Without consent, no matter the quality of the art, there is no justification for playing the audio recording of somebody’s rape: not for audience experience, nor for sympathy, nor for entertainment. Nelson’s evidence belongs only in a court room, and only as long as it can spur action, in the hands of people willing to turn outrage into protest.
Ultimately, I wonder if actions that simply raise awareness, no matter how superficially edgy, are actually more centrist than radical, causing minimal disruption to the carbon-captured political and economic status quo, and leaving untouched the machineries of the global fossil fuel order. In this sense, Soupgate feels less like a revival of the revolutionary politics Andreas Malm calls for than a part of their ongoing demise.