Banksy on commercialism and public-space advertising
for my lady:
People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.
You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.
Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.
You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.This is one of those tirades that makes a lot of sense as I’m reading it, but that if I tried to put into my own words and convince my parents of, I couldn’t at all.
It weirds me out that nearly every asshole (not everyone I worked with was an asshole) I worked with in advertising fucking LOVED Banksy. Oh, I get it - they want to take his methods and turn it into ways to sell us Smirnoff Tuscan Lemonade.
And because they were mostly failed or frustrated artistic types. Fuck you, dickbags, at least I am doing something to move towards my artistic satisfactions.
#finallygettingoutsomeofmy’gettingfired’rage
