September 4, 2010
Banksy’s Words, Not Mine
Banksy, the reclusive and still-yet-unidentified graffiti artist responsible for guerilla art from Boston to Palestine, gave a brief pseudo-interview to the UK tabloid, The Sun. He speaks a bit about his inspiration:
You live in the city and all the time there are signs telling you what to do and billboards trying to sell you something.
And I always felt that it was all right to answer back a little bit, I suppose. That the city shouldn’t just be a one-way conversation. I didn’t see why you’d settle for just walls. So I started vandalising statues and that led to vandalising parks. It just kept going really.
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I waffle on the matter of vandalism, having known urban neighborhoods where the aesthetic or social merit of the vandalism is next to nil and serves merely to further degrade residents’ lives.
But.
I will say this: that in public spaces I do want to talk back more and more. I’m thinking of a particularly offensive remark by Chicago’s Mayor Daley, uttered a couple of years back in connection with the proposed installation of CCTV cameras here, there, and everywhere. He spoke of the municipal government’s authority to monitor “our” streets and sidewalks, and I remember thinking, “Wait a minute, Richie. Who are ‘we’? Are these not our public spaces — we-the-people — the public?”
I guess that a monopoly of power just gets under my skin, no matter what, and I want to poke at it in some fashion or other.