Unauthorized Recap of Unauthorized Banksy

The one story that sticks out to me about Banksy was the auction-house piece that shredded itself. That’s fun. I can appreciate graffiti; I’ve been on several do-it-yourself-graffiti-walking-tours in both the U. S. and Canada (I love Canada!). Interestingly, an indoor exhibit can take graffiti from the outside and hang it in a way that it glows from within. It was pretty neat.

You get one guess as to what happened when B and I first got to the exhibit. Like, aside from here’s my ID and vax card. If you guessed that I had to find a bathroom, you are correct. Bathrooms—not just for hiking. This meant careening through two floors of the exhibit, trying not to look at anything so that I would later be surprised by what I saw when I came through the second time to actually see it.

Back to the beginning! There was art. There were very long explanations in teeny tiny writing that we took pictures of to later read. Those pictures are still lingering on my to-read list. In addition to reading, there was watching. Like the Van Gogh exhibit, there was a room of animation. This room was small (a little too small to see what was going on the whole time) and it came with warnings about flashing lights. It was pretty cool, though, because it was as if we were in a subway car and got to travel throughout the world and fast forward through time. The rooms afterwards each had a theme and many included art with a quirky slant. My favorite collection is all about Disney called Dismaland. As a former cast member, I thoroughly approve of every single idea that comes across in Dismaland. Y’all don’t know the half of it.

Phone booths are fun.

Also, a lot of the work tugs at humanity’s collective conscience. War is bad. How people treat other people is bad. People are awful. And also, there’s hope. That’s the gist of the messages. On top of that, there was a small section about CCTV. We turned a corner and, oh, hello, we were on screen. I wish I could say this is the first time I was caught off-guard in an exhibit by realizing we’re being watched and recorded all the time, but it was not. (Let’s remember the Whitney).

After the exhibit, B and I walked aimlessly, winding up really far downtown. She suggested heading to Washington Square Park. That park was alive! Every fourth table was selling some sort of marijuana. In between were artists and musicians. There was a poet offering to write a poem or sell you a penis-shaped candle. (This could be my new endeavor depending on how lucrative this kind of waxing poetic is, and someone should really revoke my writing privileges after that pun).