FAME

Its Friday morning and the first real demo of the climate week to come. We are in Nytorv on Strøget in the heart of Copenhagen; a not really impressive bunch of activists gather and wait. Almost half the crowd is press-people with cameras. The concept of day is to attack different companies representing global capitalist culture, by walking into their lobbies and confronting them with their direct responsibility for climate change. I immidiatly have the feeling that the location of the start-up is a hoax – that the core of activists are busy elsewhere attacking capitalism while the not-so-big crowd here is only supposed to distract the police and the press.

The square are lined on one side with a photographic exhibition by former supermodel Helena Christensen, now a climate-activist promoting immediate action with exotic photos of so-called climate victims in Peru. On the other side of the square is a golden container, containing a casting-sessions for: http://bradpitt.dk

In this sense surrounded by fame, the noise-section of the demo starts a heavy samba-like groove. And now the demo starts moving. But after only a few hundred meters the police fences the whole demo in, blocking a street off in both ends. Here we stand for half and hour or more – blocked from continuing the demo or from escaping. After a long while the polices bcks off and let the crowd continue, but now the demo stops unexpectedly in the middle of a huge crossroad, blocking a large part of thr trafiic thru Copenhagen central for another half hour.

And in this manner the day continues: Activists and police teasing each other, feeling out each other; a long series of contradicting strategic moves, that only makes sense if we see this as an advanced street theater. Who controls the streets and who controls the images that the media will project out of this game-like attack on public space. For both sides the real audience is not the accidental passer-by in the street, but media in its broadest sense; and in media the production of symbolic gesture is central.

The slogans of the day:

Our Climate! Not Your Business!

Don’t Buy The Lie

I am not sure if these slogans transmits to anyone passing the demo in the streets or working in the companies adressed. In the media coverage afterwards it is the sheer joy of street battling that emits most clearly from the different reports. But then again; this is only the warm-up for far more radical events to come.

My personal moment of fun was checking out the bradpitt.dk website afterwards. It is actually an humorous attempt at mainstream political theater.