Adrian fisk on capturing those standing until the last oak falls
Interview by Esta Maffrett | 06.05.22
Adrian fell into the environmental movement as a college student at a time when it was just beginning to make a name for itself. It was the 90s and there was an intense clamping down on the freedom of where people could go and what they could do. For many, one of the biggest concerns was what would be lost of our relationship with nature. Between environmental activists and ravers there were big movements and attempts made to protect both the planet and our right to access it but both were met with attacks and violence. Adrian Fisk was there to document it through the years and his upcoming book Until The Last Oak Falls is both a celebration and reminder of the people who came before the movement that is once again being talked about, only now with much more urgency.
How did you get into photography?
I kind of chanced upon photography. To cut a long story short I was in Bangladesh with a friend of mine doing volunteer work many many years ago in 1991. A massive cyclone came in and killed 136,000 people. Me and my mate who were taking a short break from the volunteer work realised we weren’t that far away from where the cyclone had hit. We were some of the first Westerners on the scene and I had a sort of fancy looking camera so they thought we were journalists and then next thing you know we’re flying around on this really old Russian helicopter. I had my head out taking pictures of all the devastation below me and had this epiphany, I realised that if I have a camera then I can go anywhere. The camera is my passport into all experience. And from that moment on I became a photographer.
Did photography lead you to the environmental movement or were you aware of it before?
Photography led me to the environmental movement because I heard about these people living in the trees in the North of England, Lancashire, for protest. I went and checked it out because I thought it sounded really interesting - who would be nuts enough to live in a tree and why are they living in a tree? I grew up in the countryside and i’ve always sort of had a deep affinity to the natural world. So the idea of it being destroyed and disrespected was something that struck a chord with me. To see these people putting themselves on the line, sometimes their lives on the line was really interesting to me. I was still in college at the time, my first photos are from 94.
Why are party and protest so closely linked?
There’s a really interesting documentary called Everybody In The Place by Jeremy Deller. When that film came out it was really interesting because I'm a member of these kind of old school ravers unite Facebook groups where everyone was really excited and then were left really disappointed. They thought it would be a sort of nostalgia fueled trip down memory lane with old tunes kind of film. He essentially said that rave and politics are inseparable. That rave was really a reaction to the fracture and post industrial breakdown in Britain. Lots of people struggled to understand that because they thought they were just going to a warehouse to dance and get high, they weren’t able to understand the nuances of what drove that movement. Any decent musical movement is essentially political or its roots lie in politics. So then you had the criminal justice bill come about in 1994 which was very influenced by Castle Morton, Britain's biggest illegal rave, so what happened was a lot of ravers became politicised. What they were doing was being deemed illegal and they were told they weren’t able to do it anymore. And the environmental movement was then deemed illegal because they were blocking sites from trees being cut down and such things. Both groups were wanting to access natural spaces within the British countryside and environment but now those activities were deemed illegal. I think they bought each other closer together and once you’re told that the world you believe in is not acceptable from mainstream society then you tend to seek out others that have similar ideas. I think that bought some aspect of the free party rave movement within the environmental movement. Although they’re both very much their own movements in their own rights, there was a kind of cross-pollination there between the two of them.
Both of them were about a belief of a better world. You can argue ‘how is dancing high in a field working towards a better life?’ but sometimes a better world is just a belief system, if it starts out with ideas in the mind it can continue but you need that idea in the first place to build on. Much of the rave movement was about bringing people together, unity and the breakdown of society and class structures. The environmental movement was about protecting what was threatened, there wasn’t quite the realisation of just how bad it was or how serious it was, we knew it was big and we knew about the ideas of global warming and the ozone layer but it was about creating a better world without the severity and urgency that it has now. That’s the fundamental difference.
Do you think that with the urgency and fear felt by today's protesters that protest can or should still be a place for a party as well?
I think it depends on the nature of the protest but essentially that’s just up to the organisers whether they feel it’s the right fit or not. I think that protest should be noisy. People protest because they’re frustrated with the status quo and they protest to raise awareness, the protest itself doesn’t physically change anything but the awareness is what will facilitate change. So protests really are about being disruptive, noisy and kind of annoying because that’s what helps create attention. So there should be an opportunity for party and sound systems and all that kind of stuff at protest and in my opinion it should be because I think they can be effective at pulling people in and creating awareness. The counter argument to that is that you can then run the risk of your protest being deemed or perceived as just hedonistic or irresponsible. I thought XR got it pretty good in the 2019 demonstration, particularly with the pink boats at Oxford Circus. They had a sound system there and DJs and people dancing around which worked really well but they also had quite a strict policy on no drugs and alcohol which is not a bad idea really. It means that people stay pretty on it and together. It takes away the opportunity for those that will attack the protesters, of which there are always plenty, to undermine them for only wanting to get drunk or high. It takes away that ammunition. So there are pros and cons but no simple answer. If I was going to organise a protest I would have a party but some people wouldn’t want to.
Dancing is a very good way of creating unity, energy and joy which are important things to have. Often protests are about quite heavy subjects, the extinction of the human and planetary species is about as serious as it gets, so it’s not a bad thing to bring a bit of joy, love and fun into that environment.
"The idea is that when you’re fighting the good fight and you do so in the knowledge that you are following the legacy of those that came before you then you’re more powerful, you have a stronger position to fight from. And so the book is to create awareness of really what was happening and the legacy that has been created for those that follow that legacy. "
Can you talk about the book, when the idea first started to come to life and how your vision for it has come about?
It is my first ever book so I'm learning a lot, mostly about paper stock and supply line challenges among a number of other challenges. It’s a moment of growth and it has been a really interesting journey. The idea came out of a personal development course that was asking what was important to you and what do you want to achieve when all too often we hold ourselves back. I’ve known I have this work for a while and I had been looking back at it all seeing how interesting it was but it had just been sitting in a cupboard not doing anything. So I wanted to do something with it and also we are at a really interesting moment in history. The intention of the book is three things. First I want the book to inspire people and particularly inspire people to take action. 25/30 years ago when I was making those photographs everyone was thinking that the people in the treetops who were talking about the environmental threats were nutters. Half of all the co2 that’s ever been emitted has been done so in the last 25 years, so since those people were shouting from the treetops, which is insane. My point is that if we had listened to the people that the media and the public had perceived as crazy nutcases then we might not be in such a dire situation now. Fast forward to today we’re in a situation where environmental activism has really taken off again, since XR holding the London bridges in 2018 we’ve seen a massive explosion again. There are similar attacks going on with the ‘eco nutcases’ and ‘eco terrorists’ but thinking about where we will be another 25 years if we don’t listen is so much more serious. So the book is, in part, a celebration of those activists from all that time ago who had the foresight to see what was happening and create an awareness of that. It’s also to remind the wider public and those that get to see and hear the book that we can’t make the same mistake again, we’ve got to start listening.
One of the other things going on interestingly is that a lot of the younger generation, even those deeply involved in climate activism, don’t know about the roots of the environmental movement. They don’t know that people were living in trees, they don’t know that bits of London were shut down very similar to XR but 25 years ago. The idea is that when you’re fighting the good fight and you do so in the knowledge that you are following the legacy of those that came before you then you’re more powerful, you have a stronger position to fight from. And so the book is to create awareness of really what was happening and the legacy that has been created for those that follow that legacy.
Thirdly the book is to show the power of direct action activism. It’s important to remember that there were a large number of roads that were cancelled as a result of Newbury Bypass and the negative media attention that created. It was very very influential in the scrapping of all the roads that were proposed. So there is power in direct activism and I would say that XR has been very successful in creating awareness in Britain in the past four years. XR and Great Thunberg bought it into the living rooms and kitchens of people right across the country in a way they hadn’t thought about. Everywhere you look now there is the issue of the environment going on, it’s a massive fight how much has got to be done. It can get quite depressing when you look at what needs to be done versus what’s actually being done however the first step is awareness and that is happening. So the book adds to that awareness and inspiration by looking at the legacy of this movement from 25 years ago.
What is the effect of young people being so directly involved in environmental movements?
With the people who were involved 25 years ago a number of things happened. One is that fighting environmental issues when you are properly on the front line for a long time defending trees it is dangerous and frightening. It’s tough and people suffered PTSD after the Newbury Bypass, people still talk about not being able to bear the sound of chainsaws, these are lasting impacts. People really fought very hard through the 90s and then towards the end of the 90s people became burnt out and in a way the environmental protest movement sort of dissipated. It took 18 years before it really returned again with XR, not exactly 18 years but it gives an idea of how burnt out people were. I think people felt exhausted and burnt out and at times questioned the effectiveness but at other times were happy with what they had achieved as I mentioned earlier with the cancellation of new roads and such things. I think it was a case of winning the battle but losing the war. There were losses with the Newbury Bypass but wins with raising awareness, overall the relationship to the environment has been lost and that has had an impact on people's psychology. I’m really inspired by a number of activists who still, 25 years later, are fighting, creating awareness and dedicating their lives to the environment.
For young people today I think it’s going to be really interesting to see what happens because I think that a lot of XR people will burn out, some already have done, how can we sustain that burn when everything is so much more urgent now? We can’t let it slip for another 18 years before the next movement rises up again. Also I do feel a lot for the younger children now in terms of existential threat. The impact of climate change and the impact on people’s lives across the planet which is really a loss of life and transformation of the world in a way that we could never begin to imagine. So I think there is going to be a younger generation are or will struggle psychologically. It’s really important that we’re on it with mental health and we’re prepared for that because it’s going to rear its ugly head somewhere down the line.
If you could put one object into the museum of youth culture, what would it be and why?
You can put my eye into the museum. My shooting eye is my right eye, you’ll have to wait until i’m not around anymore. Might need a jar of formaldehyde too!
