aaa-+Wills+Christensen+Civic+Hero

One Nation Under Banksy

Wills Christensen media type="youtube" key="6c_I99mjWhg" height="315" width="560" align="left"  The scene opens with a shot of a dreary London street with large brick buildings on either side framing a dark and damp alleyway, stretching far down the block. The camera pans to the corner of the alleyway to reveal a large red telephone booth lying on the ground, completely twisted out of form, which has a large pick-axe sticking out of its mid-section. Regular London folk stand around this piece, discussing the artist and how this booth can be seen as a symbol of our modern society. The creator of this is known as “Banksy”, a street artist out of Britain who uses his creativity through media and relevant social events to put his message across.

 Banksy began his career as a street artist by creating stencils out of large pieces of cardboard paper and then spray painting the cut-out on walls. The majority of his work takes the form of satire intended to invoke a reaction from the audience, such as a picture of two male policemen heavily making out on a busy London wall. Everyone has a reaction to and an opinion about what they see, and that is exactly what Banksy wants; he wants his work to be discussion pieces that startles you out of your normal boring life. Themes often explored in his wall art include anti-war, anti-capitalist , and anti-establishment sentiment, manifested as iconic black and white images. In 2005, Banksy took a trip to the Palestinian side of the West Bank Wall to paint numerous stencils everywhere in an attempt to show the suffering and hardships that both sides of the conflict go through. This simple but powerful message is important to his global appeal because everyone can look at his images and will generally have a strong reaction. His West Bank art received a huge amount of international press and paved the way for Banksy to be the most desired street artist in the world. Eventually, Banksy started to create legitimate art shows exhibiting his funky style and unconventional social commentary. His most famous exhibition included a piece of work called “The Elephant in the Room” where a full-sized elephant was painted to match the wallpaper in the exhibition room, commenting on our abilities to not be able to see the most major thing right underneath our noses.  In 2010 Banksy decided to embark on a new filmmaking adventure called //Exit through the Gift Shop,// half documentary half mock-umentary where the camera crew follows several prominent street artists around as they create art and organize exhibitions. While showcasing his own work, Banksy also used the film to criticize the street art world for <span style="color: #bd2e2e; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 230%;">selling out and <span style="color: #ce4b4b; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 230%;">repeating the same images and messages over and over until it became mundane and meaningless. Since documentaries are still a relatively untapped market for radical artists to use to spread their message, Banksy has shown that you can promote your own ideas and work while keeping the audience entertained.

<span style="display: block; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 150%; text-align: left;"> The most prestigious result of Banksy’s activities over the years was the nomination by the Academy Awards for an Oscar in the “Best Documentary” category but lost to another film. But I would say that his most important success in the past ten years would have to be the fact that a immense amount of people (all over the world) are aware of Banksy and his artistic style. International renown is not easy to come by, but Banksy has managed to attain said status and keep his artistic integrity intact. What should be taken away from Banksy’s career is this: all humans are bestowed with <span style="color: #d63d3d; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 230%;">humor, <span style="color: #d23232; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 230%;">creativity , and <span style="color: #bd2e2e; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 230%;">wit , and if you are able to produce something that taps into these assets, the possibilities are endless. What I personally took from learning about Banksy is that you should <span style="color: #bf3131; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 230%;">never take anything at face value and even if it feels as though you are a small ant with no voice against the system, that there will always be a way for you speak out. Banksy has taken the world by storm, first by paint then through news and newspaper and now through film. He has always used media as a form of broadcasting his work all over the globe and ignited a <span style="color: #cf2626; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 230%;">new understanding of modern art. <span style="color: #cf2626; display: block; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 230%; text-align: left;"> <span style="color: #ce4b4b; font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif;">__Tactics:__ <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 150%;">I got all my pictures from google images and my __ Exit Through the Gift Shop __ trailer from Youtube. I applied the "Ken Burns Effect" on all still photographs while extending the time slots of each photo to overall extend the time for my commentary. <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 150%;">I am admittedly horrible with Macintosh computers and since the beginning of making this slideshow film through iMovie, I have had nothing but trouble. The reason I chose iMovie as the correct program to use was the fact that the technology guru showed the class all the techniques for that particular program and I thought it would go smoothly. At first I had to figure out how to import images and videos then figure out the whole "Ken Burns" effects correctly. When it came time to finishing my project, I could not figure it out and even searching the web did not completely suffice; so I decided to find the project in the computer directory and drag and drop it into my portable USB drive. The next day I opened up the movie to try and add some voiceover commentary and much to my dismay, the file would not open. Apparently I dragged the project over but did not finalize any of my 'events' and nothing copied over at all. Luckily I still had all my commentary and pictures and videos to put together the movie again, from which I exported my project as a "normal" sized movie and then uploaded the file to youtube and then embedded it into the wiki. The reason why I did not directly upload my video to the wiki is because there are heavy restrictions of files who are too large and I needed to find a video hosting site which would hold the video size. I always enjoy learning new media for a project, but unfortunately this media came with a trial by fire.