Today‘s Banksy for Better Out Than In is nice and all, but the most interesting thing about it is these guys who covered the artwork with a piece of cardboard and charged for photos. Also, note, this piece is a beaver, not a rat:
For today’s + 5, we have work by Invader, Dain, Dee Dee, Mr. Toll and a few unknown artists (as always, let us know if you know the artists that we don’t):
Photos by carnagenyc, Jamie, Chris Christian, Adrien Fauth and Seth Anderson.
Earlier this week, Tristan Eaton completed this mural, titled Liberty, in Little Italy in New York City. Liberty is just across the street from Ron English’s Temper Tot mural from last October. I helped a little bit with organizing Tristan’s mural as part of my work with Wayne Rada at The L.I.S.A. Project NYC, but this mural had been in the works since before I got involved or The L.I.S.A. Project even existed, and it was the planning of this mural that resulted in the creation of The L.I.S.A. Project. I am so happy to finally see Liberty up on the wall, visible from Mulberry Street and Canal Street, adding something really special to the area. From the moment I saw Tristan’s first mock-up, I thought, “This is going to be iconic,” but Tristan has really outdone himself. Liberty is beautiful and iconic, but it really is Tristan’s interpretation of the Statue of Liberty and American ideals, rather than just a straightforward depiction of an already-iconic image.
If you want to check out the mural in person, I suggest coming down to Little Italy on Saturday afternoon when we’ll have five hours of events planned around Liberty and the other murals on Mulberry Street, including the live painting of a new piece as part of a Secret Walls competition. Bishop203, Epic, SeeOne and Meres will be competing against Greg Mishka, L’Amour Supreme, Buff Monster and Jon Burgerman, with Jay Edlin aka Terro161 aka J.SON (author of the book Graffiti 365) and Tristan Eaton as judges. More info on the Facebook event page.
Lastly, I want to thank Wix.com and all the individual supporters who have sponsored the mural. Hopefully, this is just part one of two, with Tristan adding Justice to Mulberry Street soon.
Photos courtesy of The L.I.S.A. Project NYC
First of all, I’ll quickly note that Banksy did an interview with The Village Voice and Banksy made two covers for the issue, both collaborations with Os Gêmeos.
On Wednesday, Banksy unveiled this installation on the Lower East Side, the latest from his Better Out Than In show/series. According to Hyperallergic, the area had been covered with a tarp recently, hiding any potential work Banksy was doing. It’s not Banksy’s best work from a technical standpoint, but hey, it’s a complicated piece that was presumably executed illegally. One thing that became very clear during our Illegal August experiment (in case it wasn’t clear before) is the pretty obvious point that a mural an artist can spend a week on is usually going to look more visually stunning and well-executed than something done illegally in the dark. Even with the tarp, this installation was risky. So I certainly can’t fault Banksy for the execution.
The piece reminds me of something like Goya’s The Disasters of War series, although maybe that’s just because horses make me think of classical painting… Anyway…
What really strikes me about this piece is the “audio description” component of this installation. Instead of the funny museum-style audio descriptions that have accompanied about half the works in Better Out Than In, today’s was just a snippet of the audio from the Collateral Murder video that was leaked by Chelsea Manning through Wikileaks in 2010. The video shows US Army airstrike that kill Reuters journalist Namir Noor-Eldeen, his driver Saeed Chmagh and at least others (the airstrike also wounded two children). Here is the full Collateral Murder video (warning: this video is quite graphic and potentially disturbing):
A few days ago, I raised some questions about Banksy appropriating audio of an by Syrian rebels that brought down a Syrian military helicopter in his video where rebels shoot down Dumbo the elephant. I’m still not sure what to think of that appropriation, but I think here Banksy did a great job. He isn’t using death to make a joke (even if that joke has a serious point). This installation is a sort of anti-war memorial, and the Collateral Murder audio makes the piece even more powerful.For today’s + 5, we have work by stikman (whose show I just organized at the Mural Arts Program in Philadelphia), Jace, Saki and Bitches and two artists that I’m not sure about:
Photos by carnagenyc, Michel Alessandrini, Chris Beckett, Philippe Vieux-Jeanton, Chris Christian and Damon Landry
Kinda a funny one from Banksy today. As Hrag notes though, even though the intent is different, it’s definitely going to remind people of Elbowtoe‘s street poetry. Still, not a bad piece.
For today’s + 5, we have work by Ever, Never, Clet Abraham and two unknown artists edit: Earth Crusher and Yarbs (thanks to everyone who let me know about Earth Crusher and Yarbs):
Photos by Ever, This is Awkward, Larry Carr, Andre Vandal, Seth Anderson from Banksyny.com
Today for Better Out Than In, Banksy revealed the above balloon piece in Brooklyn. The photos on his site look a bit better, but I have used the above image of my friend Saki Waki because I want to show how this piece is really about audience interaction. On the first day of the show, I wondered if Banksy was maybe using the individual works in this show as props to make a larger point. If we look at the works so far, with this one and the box truck being prime examples, Better Out Than In seems to be at least in part about the spectacle and the crowds that Banksy’s work attracts. The box truck was meant to be a display of calmness, but this is what it looked like once people found out where the piece was parked. Today’s piece is of course reminiscent of Banksy’s classic Balloon Girl image, but now the girl is missing and the audience has to participate to complete the work (the balloon reference also lends credence to Hrag Vartanian’s idea that the show might be Banksy’s version of a retrospective). Other works in Better Out Than In point to the show being about crowds in less obvious ways. With the Random graffiti given a Broadway makeover series, Banksy drew out massive crowds to look at what was essentially the crappiest graffiti in New York City. So, that’s my current theory: The show is about the spectacle that Banksy can create and the crowds (including bloggers like me) that he can manipulate.
For today’s + 5, we have work by ASVP and some unknown artists:
Photos by Bernard Oh, KylaBorg, Hrag Vartanian and courtesy of The L.I.S.A. Project
Last month, just before Banksy teased Better Out Than In on his site, I tweeted that maybe Banksy should make more gifs (he’s made one in the past) because they are “Public art you can’t really steal.” Today, Banksy did something similar and posted a video titled Rebel rocket attack to YouTube. The video is part of Better Out Than In. Check it out:
Although there is of course Exit Through The Gift Shop and Banksy has participated in short films about his work (and it’s fair to assume that this one had his blessing), this is the first time I can think of where Banksy has really posted any video art in the same vein as his street art. Someone please correct me if I’m mistaken about that.
Greg at Melrose&Fairfax wonders, “Sure, [sic] its entertaining, but how does this online video fit into the theme for this show, Better Out Than In?” But what Greg seems to be missing is that the internet is a public space now. So much street art and art in general is made to be seen online be the same public that’s supposed to be seeing street art on the street. Besides, this video is still “out” in the sense that it has been published online, to be seen for free by anyone with the capabilities to visit YouTube, rather than made for a gallery where an art dealer might screen the piece and then sell it to private collectors in DVD format as an edition of 10. This video may not be on a wall, but it’s definitely more out than in. In that same post on M&F Greg also asked, “Why not do some street projecting of the video onto a wall in New York to keep it outdoors?” But nearly half a million people have seen this video less than 24 hours after it was first published. Why do a street projection for a few hundred people? The only advantages I can see to that over posting the video to YouTube are are the randomness of the physical crowd and the shock of a video projection suddenly starting up (and on a silly technical level, keeps the show “on the streets of New York”). Valuable advantages, but YouTube still seems a better route and not out of line with the theme of the show.
Another cool thing about this video is that we actually get to see stats. Normally it’s impossible to say how many people have seen a given work by Banksy. The answer with this one: A lot. But I guess that’s no surprise.
There are at least two questions that the production of this video raises: 1. Was it legal to use Dumbo in the video, and if not, what might happen here? 2. What does it mean that Banksy used audio footage from what appears to be a real video of a rebel in Syria shooting down a helicopter with a rocket in his video (thanks to Felim McMahon on YouTube for catching that)?
As for Dumbo, I’m no lawyer but American courts have generally determined that fair use exists in cases of parody, but not satire. Since in Rebel rocket attack Banksy uses Dumbo as in a larger satire and not to parody the character of Dumbo, it seems unlikely that a fair use defense would fly in (an American) court. So, if Disney cares about this and Banksy didn’t license the use of Dumbo in this video, there could be theoretically be legal issues here, though I doubt it will come to that. Just something to keep in mind, though I only bring it up because I’m a nerd about our messed-up copyright system.
The second question is particularly tricky. Today, half a million-ish people chuckled while listening to audio of a someone being killed. And hopefully, after they laughed, they paused a moment to think about the stupidity of war. I’m not sure what it means, but surely it means something that Banksy appropriated some of that audio from somewhere other than a Hollywood movie.
My initial reaction to discovering the audio source was “Wow, that’s terrible that Banksy used that audio,” but I don’t think it’s so simple. The audio was already out there, as was the original video, so why shouldn’t he use audio that already exists? Banksy didn’t tell anyone to shoot down a helicopter? Still, perhaps it’s disrespectful to the dead, even if they were soldiers in a brutal regime. Before today, I sure hadn’t seen that original video, but now I have. Banksy’s video has more than 10x the views of the video that he got the audio from. Maybe this knowledge makes the video more meaningful. Like I said, I’m still processing this information. It’s something to think about, and I would love to read your thoughts in the comments.
PS, there’s no Banksy + 5 today because I felt like I would have covered this piece on Vandalog even if I weren’t doing the Banksy + 5 series, plus it’s a video so that slightly complicates the Banksy + 5 theme.
UPDATE: Well, while the audio description for this piece says that Banksy (called “Bambi” in the description) “is delivering calm,” the scene on St. Mark’s between 2nd and 3rd Ave is anything but calm, with a hoard of photographers desperate to snap pictures of the piece. So, maybe this truck was a bit more clever than I initially anticipated. So much for calm, the people want spectacle!
Despite the late-in-the-day post, today’s Banksy hasn’t been tracked down yet, although with the sun going down, I suspect we are only a short time away from the piece being found. For Better Out Than In piece, Banksy has installed a fake garden scene in the back of a box truck. Starting this evening, the truck will be traveling around the city “every evening from dusk.” According to the Better Out Than In site, the truck will be in the East Village tonight. I couldn’t help think of Marcel Duchamp’s Étant donnés when I first saw this piece, but Banksy’s piece doesn’t seem to have the same sinister twist. It’s just a bit of greenery (although perhaps fake greenery) in the city. So, get ready to chase down this truck. Or, try visiting a park or (if you have access to a car) going camping this weekend. Either way. Still, I like the idea of this lush little world contained in a tagged-up box truck.
Before getting to today’s + 5, I want to bring up this Buzzfeed article. First of all, the idea is pretty similar to Banksy + 5, which was adapted from an idea by Jonathan Lynn of Anewspace. That could be a coincidence of course, but Buzzfeed has a history of swiping content and ideas from others. Also, the headline, “F#©K Banksy, What About NYC’s Real Graffiti Artists?”, is ridiculous because they they go on the write about 3 street artists, and the only graffiti in the post is what is shown in the background in two of the photos. How about real writers like KATSU, ADEK, KUMA…?
But screw writing about art and graffiti. If Banksy’s audio descriptions are saying anything, they are saying, “YOU ARE OVERTHINKING THIS! LOOK AT THE ART AND ENJOY!” So here are some photos… Today’s + 5 are by Petro, El Bocho, JohnXC and two unknown artists:
Photos by KylaBorg, Olivier Bruchez, svennevenn, Daniel Hadley, Fabian Mohr and from banksyny.com
Today’s new Banksy pieces are my favorite so far of Better Out Than In, his month-long series of works in NYC. Today three new pieces appeared on the project site in a series described on the website as “Random graffiti given a Broadway makeover (an ongoing series).” Banksy has shown time and time again that he is great at placing his works in interesting locations and playing with the existing environment. These are the first pieces of Better Out Than In that have shown that off. These Broadway pieces were located on the Lower East Side and in Williamsburg, but one has already been buffed.
AnimalNY reports that at least one of the pieces may have been painted 3 days ago and has locations for all of the pieces. If we trust the metadata in Banksy’s photos (which can be tweaked), the photos were taken yesterday (can’t say exactly when because it’s unclear what time zone the camera’s internal clock is set for), so Banksy would have painted the pieces and then waited more than a day to photograph them (or at least one of them). But we are relying on two assumptions here: 1. AnimalNY’s source is accurate, and 2. The metadata in the photos is accurate. Sidenote: Other random metadata includes that Banksy or his photographer generally use a Nikon D60 and edit photos on a Mac using Photoshop CS4.
Check out the other two Broadway stencils at the end of this post. First, today’s + 5. This afternoon we have work by DOT DOT DOT (another great example of placement), Peter Fuss, Ludo, SP-38 and Francisco de Pajaro aka Art Is Trash (whose piece is actually somewhat similar to today’s Banksy pieces):
And now those other two great Banksy pieces:
Photos by All Rights Destoryed, Peter Fuss, Ludo, aesthetics of crisis and Dave “NoLions” Stuart and taken from banksyny.com
Once again, I’m much more a fan of the audio description of this latest Banksy piece than the work itself, which may be the point or maybe I’m just taking Banksy too seriously (as the audio description for this piece suggests). Luna Park came across this piece on Wednesday before it was announced on the Better Out Than In site this morning. It was confirmed last night when a description of it became available on the Better Out Than In audio guide 800-number (1-800-656-4271-2#). Hat tip to Ryan Oakes for alerting me to the audio description. Now, you can listen to it over the phone or on Banksy’s website.
And now for our +5, five other photos of street art by artists other than Banksy that were uploaded to Flickr yesterday. Today there’s work by Poster Boy, DabsMyla, Troy Lovegates, Tomo and one unknown artist:
Photos by Luna Park, mejuan, Bernard Oh, Poster Boy, Beverley Goodwin and Marie Guillaumet
So I know that late last night I said that I didn’t expect we would be covering all of Banksy’s new NYC work on this blog (also, did you somehow miss that he’s doing a bunch of work in NYC in October for his Better Out Than In project?). I said that we’d probably just be sending out links on Facebook or that I’d be tweeting about it. But then Jonathan Lynn from Anewspace in Dublin tweeted an idea at me: “you should do a column called ‘this is the new banksy & here is 5 more artists who painted today'”.
Banksy + 5 is a slight twist on Jonathan’s idea. Every time a new Banksy work for Better Out Than In is discovered, I’m going to post a photo of that work, as well as 5 photos of street art by other artists. The photos will be photos are sent to me or were uploaded to Flickr the day before the latest Banksy piece. So, for example, today’s Banksy + 5 includes the latest Banksy (the “New York Accent” stencil shown above) and 5 photos that were uploaded to Flickr on October 1st.
For today’s +5 we have NiceOne, Kid Acne, El Mac, Loretto and a collaborative piece by Shuby, Rowdy and Sweet Toof next to a piece by Eine:
Want to digitally side-bust Banksy and get some attention by being featured in a Banksy + 5 post? Get up, take some photos, and send them my way (rj a-t vandalog dot com).
Photos by Luna Park, Christmas Junkie, Kyla Borg, bernardoh, Sarflondondunc and Delete
