Today‘s Banksy for Better Out Than In was a pretty impressive production, a roving truck featuring what appear to be a combination of animatronic and human-controlled animal puppets. Good stuff.
And for our + 5, there’s work by Buildmore, Nether, edit: London Kaye (thanks to Daniel in the comments) and three two unknown artists:
Photos by Damon Landry, duncan c, The Integer Club and allan molho
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.
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
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
