Lush is back again this week for his third comic in a 10-part series. It’s nice to see a writer defending street art, but maybe he’s just trying to appeal to Vandalog’s audience.. What do you think? – RJ
Comic by Lush
Banksy on YouTube
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.
Banksy + 5: October 5th
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
Banksy + 5: October 4th
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
Zed1 and Phlegm in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn
With so much quality street art and graffiti concentrated within the same neighborhoods — generally those edgier ones or on the edge of gentrification — I am delighted that Zed1 and Phlegm have brought their visions to Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. A rather staid middle-class neighborhood, Sheepshead Bay now boasts two of the finest pieces in town.
In from Italy, Zed1 has been getting up these past few weeks in Brooklyn and Queens. More images to come soon, but these two are the ones that found a home in Sheepshead Bay:
And a few weeks back, UK-based Phlegm painted right nearby. While I had assumed his signature characters were burying themselves in books, the word on the blogosphere is that they’re deep into their tablets!
Sheepshead Bay native Joe Bouganim, the owner of Bottleneck Gallery, organized these walls.
Photos by Tara Murray
Banksy + 5: October 3rd
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
Banksy + 5: October 2nd
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
Banksy comes to New York City, first piece damaged within hours
Update (October 2nd, 11am): AnimalNY is reporting that Smart Crew temporarily replaced the sign with one of their own making, but that sign is now gone too and the entire piece has been buffed.
We now have some idea of what Banksy‘s Better Out Than In project is, the project that was hinted at on his website last month. It seems Banksy is putting up work around New York City (not LA as rumors initially suggested) throughout October. The work above is the first piece of Better Out Than In and is located on Allen Street around Chinatown/the Lower East Side. Pretty much everything that’s known about the project is on a new site, Banksyny.com. There’s also an Instagram handle (@banksyny). Looks like we will be getting regular updates from those two sources as to when new pieces go up. The site currently says, “For the next month Banksy will be attempting to host an entire show on the streets of New York.” To make this like (scare quotes) “a real show,” there’s an audio guide of sorts. Note the little stenciled numbers to the right of the piece in the above image. That’s a phone number (1-800-656-4271) that you can call to hear the audio guide (the item number of this piece is, naturally #1). You can also listen to the audio description (at least of this first piece) on banksyny.com.
As Bucky Turco at AnimalNY says, “So to recap: Banksy, a street artist who puts up work in the street–as other street and graffiti artists are wont to do–will be putting up work in the street. Got it.” But that seems to be missing the point, at least the point of where I suspect Banksy may be going with this. Just like The Street Museum of Art is absurd, there is a level of absurdity in Better Out Than In, but I think it’s probably useful absurdity making a point.
It may be the case that Banksy is trying to comment on street artists’ desires to get into museums or paint legal murals rather than work on the street in a guerrilla fashion. Are Banksy’s stencils good? Yes. Are they usually mind-blowingly brilliant? Nah. As Melrose&Fairfax points out, the concept of first stencil of this “show” is similar to work that went up earlier this year in LA last year by Plastic Jesus. If Better Out Than In continues in this vein of the kinds of stencils and public interventions that we have come to expect from Banksy, then I think Better Out Than In may be using those “typical” works to make a larger commentary about Banksy’s work and street art in general. So it’s not really the individual works that will matter but the show as a cohesive whole. Could Better Out Than In be the street art equivalent of institutional critique, really only using the works of street art as props? If so, Banksy may once again outdo himself, a commendable feat when the question among his fans always seems to be “What can Banksy do next? How can he top that last thing?”. Like I say, it’s too early to say with any confidence if this is what Better Out Than In is really about. So far we’ve only seen one piece and gotten a hint at the larger project, so I’m just speculating out loud and tomorrow it could become apparent that I’m completely wrong and have just my head too far up my own ass to see that yet. Maybe Banksy just wanted to make some jokes that didn’t work as stencils or he’s upset that MoMA hasn’t given him a show yet. I guess we’ll find out soon, although with Banksy it seems that hardly anything is ever completely clear.
One of the questions that people seem to be asking about these works is how long they are going to last, given the recent spike in the number of Banksy street pieces that people have sold or are trying to sell. Well, if this first piece is any indication, the works won’t last very long. This first piece has already been damaged. The sign has been removed and some tags have been added. My partners in The L.I.S.A. Project stopped by the wall late Tuesday night and took this photo:
Or, for the gif-lovers out there, I’ve made this:
The point is, if you really want to see one of these pieces, it’s probably best to keep a close eye on the project website, the project’s Instagram and other social media channels where the location might be revealed (since it appears Banksy’s sites will only be giving an approximate location) so that you can get to the new work before thieves or people bent on destroying it do.
Speaking of other social media channels. I tweeted a bit this evening that perhaps Banksy had joined Twitter for this project as @banksyny, but pretty soon after that I realized that the account is almost definitely a hoax. Obviously there’s no way to no for sure, but the general rule-of-thumb for confirming anything Banksy-related is to see if it appears on his website. While the @banksyny Instagram account is linked to from banksyny.com (which his official site, banksy.co.uk, currently redirects to), the Twitter account is not. So, I think it’s safe to say that the Twitter account can be assumed to be a hoax. Ironically, right after tweeting about the @banksyny Twitter account and believing that it could be real, I tweeted this about how people shouldn’t report Banksy rumors as fact. So, I screwed up on that one…
My guess it that we won’t be posting updates about every new piece in Better Out Than In or news about the project to this blog. Instead, you’re probably better following Vandalog on Twitter or Facebook for those updates (or of course following Banksy’s own site).
Photos courtesy of The L.I.S.A. Project and by carnagenyc
According to Lush… Some possible futures
Lush is back again this week for his second comic in a 10-part series. What do you think the future holds for street art and graffiti? Lush’s first suggestion is already out there as an app by KATSU, but of course it hasn’t superseded painted graffiti (yet). – RJ
Comic by Lush
Melbourne Monthly Madness – August 2013
Sorry this post is so late. I’ve had an injured hand, so typing has been a pain, literally… Here’s my round up for August. I’m calling this month the Video Edition, cos I don’t think I can recall a month where so many awesome videos came out… Here we go…
To start off check out this great video from Jack Douglas. Jack is a talented Melbourne street artist and tattooist; this video shows some of his street and tattoo work. His characters are always awesome.
Another rad video featuring local writer BOLTS smashing some walls across Melbourne with his always super tight style.
Do you know what a “bogan” is? It’s an Australian colloquialism, this video from Melbourne writer AEON (created alongside VNA magazine) gives you a perfect explanation of the Aussie Bogan, lost in London.
LINZ from Queensland visited Melbourne and painted this great piece. LINZ also talks about his time as a writer and how things have changed so much over the years.
This video from Spacerunner is definitely my favourite video for the month. SIMR and Rides showing us how it’s done painting one of Melbourne’s trains in the dark of the night.
Check out this video featuring interviews with Rone, Sandra Powell and Andrew King discussing their views on street art in galleries and the streets and the general attitude towards the art recently in Melbourne.
Rone was in Portland Oregon recently for Forrest for the Trees festival.
A new video from LUSH.
And finally Reka painted this epic 8 story wall in Copenhagen.
Continue reading “Melbourne Monthly Madness – August 2013”