The KLF did it better. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_Foundation_Burn_a_Million_...
What a depressing story. Banksy stunt is uplifting, that story really made me sad.
An artwork by Banksy shredded itself after selling for $1.3M at Sotheby’s
271–280 of 301 posts
Re: An artwork by Banksy shredded itself after selling for $1.3M at Sotheby’s
#272Some photos of the shredded art: https://hyperallergic.com/464419/1-3m-banksy-artwork-self-de... ; https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/sotheby-s-banksy-ed-as-... ; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Std3LfVx41c
Has anyone been able to find video of the shredding happen? Finding videos on youtube is such a crapshoot nowadays with people uploading/copying the same videos or some lame commentary over static images.
There is a clip on a Instagram "Banksy" account:
https://www.instagram.com/banksy/
I would like to know the details on how he pulled it off, I refuse to believe the auction house was unaware of the stunt.
Re: An artwork by Banksy shredded itself after selling for $1.3M at Sotheby’s
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think two orders of magnitude is a reasonable level of wealth inequality.
What gives you the right to decide what other people do with their stuff? How would you feel if someone came along and said "I don't think two orders of magnitude is a reasonable level of wealth inequality, so I'm taking everything you own to give it to poor Africans"? Imagine two people both making $100k/year. One saves/invests half their income, the other saves 0%. In 20 years, one has a million dollars of savings,…
If you own two orders of magnitudes more than somebody else, that means you can buy the stuff that they might need so they don't get it, such as land and labour.
That's also a form of violence.
I'm not saying that the saver should be penalized and the wastrel favored, you're reading way too much into this.
What I am saying is that high wealth inequality is a sign of decay in a society and it's in the best interest of everyone to ease it.
Re: An artwork by Banksy shredded itself after selling for $1.3M at Sotheby’s
#274Earlier quoted context omitted.
What gives you the right to decide what other people do with their stuff? How would you feel if someone came along and said "I don't think two orders of magnitude is a reasonable level of wealth inequality, so I'm taking everything you own to give it to poor Africans"? Imagine two people both making $100k/year. One saves/invests half their income, the other saves 0%. In 20 years, one has a million dollars of savings,…
> The saver, by exercising restraint and not consuming everything he produces, has contributed more to the economy by allowing the fruits of his labours to be invested, increasing future productivity. Is that so? I'm not so sure. How can we know that the spender didn't contribute more to the economy by spending 50k/year more on goods and services?
I don't think that a rich heir contributed THAT much more to society than, say, a poor Amazon warehouse worker.
Re: An artwork by Banksy shredded itself after selling for $1.3M at Sotheby’s
#275A video of Banksy himself showing how he built the shredder:
Re: An artwork by Banksy shredded itself after selling for $1.3M at Sotheby’s
#276Re: An artwork by Banksy shredded itself after selling for $1.3M at Sotheby’s
#277Part of me feels like this stunt is clever because the nature of the performance improves the value of the work. So it's self-destructive in the technical sense of the term but it was designed in such a way to essentially transform the piece. While shocking in the moment, as the pictures of the scene show, the work has three separate qualities: the original significance of the piece, the new meaning it attains after…
You might be interested in the work of the artist Eva Hesse. She experimented with materials like latex and fiberglass to create sculptures that were almost organic, with skeletons and skin. These materials are decomposing quickly, and while I couldn't find a source for this online, I believe she was intentionally using industrial processes that led to more rapid chemical breakdown. So her creations are (not so) slow…
I’m a big fan of Eva Hesse, but have never heard that she intentionally used the materials she did because of their limited shelf life, cutting short her works’ lifespan like her own.
It’s an interesting idea, however the cynic in me couldn’t help but notice that the domain you link to is for an end of life counseling organization. I wonder if their line of work makes them give this aspect of her work more significance than she would’ve during her lifetime.
Re: An artwork by Banksy shredded itself after selling for $1.3M at Sotheby’s
#278This is just so impressive to me. That this was set in motion in 2006 with the engineering and frame design and executed perfectly 12 years later is just so magnificent I’m almost tearing up. The way the it was shredded and stopping halfway allows the piece to still be hung, and in my mind, this massively increases the notoriety and value of the piece. To prank Sotheby’s like this at the moment that the auctioneers g…
I think it's a set-up. The portion of the artwork with the head at top seems disjointed from the rest of the shredded portion (the original picture has normal human proportions). So, it seems at least, that there may be two works of art. One which remains unshredded and one which was already shredded (and was released by some mech). Whatever powered the light, likely powered the release mechanism for the shredded and…
Bingo. I’ll bet the new owner can run it backwards and repeat this brilliant hack.
Re: An artwork by Banksy shredded itself after selling for $1.3M at Sotheby’s
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
I highly doubt it. I don't think Banksey is worried about a print being damaged.
From the video that Banksy posted, the shredding mechanism just doesn’t make any sense. X-acto blades at that angle wouldn’t shred in the way it come out of the frame. There’s clearly something else happening here. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-bristol-45770028
Absolutely. It would not work. See the other comment suggesting the shredded version was stored in the frame.
Re: An artwork by Banksy shredded itself after selling for $1.3M at Sotheby’s
#280As a magic aficionado my bet is that the picture was rolled into the frame and a pre torn version popped out the bottom. Like the old dollar bill trick. Still impressive.
That was my initial thought, too, because it would be very difficult to store the required power for a high torque shredder for that many years.
Then I realized there must have been a big ass slot in the bottom of the frame, something no art inspector would miss. If the auction house had known about it and then it really could have been done any number of ways.
It's hard to be absolutely certain given the limited photographic evidence, but I think in light of those concerns it's the most likely option.