Banksy Hits New York

So I’m right in the middle of this game of Donkey Kong Jungle Beat (getting the platinum crests) when it occurs to me I might see something of meaning in Banksy’s art. All the obvious art school pranks aside, what Banksy does means more now then it did when say dada-ists or situationists took to hanging their stuff on galleries walls.

First he’s doing all of this semi-publicably. He’s got a website. He’s almost reachable
in the way a friend you meet on aim is, you know he (or a she that likes
fake beards) exists, but their still kinda out there in the domain of your imagination. Recently I’ve been piecing together a body of a girl named Ana via MSN chat and a digital camera, unfortunately not having a camera, her requests for my pictures haven’t quite been met yet. We’ve talked on Skype, we talk on aim, and obviously ya know there’s something there, do we know who each other are? We’d like to think we do. And in a less dating-esque way that’s how you know Banksy aka Stephen Lazarides according to his domain whois it’s not so much his pictures that comprise the piece as much as it is this self that we experience as part of the piece.

do we need another u.s. protest picture? actually yes, in fact we need u.s. protest pictures everywhere and anywhere flooding our sub-conscious with devilish republicans as insidious as Reagen-era drug propoganda, but what’s more important is that here we have a guy who’s sculpting a mythos in html and spray paint and these structures of digital and 19th century display are permeated by a creation unique in our times. We spar with more AIM phantoms than pre-digital pen pals

Banksy isn’t just a web site owner and painter he’s also a phantom limb, hanging just off the peripherary of your buddy list, and even better we don’t accept him as real but as a fold in a British graffitti’s artist’s mind. We know, from his tongue and cheek proceedings, that he’s saying this isn’t me, but it’s someone you might want to know.

Woops forgot to mention all photos from the excellent Wooster Collective

Further correcitons Banksy’s real name is Robert Banks thanks to Nervous Acid