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Banksy Dismaland Show Revealed at Weston's Tropicana
- chrisBob 11y agoAnyone interested in Banksy but doesn't know much about him? Check out "Exit Through the Gift Shop". About half way through it turns into the most hilarious documentary I have ever seen.
- serg_chernata 11y agoThere's also a great documentary on HBO that follows Banksy's residency in NY.
- stefantalpalaru 11y agoThat one's a bit sad because it shows the local taggers defacing his stencils shortly after they are in place.
- serg_chernata 11y agoI think that's exactly why it's a great documentary. I adore Banksy's work and kick myself every day for missing out on the stuff he sold in NY during that stay in NY. I live in CT, a short ride away. Anyway, it's sad but fascinating to see how other people perceive his work, even if it's completely negative and disrespectful.
- acqq 11y agoWhy not? That's the environment of these works.
- KC8ZKF 11y agoPerhaps that's the idea. The defacement is supposed to happen, and we are to feel sad about it.
- Jtsummers 11y agoI MET a Traveler from an antique land, Who said, "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desart. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read, Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed: And on the pedestal these words appear: "My name is OZYMANDIAS, King of Kings." Look on my works ye Mighty, and despair! No thing beside remains. Round the decay Of that Colossal Wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away. - Ozymandias, Percy Bysshe Shelley Everything we make is ephemeral, nothing will last. It will be transformed by man or by nature. Either in its meaning or its form. And, ultimately, it will fall to the elements. EDIT: I recently learned that there's a second poem, this one by Horace Smith. The two wrote their poems as a competition. IN Egypt's sandy silence, all alone, Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws The only shadow that the Desart knows:— "I am great OZYMANDIAS," saith the stone, "The King of Kings; this mighty City shows "The wonders of my hand."— The City's gone,— Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose The site of this forgotten Babylon. We wonder,—and some Hunter may express Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace, He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess What powerful but unrecorded race Once dwelt in that annihilated place. - Ozymandias, Horace Smith
- nosuchthing 11y agoPertinent on empherialness of art, politics, and existence: "How Wang Fo Was Saved", by Marguerite Yourcenar & Animated by Rene Laloux (animator of "La Planète Sauvage") https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbe_19I0vhs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbe_19I0vhs
- acqq 11y agoThe original story by Marguerite Yourcenar here (starts after the French text): https://switchie5.wordpress.com/2003/10/22/le-vieux-peintre-wang-fo-et-son-disciple-ling/ https://switchie5.wordpress.com/2003/10/22/le-vieux-peintre-... I like it many times more than the animation.
- flashman 11y agoFamous out-of-towner comes and marks your territory? What are you supposed to do, respect him?
- Dylan16807 11y agoPlay the game. Art vs. art. Alter the image to be yours. Outdo it. Don't just put your name real big. Unless we're using a very broad definition of 'defacing', in which case sure go ahead and 'deface' it.
- owenfi 11y agoNot a great one for a first day with someone you barely know (no movies at all on a first date, I know, I was young!) or maybe it is great if you want to weed out uninteresting people.
- chrisBob 11y agoThe start is a little slow. I had a friend get board and turn it off before getting to the best part. Maybe you just found someone with a short attention span.
- uxcn 11y agoThe comparison to Andy Warhol was fairly appropriate.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- BillTheCat 11y agoIt's funny how commercial Banksy's art has become. People track down his art, rip it out of walls and sell it for millions of dollars to the very people that the art is mocking. I like what Max Tempkin said in regards to selling people literal crap for $6 a piece: "... [T]here's no protesting capitalism. There's nothing you can say about capitalism that it won't subsume and sell back to you." [1] [1] http://blog.maxistentialism.com/post/105481561063/ http://blog.maxistentialism.com/post/105481561063/
- serg_chernata 11y agoActually, an interesting bit of information on the topic of selling Banksy's art. The HBO documentary I mentioned concludes with a statement that while several of NY Residency pieces are up for sale none have sold to date. I don;t know if they have between then and now however.
- kaolinite 11y agoMy favourite story on a similar note is how a Marc Jacob's boutique was vandalised a few years ago. The vandal spray painted "ART" across the front of the store. Marc Jacobs responded by photographing it and putting it on a teeshirt and selling it for $700. http://www.huhmagazine.co.uk/3721/art-by-art-jacobs-t-shirt http://www.huhmagazine.co.uk/3721/art-by-art-jacobs-t-shirt
- qq66 11y agoMind-boggling to think about, but could the vandal assert copyright over the spray painted wordmark?
- nosuchthing 11y agoNot really. For reference, Richard Prince's derivative 'artwork', particularly the slight modification of artwork from other artists without consent has more often than not been ruled fair use — http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-17/richard-prince-instagram-and-authorship-in-a-digital-world http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-17/richard-pr...
- msoad 11y agoHow Banksy still is anonymous with all this? If you don't know him, checkout his website: http://banksy.co.uk/ http://banksy.co.uk/ P.S: It's known that it's a "he". That's why I used "he" and "his"
- misiti3780 11y agoone of the UK papers figured out who he was a few years ago. i know he didnt officially admit it but if you read this article it is pretty clear they actually did track him down (in my opinion anyways) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1034538/Graffiti-artist-Banksy-unmasked---public-schoolboy-middle-class-suburbia.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1034538/Graffiti-a...
- WaxProlix 11y agoNot a lot of credibility to the daily mail; it could be right, but they just outright make shit up sometimes. It's basically a tabloid.
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y agoEr, it is quite literally a tabloid. No basically about it. It's not a broadsheet.
- subdane 11y agoIs Banksy Damien Hirst? http://www.streetsworth.com/2013/11/is-damien-hirst-behind-banksy-machine.html http://www.streetsworth.com/2013/11/is-damien-hirst-behind-b...
- modfodder 11y agoIs Banksy a he? http://www.citylab.com/design/2014/11/why-banksy-is-probably-a-woman/382202/ http://www.citylab.com/design/2014/11/why-banksy-is-probably... I prefer the theory that it's a collective of artists lead by a woman.
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- werber 11y agoLooks cool, but god damn it's redundant.
- Brakenshire 11y agoDefinitely redundant. But to be fair if marketing/advertising/campaigning bludgeons the point home (Eat such and such fast food and have a happy relationship with your children! Buy such and such clothes and have a sexy girlfriend! Have you absorbed this political talking point yet!?) it's only fair that people speaking against that are allowed the same license to labour the point to the edge of boredom and despair.
- wmeredith 11y agoHow else would one fight the banality of evil?
- Sven7 11y agoI don't know. Seems a bit timely. Bob Iger of Disney this week has said, that they are at a point with their content/merch/theme parks etc able to "burn out" the entire consuming population of the country if they wanted too... Imagine what that overoptimized machine can do in a few years from now.
- TheOtherHobbes 11y agoMaybe Bob should just Let It Go.
- kevin_thibedeau 11y ago... into the vault for 25 years.
- riffraff 11y agoforgive my question, but what does "burn out" the consuming population actually mean? Also, where is this interview? I'd love to read it :)
- dankohn1 11y agoIf you're not already familiar with Banksy, this is my favorite piece from his New York residency: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zX54DIpacNE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zX54DIpacNE And here is where the Simpsons had Banksy design their opening: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DX1iplQQJTo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DX1iplQQJTo
- sprkyco 11y agoReally wish he would pull something like this stateside at Lake Dolores: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Dolores_Waterpark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Dolores_Waterpark
- chestnut-tree 11y agoThe UK's Channel 4 News has a good video report on Dismaland here (approx 6 mins): Dismaland: inside Banksy’s dystopian playground https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wruEnynr1w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wruEnynr1w
- hristov 11y agoCool. If he moves this to america I would love to apply for a job as a pissed off usher.
- dismal2 11y agoHasn't this already been covered on this season of Bojack Horseman?
- zemanel 11y agoI worked in Bristol between last and this year. Sometime around August maybe last year on a Monday morning, as i was having a work break outside the building, i looked over the corner and a new Bansky was on the wall (girl with the earing). In the afternoon, a wave of admirers was already rolling in. By tuesday, someone had already dafaced the piece, by splashing black ink over some parts of it.
- jkestner 11y agoI guess I'd prefer the defacement to the aforementioned chopping off to turn into sellable art.
- zemanel 11y agoI think that in the end it may not matter; if i had to classify "real" art and was thinking clearly, i'd say "real" art is the message that the piece carries, as the piece itself is just wood, stone, ink or whatever, can be defaced, taken off a wall and sold to a rich guy's living room wall whereas the message is intangible. So i guess censorship would actually be the worst case. Ps. This line of thought relates to some of the other comments in these threads ("... [T]here's no protesting capitalism. There's nothing you can say about capitalism that it won't subsume and sell back to you." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10093768 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10093768)
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- qq66 11y agoInteresting to see how well-made some of these pieces are. The overturned horse and the killer whale look very high quality. I wonder how Banksy produces these and maintains his or her anonymity, as the pieces look like they are the work of large teams of professionals.
- riffraff 11y agoI think it's been definitely shown he actually has (is?) a large team of professionals, if you watch "exit through the gift shop" you will see the setup for some of the works which uses many different people.
- kzhahou 11y agoAbsolutely beautiful work. Love it. At the same time, though, as a commentary by the acclaimed Banksy, isn't "Disneyland is over-commercialized hell" a cliched theme at this point?
- antod 11y agoI'm no art critic, but I suspect Disneylands commercialism is not the target of the commentary at all (more likely the direction of modern society or 21st century Britain or something like that), it is just the physical manifestation or visual theme of that commentary. A bit like how the Stay Puft Marshmellow Man is not really a deity, but the physical manifestation of Gozer the Gozerian. You miss the point somewhat if you concentrate on the marshmellow.
- chad_strategic 11y agoWell played, Mr. Banksy, well played. (golf clap)
- dang 11y agoThere's also http://hyperallergic.com/231114/banksys-new-apocalyptic-theme-park-is-designed-to-disappoint/ http://hyperallergic.com/231114/banksys-new-apocalyptic-them..., which might be a bit more substantive. via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10095509 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10095509.
- ctrijueque 11y agoTwo other links with photos and a excerpt of an interview with Banksy about the park. http://www.juxtapoz.com/current/preview-inside-banksy-s-dismaland-tropicana-weston-super-mare http://www.juxtapoz.com/current/preview-inside-banksy-s-dism... http://www.juxtapoz.com/current/october-2015-banksy-s-dismaland-exclusive-interview http://www.juxtapoz.com/current/october-2015-banksy-s-dismal...
- petercooper 11y agoThe point I've taken away from Dismaland is how most theme parks are already Dismaland. Think of what would make for an awful theme park: high price to enter, long queues everywhere, screaming kids, highly priced low quality food, security checks, a constant push to buy crap.. that's already what we allow to pass as a theme park, yet people willingly sign up to enter.
- andy_ppp 11y agoThings really are getting worse for most people now. Something that maybe we aren't used to as technologists in our little bubbles away from the rest of the economy. Dismaland is not even satire, it's a reflection of what is really happening as the rich try to prop up a system that looks like its about to fail again... buy gold and bitcoin.