Generally, the duty of public intervention has been delegated to the State and another very important actor has been forgotten: the individual.Now, the difficulty of focusing on the individual lies in elucidating what the common good is, in knowing if what I like will like the rest. Today, with creative technical means available to people (graphic printers prêt a porter , mobile cameras, free press media in the form of blogs, like this one, etc.) we are all artists. We are all healers. The wall of the official mainstream has been broken and confusion has arisen about what the cultural canon is, resulting in the general public trying to consult, like an indisputable oracle, market trends.
These questions and many others are raised in the interesting, biting and caustic documentary “Exit Through the Gift Shop” from famed street artist Banksy.
The denunciation, a banner that our champion of neglected artists has waved endlessly, has tried to escape, without being entirely convinced, from the establishment, to be a leading actor in the same establishment.
With an extremely aggressive advertising campaign, he has managed to be the graffiti artist of worldwide reference, even hiding his own identity from the masses.
This has not prevented him from presenting his work in spaces such as the Tate Gallery in London or nominate for an Oscar, as the North American Academy has announced. Banksy is up for the 2011 Best Documentary Award criticizing a system that now glorifies him .
This British artist -craftsman for some- also caricatures the great ghost of speculation. That ghost that in the financial field has managed to be a fundamental protagonist of the economic crisis that we are going through and that has been introduced like a virus through the meanders of society. The cultural spectrum has not been immune.
In Spain we see that the excess infrastructure for art is winning the battle against true and effective cultural management. If the Bilbao Guggenheim or the City of the Arts and Sciences of Valencia were a development model, today any town or provincial capital has its “new space for creation”. That is not bad news, neither for Avilés, nor for Gijón, nor for San Sebastián, nor for A Coruña, but the danger of infrastructure inflation without real support to the creative germ: the artist.
And in the streets is where the virtuoso emerges. In urban life, in rural life, at work, in the family, in bars.
Here’s to Banksy, cultural agitator and promoter of public space. Provocateur and contestant who seeks forms of expression, if necessary fighting against the system, against the mayor on duty, against the police, against his professional colleagues and against the market that has helped him so much when necessary.
Welcome to the post 9/11 guerrilla advertising!