birbuçuk

OPENING: DECLARING FOSSIL FUELS A CRIMINAL INSTRUMENT

The opening begins with a recurring ritual: the world is hotter, more polluted and heading towards extinction faster than ever before. But this time the tone of the opening is sharper. The team behind the petrol gathering shares with the public a point on which they agree: fossil fuels must be discredited and declared a criminal instrument. This is not an analysis but a position.

And another confession: when the 16th Istanbul Biennial opened, they learned with regret that some companies whose sole business is fossil fuels were among the organisations supporting the Biennial. They do not think it right to accept such sponsorship at an art event that places the climate crisis at its centre. Yet they also speak of the value of being here, of bringing these issues onto the agenda, of this platform having been opened. The tension of speaking from within is as old as the Biennial itself, but birbuçuk is one of the few voices to bring this openly onto the stage.

THE PRICE OF A LITRE OF PETROL

An economist takes the stage. The question seems simple: how much is a litre of petrol? The previous day's price had been checked — 6.80 lira on the European side of Istanbul, 6.86 on the Anatolian side. Calculated to the decimal — a precision that makes one think of how meticulously accounts are kept. On an intercity road, a litre of petrol takes you about twelve kilometres. It is eleven or twelve kilometres from Yedikule to the Biennial venue — the equivalent of a litre.

But that is not the real cost. Once you start calculating the cost of a litre of petrol, the ledger snowballs: the ecological destruction in the regions where the oil is extracted, the pollution from refining, the carbon footprint of the transport chain, the poverty, corruption and war that follow in oil's wake. The cost of polluted soil and water, and of people falling ill. And heaviest of all — the ecocide left behind. The economist says they know how to calculate costs well, but no accounting system can calculate the entirety of this cost. Because some costs cannot be converted into money. Ecological economics is precisely the field that tries to make these incalculable costs visible — and petrol is one of its most painful examples.

"We are all part of petrol in one way or another, consumers of it."

OUR HOUSE IS BURNING

The stage is darkened. Multiple voices rise. A collage compiled from different speeches by Greta Thunberg — translated into Turkish, sometimes distorted, broken, repeated. This is a performance: the words of a sixteen-year-old girl emerge from multiple mouths, some whispering, some shouting. "Our house is burning. I am here to say this." Hope, panic, anger, helplessness intertwine.

Our house is burning. There can be no excuse for doing nothing. When we take action, hope is everywhere.

The performance brings Greta's most striking paradox onto the stage: a child being compelled to preach to adults. "My name is Greta, I am sixteen years old" — this sentence grows heavier with each repetition. "I want to feel safe, walking alone at night, sitting on the metro" — the climate crisis is a security matter, an existential threat. The generation whose futures are being stolen speaks and the hall listens in silence. Emissions need to be halved within eleven years. Everyone in this hall hears this — but how many of them came here on petrol?

ART AND WHITEWASHING: THE HISTORY OF MUSEUM PROTESTS

A museum professional takes the stage and, while introducing themselves, says "if I called myself an activist, I would be doing the other participants here an injustice" — but what they recount is activism itself. Art wash: oil companies and arms manufacturers laundering their reputations by sponsoring art institutions. In the companies' own language this is called "reputation management".

The narrative begins in England: the Liberate Tate movement, through six years of persistent protests from 2010 to 2016, succeeded in ending the BP-Tate sponsorship. The museum has more than a hundred thousand members — this base makes it possible to mobilise public opinion. Success ripples outward: in the Netherlands, Fossil Free Culture ends Shell's Van Gogh Museum sponsorship. In France, Libérons le Louvre campaigns against Total — they staged a new action just last week. The museum professional goes further back — to 1969, to the Art Workers' Coalition. The Vietnam War has cost seventy billion dollars; the space race, ten dollars per American. The middle class is being crushed. A group of artists presents MoMA with a list of thirteen demands: artists' rights, more space for Black artists, working-class access to the museum. Only one demand is accepted: free entry one day a week. MoMA scraps it two months later, citing lost revenue, and is forced to reinstate it after protests. These free days continue until the 1990s — and then pass, in turn, to sponsorship by Target and by Uniqlo. Corporations have taken the place of the public.

And then a striking confession: "I am above all a museum professional and the main sponsor of the museum I work in is an oil company." In Turkey, museums have weak membership bases; sponsorship is a necessity. With a hundred thousand members, not ten thousand, we can open oil sponsorship up for debate, they say — a provocative position.

Companies can move very comfortably into spaces the public has not claimed. I do not think it right, at this stage, to complain about this in countries where the public has not claimed its spaces.

FROM SINOP TO THE STREETS: CLIMATE REBELLION

The final presentation is the most personal. An activist from Extinction Rebellion describes a journey that began with going out onto the street alone. Their motivation: seeing what Greta achieved at fifteen and wanting to share that burden rather than leave it to a child.

The most powerful moment of the story takes place in Sinop. It had been decided to hold a climate strike with the children. The children prepared their placards and wanted to march themselves — "we are definitely going out," they said. The activist hesitated: how will the security forces treat the children? Will the families be angry? Let's take photos and share them, came the suggestion. But the children were resolute. They marched so sincerely that they held their placards not to their chests but outward, towards people, showing them. Then they went to play in the park. The activist lay under a tree and watched the children — by Istanbul standards, just seeing something like this was a joy.

But in the evening one child turned round and said: "This was the first time in years that I played like a child." The sentence goes straight to everyone's heart. The children themselves chose to fight for climate justice — but did we unintentionally place a burden on them? Are they unable to live their childhoods?

The children are truly doing the best they can. Our generation, we adults — are we trying hard enough for this?

CONSISTENCY: BY TRAIN TO ANKARA

The Q&A session gains unexpected depth. The first question is simple: "What was your motivation? Where should those who cannot bring themselves to act begin?" But the answers are not simple. Individual action or structural transformation? This tension is the petrol object itself — the connection between individual consumption and systemic violence. A researcher tells an old story: in 2007 they gathered nearly 170,000 signatures for the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol and went to Parliament. At a committee meeting an MP asked: how did you get to Ankara? The answer — "we came by train" — was a shock. After they had left, the bureaucrats talked at length: "Look, they really don't fly." Consistency is persuasive.

But individual action alone is not enough. Between the energy it takes to recycle in Istanbul and in England there is a world of difference — unless the service is brought to your door, individual effort cannot reduce emissions. Individual measures taken without changing policies have no effect on emissions. A voice proposes the concept of "capitalocene": not the anthropocene but an era of capitalism's making. Unless the system changes, individual transformation will not be enough.

And a small but striking moment in the hall: someone confesses that, with so many vegans around them, they are embarrassed to say they are not vegan. Individual action creating social pressure — this too is a transformation mechanism, soft but effective. The resistance against gold mining in the Kaz Mountains is recalled too, and the hall opens outwards: next week, a thirty-thousand-strong action is expected in Çanakkale; Alamos Gold's permit expires on 13 October.

As the petrol gathering leaves the hall, everyone knows the cost of a litre of petrol is not 6 lira 80 kuruş. But no one can calculate how much it is. Perhaps its very incalculability is the truest cost of petrol.