly have to protect the environment, which makes you an environmentalist driven by food. There are lots of hazards which have little to do with climate (or at least which also have other, climate-unrelated causes), which can affect food. Invasive species, plastic, overfertilization, corporations, general socioeconomic disparities, just to name a few.
It will make the climate crisis be covered in headlines and make it harder to ignore
No it won’t
This IS a legitimate form of protest.
NO, it isn’t
you are talking about them. Therefore protest worked. Therefore it was a protest.
We’re talking about what idiots they are.
Pithy quotes aside, not all publicity is good publicity.
I’m curious what you think is acceptable protesting?
Marches are one traditional approach. Those can be disruptive, but they don’t deliberately cause property damage to unrelated victims so that’s way better.
I can get people to talk about me by taking a dump in public that isn’t the same as listening to what I have to say.
420 million people a year defecate in public, so unfortunately not.
Real public not in the freaken woods. As in people around and seeing it. Jesus.
TIL wood are “fake public”
PS, not a lot of woods in the middle of New Delhi. Or here in Brooklyn, where I saw an unhoused person, taking a crap in the street the other day.
They tried to destroy a cultural icon. That’s the only topic worth talking about.
No, they didn’t. They knew it was behind the bullet proof glass and would not be harmed. They did this to draw attention to a cause. It worked.
Half of the comments here don’t even know what cause it was for. You know you are supposed to learn by kindergarten that there is a difference between good attention and bad attention. Making a scene is easy but ineffective the vast majority of the time. Convincing people is difficult but it is the only way to get long term results.
You must have met people like this in your life. Someone completely unable to grasp that there are others around them and they got their own needs and wants. Does that person care? No. They didn’t get what they want so now everyone has to suffer.
Half of the comments here don’t even know what cause it was for.
That’s because the news piece deliberately omits that part, at least from the headline. If they didn’t throw soup at an important piece of bulletproof glass, there wouldn’t even be news coverage.
Even if I agreed with your premise (which I don’t) I think it pretty silly to use a small niche internet comment forum as a gauge for saying this didn’t work, when it’s plastered on headlines around the world. And you’re already admitting that it did work, now you’re just debating it’s effectiveness. And that’s not the point. 
They knew it, huh. Sounds like an admission of guilt.
They clearly didn’t accidentally spill soup so I’m sure their guilt isn’t really in question.
the Mona Lisa is behind several centimeters of glass. they have absolutely no way to date it with soup.
You know why the glass is there? Because some lunatic tried to throw pait at it. You can’t justify the act because it’s guarded against it. It’s like saying it’s OK to to launch a missle at me because you know I have an interceptor system.
Lmao no they didnt, it has been behind glass for almost 2 decades, facts dont care about your feelings.
Well we disagree. I think protests qua protests are interesting to talk about, same for climate protests, civil rights, the role of art, the role of art conservation, and even soup is pretty interesting.
Couldn’t have just used any of the socially acceptable ways to protest? This is France ffs, they are the world leaders in organizing a protest. You piss the French off and you got a march on your hands.
there are no socially acceptable ways to protest - that is the definition of protest.
In the end, I think it’s no different than religious fanatics destroying part of their culture because they disagree with it. They prove nothing. They accomplish nothing.
The only legitimate forms of protest are ones that are easily ignored, right?
This is easily ignored. Everyone will forget about it in a few weeks and nothing will change
No, but forms of protest that are specifically intended to destroy the property of unrelated people aren’t particularly legitimate.
Ok, but that’s not really relevant here. Nothing was destroyed
Put a million people in the streets and I’ll notice. Take out a painting and you’re a vandal :::
No one damaged any paintings
Name a better form of protest to get the people’s attention.
Spoiler: They’ve tried that before.If you aren’t aware of climate change by now then you’re an absolute moron. I don’t see how soup is going to change anything
The world is making progress in climate change. This isn’t going to make it go faster.
The world is making progress in climate change.
It better hurry the fuck up.
Throwing soup on paintings discredits environmentalism to a lot of people. But what they should really be upset about is misleading graphs cherry-picked to look as alarming as possible.
Sea ice is a concerning indicator, sure, but if you look at other news and other graphs about it you’ll not find anything like this gigantic drop. In particular in the section of that page about Antarctic ice:
At the beginning of December, ice extents were at record low levels. However, the seasonal decline in Antarctic ice extent subsequently slowed. As a result, by the beginning of the new year, extent was only sixth lowest.
It also notes that Arctic sea ice extents were typical during 2023, so whatever was happening to Antarctic ice wasn’t necessarily an indication of global trends.
I am an environmentalist, I want to see continued effort being made on switching to renewable resources and ameliorating the effects of climate change. But I worry that a lot of environmentalists are crying wolf very loudly and it’s going to harm the movement in the long run when people realize how overblown some of these arguments are.
No one cares what people think about the movement in the long run.
Having a long run is the goal.Personally, I think we have 20 years left in which we can pretend to do something against climate change (because nothing has actually been achieved, CO2-output keeps climbing, completely unaffected by this whole debate).
By 2045, conditions around the equator will trigger a global migration north, then we’ll go back to bombing each other at large scale and all mitigation efforts are over.They didn’t throw soup on a painting. They threw soup on glass that was in front of a painting. No paintings were harmed in this protest.
Okay, amend my comment to read “throwing soup at paintings.” Any other changes needed?
While continuing to tap new oil fields and failing to make sufficient progress. Also, this one isn’t about climate, but healthy and sustainable food. Connected issues, but still.
All that aside, to come back to the somewhat dodged question, what would make things go faster?
That’s the good question. I’m not sure there is one. We ( the world) were slow off the ball on climate change and its not like we move like a power boat, more like a barge.
Well voting for one. Have people tried that?
Yeah that’s helped us so far lmfao
If voting did nothing they wouldn’t make it difficult.
Are they?
Your reading comprehension is poor. This isnt about climate change. This is about food security.
… So they threw away food to make a statement?
This is like protesting pollution by purposely throwing oil into the ocean. Generally speaking the act of protest should not directly intensify the problem.
A can of soup dude. The trashcans at the Louvre have far more food waste than a can of soup. What larger good can be done with a single can of soup?
Feeding a person.
I mean it’s more like knocking over a barrel of water during a rainstorm to bring attention to the fact that people across the world don’t have access to clean water. There is more than enough food to go around in Paris, the problem is distribution and greed. You think donating a single can of soup would make a meaningful impact compared to getting on international news to spread your message?
Random insult back atcha
Funnily enough this has been the most successful form of environmental activism to this day
Successful in pissing off the general public and causing them to ignore anything of substance that you have to say, sure. Pushing people away from your cause is not a good strategy if you want to effect change.
Literally killing yourself to protest climate change has barely made the news so yea, for some reason people only talk about it if you throw soup at glass in front of art for some reason.
Killing yourself to protest climate change isn’t a climate issue, it’s a mental health issue.
You sound like you live in a bubble.
Hop off lemmy bro. It’s rotting out your brain.
Hey guys science says our plant is heating up due to carbon emissions we are creating by burning fossil fuels. Can we tone it down a bit?
No
Hey guys going to chain myself outside, because this is super important
Don’t care
Hey guys, going to burn myself alive to protest climate change
Meh
Soups and super glue on art!
Oh the humanity! Why would you not engage with us in simple conversation before chucking a cream of tomato onto bulletproof glass!?
Wait… THAT’S WHAT GOT YOUR ATTENTION?!
People were talking about climate change though. Movements like FFF (until Covid took the wind right out of their sails) had quite a bit of momentum, and actually were making it a mainstream topic.
Protests like this are getting people to talk about what you did, not about why you did it.
I mean it has us talking about why they did it, right?
We’re not the people they need to reach though. I don’t think either of us needs convincing that urgent action is needed on climate change, it’s our boomer parents, coworkers, etc. who need convincing. And if someone’s attempt at helping with that ends up making climate activists look like deranged vandals then please for the love of God stop trying to help.
dont put /s, it ruins the joke
My own personal style of humor is to say absurd things with a straight face, and unfortunately I have found that on the Internet there is always going to be someone who believes me without question no matter how absurd a statement I make. Because unfortunately there’s always someone on the Internet who actually believes something that absurd.
It worked. Good for them, no damage was done and the news is talking about the issue
It’s a dumb action, and this is from someone that supports direct action. How people are talking about an action is critical: the context matters.
The first thing people are going to ask is “why did you do this?” and the answer needs to make sense. Throwing soup on an oil exec, painting their office, etc – something sparks a conversation in a way you can exploit to further the cause.
“Vandalizing” a famous piece of art not even tangentially related to your cause is just going to make people think you’re an asshole and shuts down that potential for a productive discussion.
Some of the most successful stunts of extinction rebellion over here were painting private jets orange, and my personal favourite declaring a golf course a nature reserve and planting all kinds of indigenous plants there.
Not even the pearl-clutching “but that’s property damage!” types tend to be really mad about that kind of stuff.
Yeah and I’m pretty sure the issue with climate change isn’t a lack of awareness…
Right? Raw shock value is only useful when something isn’t well known. Everyone knows about climate change and has a position.
Great, use “shock value”: but make a worthwhile statement with it too. The goal is to force people to confront an issue, not effortlessly write it off as a childish tantrum and ignore it.
Usually when this happens, the articles forget to mention the glass and the comments are all centered on how stupid the protestors are. Good to see an exception here.
Edit: Never mind. I scrolled down and it’s bad as it always was on reddit.
sigh
It’s doing more harm than good for the climate cause.
THROW PIES AT THE RICH! Not art. The rich.
People have target the rich as well as buildings (banks, polluting factories) They get sued and it rarely ever hit the news.
Something like this? Plenty of witnesses jumping to record this and share on social media.
I dont think any art has gotten damaged by these stunts yet. All important pieces are behind bullet proof glass or not unlikely a copy with the orginal in a vault.
Ok ok ok, I’ll set aside pies for the rich… But can I also throw soup at activists?
They are covered in glass. They do this to make a scene to bring light to their cause. The painting wasnt harmed. Meh. Either way I’ve kinda accepted that humanity is doomed. I’ve gone through the 5 stages. Too many are suck on denial.
some of us have been chilling at anger for a while. it’s kinda nice.
How do you separate your anger at the world from your regular everyday anger at morons? It’s a real struggle.
Why would i separate them. You take all the anger, you squish it down real hard until it’s tiny and it’s white hot, you put it in the center of you and set it to spinning, and it’ll drive you to incredible feats.
…why the need of throwing food at a piece of art…?
or paint, that’s been a thing.
really pisses me off, environmentalists attacking art, of all things. random art didn’t cause environmental issues, and they’re undermining their own message with the sheer absurdity of it.
They attacked a pane of bulletproof glass; if destroying art was their objective they wouldn’t have had to walk far.
Are there any examples of these protests that have caused lasting damage? What I’ve seen was very visible but didn’t actually threaten anything.
It’s a weird message for sure but they don’t seem to malicious to me.
The goal is always to get on the news.
But it’s super weird. For example: any of the PETA BS ever worked for most of society? All it does is trigger the extremists while pissing off nearly everyone else.
Are you joking?
Veganism and vegetarianism is massively on the rise and firmly in the mainstream. McDonald’s does a plant based burger ffs.
PETA have even managed to position themselves as a certification agency for “cruelty free”. If getting companies to self-regulate and accept you as the rule maker for that regulation isn’t above your standard of “working” then I don’t know what is.
Whatever object was thrown, aside, i wonder if this is some kind of act attributed to their primitive parts of their brains that command the following: Monke throw poop.
Anyone else think of the Mona Lisa case from Glass Onion?
Possibly why it was chosen?
The Mona Lisa is So Hot right now
This one weird trick makes everyone in the immediate vicinity instantly despise you! Click for more info!
Again?!
Didn’t another group do this exact same thing last year? I believe it was Stop Oil last time.
You’d think they just stop anyone with a thermos or other vessel capable of holding soup.
Unless they get to the point of doing full strip and cavity searches, there’s no way to prevent someone from bringing in a Ziploc baggie full of soup.
I believe that they did it to a Van Gogh painting which actually was more note worthy as that was not behind bullet proof glass
Im almost positive this is either the same exact story being posted a year later, either way I distinctly remember the same argument of “it’s behind glass, dumbasses” being mentioned last time.
Protesters did shit attention grabbing thing and no one even knows what it was for.
So I guess now regular people will have to put up with security theater
One of the two activists removed her jacket to reveal a white T-shirt bearing the slogan of the environmental activist group Riposte Alimentaire (Food Response) in black letters.
If only there was some incredibly easy and simple way to find out what it was for
Why would I care it’s probably stupid, all these groups have childishly stupid goals like ‘why don’t we just not use oil, I’m sure no one ever though of that, right?’ and ‘force everyone to live the lifestyle I personally happen to prefer’
Their plan always overlooks the fact that total chaos would ensue if anyone ever tried what they’re demanding, if they had anything worthwhile to say they’d be saying it in the relevant places and people would be listening.
I guess if you presuppose the group’s intentions you never have to worry about what they actually say. Kinda like how I’m gonna presuppose that your second paragraph was just complaining about people being noisy or whatever instead of actually reading it.
Of course your going to ignore it, it’s the inconvenient reality ignored by everyone that wants to feel like a hero because they wished for an easy solution to difficult problems
Nah, I’m going to ignore it to try to show you how ignoring what someone says is an awful way to gain an understanding of them
Why is soup the choice rather than dye, ink, or paint?
They knew they couldn’t (probably didn’t want to) damage the painting itself. The Mona Lisa has been behind bullet proof glass since the mid 90s, so it wasnt a secret. So they chose something that was relevant to their cause and they probably (rightly) guessed that soup would make a headline when paint or dye has been done so many times before that it might not.
Real reason: They’re demanding that France make assurances for access to food.
Fake reason: They’re Warhol fans.
Now I want to know if DeVinci had any rivalries with other artists that we could bring back.
They’re bringing attention to food insecurity, so their method is… wasting food. Yea that checks out
Yeah that one can of soup in Paris would make such a massive difference to worldwide food insecurity lmao
There’s three types of protestors in the world:
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Cause minimal, non serious disruption. Spread the message without pissing people off, because that’ll make people more receptive to joining you.
-
Cause serious disruptions, even if it pisses people off, because it brings attention to the issue makes it impossible to ignore.
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Bring attention to an issue at all costs by any means necessary, even if it makes the issue worse or has absolutely nothing to do with the issue. Be an asshole to make people listen.
There’s a valid argument that without 2, people won’t take something seriously, and mild inconveniences are the whole point of nonviolent protest. It gets a bit morally grey when it would do something like prevent an ambulance from operating though. I don’t think anyone who normally waves that away would feel the same if it resulted in the death of a loved one.
And 3 is just clout chasers imo, like in this situation. I can’t take someone protesting food insecurity seriously if they’re wasting food to do so.
-
Or one of those laser “pointers” with crazy high power, 1 watt or higher?
Because they didn’t want to cause damage. The target was glass, not the painting.
