Arts & Culture
COLLINS | Trouble In Dismaland
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By SHAY COLLINS
“This is art with high ‘click potential,’” pseudonymous pseudo-dissident Banksy told Juxtapoz’s Evan Pricco, referring to his latest project. Banksy’s Dismaland, a “bemusement park” that occupies a four-acre long vacant swimming pool complex in Weston-super-Mare (a seaside resort town in Somerset, England), includes work from Banksy and 58 other artists, creating a twisted fairy tale hell. Banksy’s press release states: “It’s a theme park whose big theme is theme parks should have bigger themes.”
Across the pond, however, I fear that the online media reporting on Dismaland footage has inverted the works’ larger meaning. Works that comment on celebrity culture, immigration and police brutality become a tool to prove Banksy’s strangeness and testify just to how far he’ll travel into the realm of the discomforting. To come clean, this column started with a bunch of very sour grapes.