Banksy - Street Art - Thieves - Public Heros - The Popo - Funny Stuff

cbf reading - Check the video below

This is it … Banky’s final New York residency artwork. It’s in Queens.

Over the background of Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York,” the wryly deprecating audio guide begins, “Well, this is the last day of the show and I’d like to say we’re going out on a high note … and I guess in a way we are.”

Banksy’s work is an homage to the ubiquitous bubble letters of graffiti in the city that invented graffiti in the modern era, according to Banksy’s audio guide.

“It has been an interesting experiment but is there an cohesive message behind it?” The narrator asks.

And Banksy makes his case with a mini-manifesto:

“Banksy asserts that outside is where art should live amongst us. And rather than street art being a fad, maybe it is the last thousand years of art history is a blip when art came inside in service of the church and institutions. But art’s rightful place is on the cave walls of our communities where it can act as a public service, provoke debate, voice concerns, forge identities. The world we live in today is run — visually at least, by traffic signs, billboards, and planning committees, is that it? Don’t we want to live in a world made of art not justdecorated by it?”

What do you think?

We’ll have updates from last night’s piece in the Bronx and today’s work in Queens shortly. Stay tuned, and expect my thoughts on the matter on Monday.

In the meantime, this work is located at 35th Street and Borden Avenue in Long Island City, Queens.

We’re on the scene; here are some images — a man (in the lower right corner of the second image) appears poised to take the work, 911 has been called

 

What a scene. We arrived to find the Banksy piece intact and a handful of people standing around taking pictures. It’s unclear who owns the building it was placed on, but the lot below is employee parking for a company across the street. Soon after we arrived, workers closed off the lot because someone had stepped on and dented the roof of a car parked there. “So this sign [the Banksy] just cost someone a couple thousand dollars,” one of the workers told me. “And I don’t even know what it is.” I offered to explain it, but he said “I don’t know, and I don’t care.” None of the workers were happy about all the commotion and the way the Banksy had disrupted their work (including causing a traffic jam).
A young man in a gray hoodie and baseball hat climbed up onto the billboard ledge below the work by way of the fence, and he started trying to set the Banksy free. He untied or cut the strings holding it on bottom, but he couldn’t reach the ones on top. He was communicating with a friend on the ground. I asked the friend if they wanted to sell the piece if they managed to get a hold of it. “Yeah, I mean, if we could get a lot of money,” he answered.
But the first guy was up on the grating for at least half an hour by himself, and he was at a loss for what to do or how to reach the top. He alternated between tugging on the strings and sitting on the ledge, looking forlorn and confused. He would also periodically try to halfheartedly hide his face, as if he were suddenly remembering that what he was doing was illegal. Someone appeared with a ladder, but it took an inordinately long amount of time for the guy and his friends to figure out what to do with it. Finally another man in a blue hoodie climbed up, and the two of them hauled the ladder up and got to work cutting the strings on the Banksy.
In the meantime, the crowd was shouting at them (“get the fuck out of Queens!”), and both the workers who park in the lot and another bystander called the police. (The bystander said he called 911.) The two would-be thieves freed the work and were on their way down with it, via a parked truck, as a crowd formed on the ground to stop them. At that exact moment, the cops pulled up and a fight broke out, as you can see in the video above.
The cops were very aggressive about pushing the crowd back as they tried to figure out what was going on. Even though Banksy’s been in town for a month, they didn’t seem to know what the work was. One of the cops asked the first would-be thief if the giant balloon was his, and he answered, “yeah, it’s mine.” The crowd quickly corrected him.
After a lot of talking, the cops arrested both of the attempting thieves. (Drop too much info Blah Blah Blah)

Once the arrests were done, the cops had to figure out what to do with the piece. They didn’t seem quite sure what to make of an oversize spraypainted balloon worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. (I’m not even sure they knew it was worth that much.) While everyone was standing and waiting around, they also managed to arrest two more people, who knows what for. A few minutes later a van drove up, and the cops proceeded to stuff the work into the back.









Ganked from http://hyperallergic.com/91224/last-nyc-banksy-is-full-of-hot-air/