Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio zero.
Speaker 2: Elizabeth. How you doing, I've done pretty well. I'm missing you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know, it's been like twenty minutes.
Speaker 2: I know. I was like, hey, I went outside, I
Speaker 2: forgot who you are. I walked back in, Elizabeth.
Speaker 3: It happens all the time, Yeah, all the time. Do
Speaker 3: you know what's ridiculous?
Speaker 2: Yes? I do, Elizabeth, Oh do sure? Yeah. Do you
Speaker 2: ever heard of a little drink called gator load gator load? Yeah?
Speaker 3: You know, I know, gator raid.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, you're familiar. Gator raid also used to make
Speaker 2: a thing called gator load.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, it's this, okay.
Speaker 2: Gator load two to eighty.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 2: Gatorload is a quote specially formulated to supply the body
Speaker 2: with useful carbohydrates, which the body converts to glycogen without
Speaker 2: the bulk of large quantities of pasta. And it is
Speaker 2: this extra supply of glycogen prior to a strenuous athletic
Speaker 2: event that helps you perform at your peak for longer
Speaker 2: periods of time. Gator load is available in a convenient,
Speaker 2: easy to use twelve ounce singles BA ba blah. Carbo
Speaker 2: loading because carbo loading as a drink. Right. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 2: there's a funny little bit, which is do you know
Speaker 2: much about the Chicago Bulls, Michael Jordan Utah Jazz, I
Speaker 2: told you a little bit about them recently.
Speaker 3: Enough to be dangerous.
Speaker 2: You go, remember in the trains you loft trains, I
Speaker 2: told you about the trains the Great Air during train heist,
Speaker 2: I mentioned them shoes and they were sold in the
Speaker 2: Utah Jazz the finals with the balls in that series
Speaker 2: during when there was the flu game in nineteen ninety seven. Well,
Speaker 2: in back in nineteen eighty eight, Gatoraded invented this thing
Speaker 2: called Gator Load, and they hadn't really you know, popularized it,
Speaker 2: but it was basically spaghetti in a bottle.
Speaker 3: It's like a thing of insured.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's the opposite of what you want before a game.
Speaker 2: So the equipment manager before well yeah, maybe or even
Speaker 2: two days before. So flash forward at this point, we're
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety seven the NBA Finals Salt Lake City.
Speaker 2: The equipment manager for the Bulls accidentally got Gator Load
Speaker 2: instead of Gator Rays and the players were like having
Speaker 2: cramps and their stomachs were bloated distended. It was one
Speaker 2: of the worst fails of all time. Yeah, because gator.
Speaker 3: Load that both teams are just the bulls.
Speaker 2: One trainer said, just the bulls. The trainer said it
Speaker 2: was like eating baked potatoes.
Speaker 3: Oh god, that's like, that's like the episode of the
Speaker 3: Office where Michael Scott carbo loads like five minutes before
Speaker 3: running a race with you know exactly.
Speaker 2: So the Bulls ended up losing seventy eight seventy three.
Speaker 2: If you hear the point totals, you're like, the bulls,
Speaker 2: What that's crazy? Here we go?
Speaker 3: Why close?
Speaker 2: Yeah, but they came back to win the series Go Bulls.
Speaker 3: Yeah it is. You know what else is ridiculous? Elizabeth
Speaker 3: mass Appeal counterculture.
Speaker 2: I like that.
Speaker 4: Huh.
Speaker 3: This is ridiculous crime A podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists,
Speaker 3: and cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free and
Speaker 3: one hundred percent ridiculous.
Speaker 4: You damn right right right?
Speaker 3: Hell saren Are you familiar with Banksy the Tagger graffiti artist? Yes,
Speaker 3: let me woman explain to you please. I love that
Speaker 3: banks He's a pseudonym. What so it's not it's not
Speaker 3: a real name, like, it's not I know, the government
Speaker 3: name English. He's an English artist, like we said, a
Speaker 3: graffiti artist, but not in the sense of taggers or
Speaker 3: like those who just scribble on things.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now he throws pieces up and does like real art.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the art, it's actually very much in the tradition
Speaker 3: of Italian graffiti art, like the o Grafiti. Yeah, that's
Speaker 3: very visually striking and political. So like use of negative space,
Speaker 3: monochromatic palettes, really bold color as highlights. It's very there's
Speaker 3: immediacy to it, accessibility in the imagery, and he primarily used.
Speaker 2: For him this is great, so welcome.
Speaker 3: He primarily uses stencil.
Speaker 2: Base in the sense that's why I think of the
Speaker 2: Italians as the stencil Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, And so it's quick to pull off, it's
Speaker 3: visually sharp, and that technique also aligns with earlier sweet
Speaker 3: artists like Bleack Lorat, you have heard of him.
Speaker 2: And also it also conforms with the hyper consumer and
Speaker 2: the mass production aspects of our culture.
Speaker 3: So Black Lorat was really the one who pioneered stencil
Speaker 3: graffiti in the eighties in France. But and Banksy rather
Speaker 3: than aligns with him, you could go so far as
Speaker 3: to say he ripped him off steals. Yeah, And so
Speaker 3: Black Lorat started in nineteen eighty six there was a
Speaker 3: general strike by students and workers that just ground France
Speaker 3: to a halt. That's when we started seeing these things
Speaker 3: a lot of visual and thematic similarities. But Banksy also
Speaker 3: does installations mixed media. I'm going to put this into
Speaker 3: art speak for you. Banksy's uvre is rich in political
Speaker 3: and social critique. So basically he confronts themes like capitalism, consumerism, war, authoritarianism, surveillance,
Speaker 3: and it's satirical work, thought provoking, and it blends like
Speaker 3: dark humor with this powerful imagery.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like making light of domination or subjugation.
Speaker 3: Right, And let me give you a brief history. So
Speaker 3: in the nineties, Banksy emerged as part of the underground
Speaker 3: graffiti scene in Bristol, England. Ah Yes, and then moved
Speaker 3: to London in the early two thousands, and that's where
Speaker 3: his stencil based stuff got, you know, war recognition. He
Speaker 3: starts satirizing politics, consumerism, war like targeting the powerful. In
Speaker 3: two thousand and four, Banksy released Banksy's Die Faced to
Speaker 3: like to face but a fake ten pound note featuring
Speaker 3: Princess Diane. He in two thousand and five, painted on
Speaker 3: the West Bank barrier in Palestine doing this really powerful
Speaker 3: anti war.
Speaker 2: Imagery lift up the Wall.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 3: Two thousand and six created Barely Legal, which was an
Speaker 3: LA art show that had a live spray painted elephant.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 3: Frintique Global Poverty twenty ten Directed Exit through the Gift Shop. Yes,
Speaker 3: great documentary, Yeah me too, about street art commercialization of
Speaker 3: the art world. Nominated for an Academy Award.
Speaker 2: I bet he did not attend.
Speaker 3: Yeah no, well we don't know, Thank you, Elizabeth. Twenty thirteen.
Speaker 3: I did like a one month residency in New York
Speaker 3: and left Newark all over the city each day. Twenty
Speaker 3: twenty did a COVID nineteen themed graffiti in the London underground.
Speaker 2: I remember that.
Speaker 3: Twenty twenty two painted murals in UK during the war
Speaker 3: depicting like the resilience and the defiance of the people. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So Banksy was originally very counterculture, and then people like
Speaker 3: Brad Pitt started buying pieces and other artists started to
Speaker 3: bite the style, and it kind of has gone a
Speaker 3: little out of fashion. It's not edgy, Yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Would say that it's become like so much so that
Speaker 2: it's canon. It's like museum.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, most definitely So you know, Banksy is widely
Speaker 3: celebrated and that runs counter to the counter culture origin.
Speaker 3: But there are a lot of criticisms. So there's accusations
Speaker 3: of commercialism and hypocrisy. You know, he's supposed to be
Speaker 3: all anti capitalist and anti establishment, but then the pieces
Speaker 3: sell for millions of dollars at auction.
Speaker 2: I thought you were down for ad Busters, man.
Speaker 3: Every time there's an accusation of exploitation of street art culture,
Speaker 3: other graffiti La the other graffiti, or to see Banksy
Speaker 3: is like profiting off of this culture that's criminalized for others.
Speaker 3: People talk about that issue of originality. You know, it's
Speaker 3: highly derivative about you know, the Italians and Bla Clarat.
Speaker 3: So are you a fan?
Speaker 2: You like, I've been a fan. I wouldn't say that.
Speaker 2: I'm like, I still love Bosquiote, like like you'll always
Speaker 2: hear me love, even though he's become very much a
Speaker 2: mainstream artist that people are now like Dutch's biting, but
Speaker 2: it's become like a language of visual language, so it's
Speaker 2: lost a lot of its hits.
Speaker 3: But with Bosquiot, it's almost as if people have an
Speaker 3: idea of what the work is, but they're not familiar
Speaker 3: with his work itself.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because there's so many pieces I never ever see,
Speaker 2: like the Joe Lewis stuff that so like, I really
Speaker 2: like his stuff a lot, and that hasn't happened the
Speaker 2: way that it has a Banksy where it's been almost
Speaker 2: drained of its meaning and value for me as a
Speaker 2: as a witness to it or as you know, even
Speaker 2: as a participant when it's its street art.
Speaker 3: They're not particularly challenging the Banksy pieces.
Speaker 2: And the critique is a little bit uh wan at
Speaker 2: this point.
Speaker 3: I feel like they harkened back to that early two
Speaker 3: thousands when people were really starting to share images online
Speaker 3: and use them as like avatars.
Speaker 2: It feels very George W. Bush, like a rock war
Speaker 2: kind of like what's protest this like? And then carry
Speaker 2: out to like all that World Trade Organization protest that
Speaker 2: energy had. He's like on top of that wave surface.
Speaker 3: You had online image sharing for the first time, so
Speaker 3: like you could make statements with pictures more than an
Speaker 3: other means of communication, and you could really you could
Speaker 3: suddenly save images really easily. So yeah, full Tumblr. We
Speaker 3: hearted picturist aspect the internet, you know, now we're like
Speaker 3: oversaturated with it.
Speaker 2: There's a gift for everything post social media.
Speaker 3: Don't get me started on AI art, but like Banksy
Speaker 3: to me, represents that time where those striking, powerful images
Speaker 3: were harder to come by and anyway, so.
Speaker 2: It was also so easy to commodify things and to
Speaker 2: claim them. Now you know, like not that it was
Speaker 2: always easy just right click, but I mean, like it
Speaker 2: was not the on demand.
Speaker 3: Stuff too, because you when I was looking up examples
Speaker 3: of banks the art you can have like it's printed
Speaker 3: on all shower curtains and like it just.
Speaker 2: Raw covers fans for your room.
Speaker 3: Bizarre. So, like I said, Banksy's real identity is not known.
Speaker 3: We don't know. Still, there are all sorts of theories
Speaker 3: though let me give you some of my favorites. The
Speaker 3: most popular theory is that Banksy is actually Robin Gunningham,
Speaker 3: a British artist. He was born in Bristol in nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy three. Alliance with Banksy's known connections to that street
Speaker 3: art scene. In two thousand and eight, The Mail on
Speaker 3: Sunday conducted an investigation linking Banksy to Gunningham. Based on
Speaker 3: interviews with former classmates acquaintances. They found all these old
Speaker 3: photos where Gunningham has like a spray paint stencil kit
Speaker 3: that's like similar to the banks style.
Speaker 2: Sure.
Speaker 3: In twenty sixteen, this is so crazy, scientists at Queen
Speaker 3: Mary University of London used geographic profiling like you do
Speaker 3: with serial killers, to analyze the locations of Banksy's artwork,
Speaker 3: and then the study found that Banksy's pieces were often
Speaker 3: created near places linked to Gunningham's past residences and social activities.
Speaker 3: And then after like the rise to fame, Gunningham like
Speaker 3: pretty much disappeared from public records and like, so there's
Speaker 3: all the speculation like he's laying though. Another theory, one
Speaker 3: that I like is that Banksy is Robert del Naya
Speaker 3: of Massive Attack.
Speaker 2: This is the one I've heard.
Speaker 3: And I don't say that just because I'm a huge
Speaker 3: huge massive attack, I mean like huge, but it's there's
Speaker 3: a good argument to be made. So before becoming a musician,
Speaker 3: del Naya he was a well known graffiti artist from Bristol.
Speaker 3: He was part of the Wild Bunch crew and that
Speaker 3: was like they were the pioneers of Bristol's street art
Speaker 3: scene eighties. Yeah, even Banksy himself has credited del Naya
Speaker 3: as an influence so right. Journalist Craig Williams he noticed
Speaker 3: a pattern between Massive Attacks tour dates and the appearance
Speaker 3: of new Banksy artworks. Ooh, like you can connect them
Speaker 3: all through these various places. They both have very similar
Speaker 3: strong anti establishment views reflected in their work. Banksy wrote
Speaker 3: the forward to a book about del Naya's artwork in
Speaker 3: twenty thirteen. Banksy's month long New York residency was rumored
Speaker 3: to be inspired by Massive Attacks album one hundredth Window,
Speaker 3: and then when they asked him directly Delnaya, he denied it.
Speaker 3: But it's like, yeah, but I know him.
Speaker 2: Huh. So.
Speaker 3: Another theory is.
Speaker 2: The other theories actually got more.
Speaker 3: Another theory is that Banksy is Jamie Hewlett, the co
Speaker 3: creator of Gorillas. Oh yeah, okay, yeah, there are big
Speaker 3: similarities in like the artistic style and the sames. But
Speaker 3: it's not like supported by evidence.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would say that one matches like wonder wat
Speaker 2: it just sounds fun. Yeah, I think Robert from Massive
Speaker 2: Attacks much more.
Speaker 3: The theory of what I really believe is the case, oh,
Speaker 3: is that Banksy isn't one person but rather a collective Ah.
Speaker 2: Of course that makes the most sense.
Speaker 3: Some people think that banks he's a group of artists
Speaker 3: together rather than a single person. That explains like the
Speaker 3: large scale and rapid production of work all over the.
Speaker 2: World, okay, and also the travel.
Speaker 3: The travel, yeah, because like multiple pieces appear in multiple
Speaker 3: countries within a short time period. Uh huh, So it's
Speaker 3: really unlikely that one person can do that. He also
Speaker 3: has these large installations dismal land Waldoff Hotel that require
Speaker 3: really significant manpower and logistics and resources. So like a
Speaker 3: group of artists working under the Banksy name that makes
Speaker 3: it feasible.
Speaker 2: Could it be like a dread pirate Robert situation where
Speaker 2: there was a bank see, and then he hired a
Speaker 2: new banks to be his assistant, and then he let
Speaker 2: him become the banks and he's retired, and then that
Speaker 2: one has found a new assistant and let him become Banksy. Yeah,
Speaker 2: or like Manudo.
Speaker 3: Yeah, or technically double O seven or yeah exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think it's like they got together and thought, let's
Speaker 3: call it Banksy.
Speaker 2: I like that. That's actually interesting. And a bank of artists.
Speaker 3: Because that's the other thing. Okay, So you have all
Speaker 3: these diverse artistic styles and media. There are some stylistic
Speaker 3: differences from one piece to the next. Yeah, so that
Speaker 3: suggests multiple contributors.
Speaker 2: This is the most fascinating.
Speaker 3: I know, it really is. Remember, in twenty sixteen, Queen
Speaker 3: Mary University did the serial killer profiling, mentioned that it
Speaker 3: found that Banksy's works were concentrated in certain areas, right,
Speaker 3: but that new ones were appearing worldwide at the same.
Speaker 2: Time, so he couldn't be Yeah, there's this.
Speaker 3: It would be absolutely impossible. Now it's not. Maybe. So
Speaker 3: some compare Banksy to other anonymous or like semi anonymous
Speaker 3: artist collectives like the Gorilla Girls female art activists woo ming.
Speaker 3: That's those are those Italian authors who published under a
Speaker 3: show right, I was mystery novel, right, Yeah, it was
Speaker 3: like as a woman.
Speaker 2: A woman won awards for it, and they're like, what
Speaker 2: do we do?
Speaker 3: Corpus Delecti is a French street art group, so it's
Speaker 3: been done before. But then thanks to Reddit, there's my
Speaker 3: new favorite theory. Banks he's a woman. And it's not
Speaker 3: my favorite theory because I believe it.
Speaker 2: I'm kind of embarrassed as sex assigned. I didn't never
Speaker 2: consider that.
Speaker 3: It's not a good theory. There there's this user Bobolon
Speaker 3: who posted onto the subreddit pop culture chat not too
Speaker 3: long ago, the super in depth argument that Banksy is
Speaker 3: not only a woman, but a very specific woman. This
Speaker 3: is actually what gave me the idea to talk about
Speaker 3: banks Yeah, so Bob in Law came in hot with
Speaker 3: the theory, super aggressive, like out of nowhere. To the
Speaker 3: it appeared to be to the puzzle of the people
Speaker 3: who post on there, it was so entertaining. So Bobylon
Speaker 3: Babylon was sort of combative, like I said, and they
Speaker 3: felt really passionate about the matter. It's like they kicked
Speaker 3: down the door to the library's like what exactly? So anyway,
Speaker 3: they think that Banksy is actually Scottish artist Lucy Mackenzie
Speaker 3: hm a good Glasswegian. So I would try and explain
Speaker 3: the theory as presented in the Reddit post, but it's
Speaker 3: very long and convoluted. It was two parts. I only
Speaker 3: read part one. It involves analyzing the backgrounds of photos
Speaker 3: and like knowing the layouts of buildings and interpreting interpersonal relationships.
Speaker 2: It's a lot like JFK conspiracy, for like comparing a
Speaker 2: photo and an outline of a head.
Speaker 3: Like from what angle would that see the street? And
Speaker 3: I found the whole thing cross posted on the Banksy
Speaker 3: suburb it and the top comment there kind of sums
Speaker 3: it up. TikTok drop Top wrote quote, I think what
Speaker 3: is more likely is you have an obsession with this
Speaker 3: Lucy McKenzie girl. Your theories hold absolutely no water. They're
Speaker 3: all ham fisted ramblings that make no sense at all
Speaker 3: when looked at through any logical lens like ouch wow.
Speaker 3: So no matter who they really are.
Speaker 2: About coming in hot, I mean hot, hot.
Speaker 3: Hot, well Peter Tosh for you, So it doesn't matter
Speaker 3: who Banksy really is. Banksy's making serious coin on the
Speaker 3: art real.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And you know what happens when you have art and
Speaker 3: you have money? Oh yes, yes, crime there it is crime.
Speaker 3: Banksies get stolen, even the ones stenciled on buildings.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I want to tell you about some of these today,
Speaker 3: but first we need to pause for some ads the
Speaker 3: rich Feast that keeps us available to the people for Freeze,
Speaker 3: and when we return, Banksy zaren bgsy. First off, did
Speaker 3: you hear about anything cool that you wanted to buy
Speaker 3: and or know about in those ads?
Speaker 2: I wasn't listening. I was playing with the interns.
Speaker 3: Okay, great, because I was listening and I want it all.
Speaker 2: You're much more than I am.
Speaker 3: I am, So it's fantastic bags. His art is expensive,
Speaker 3: so it makes sense that it'd be ripe for theft,
Speaker 3: except for the fact that most of them are on
Speaker 3: walls of very large and movable building.
Speaker 2: That's on wondering are you taking it down brick by brick?
Speaker 2: How are you doing that?
Speaker 3: Not all the art is on the walls. Most of
Speaker 3: it is. There are sculptures, oh right, and they aren't small,
Speaker 3: but they aren't a three story building.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not like having to take a wall down.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: March two thousand and four, Banksy illegally installed a ten
Speaker 3: foot tall statue in a small square near Shaftesbury Avenue
Speaker 3: in London. And the statue is called the Drinker and
Speaker 3: so it was modeled after rodinand's the thinker, sure, but
Speaker 3: like a sloppier version. And he had a traffic cone
Speaker 3: on his head. And that hearkens to a very famous
Speaker 3: statue in Glasgow, which is which is the Duke of
Speaker 3: Wellington statue there. It was put up in eighteen forty four.
Speaker 3: It's in front of the Gallery of Modern Art, and
Speaker 3: the good people of Glasgow make sure that he is
Speaker 3: always wearing a traffic cone on his head.
Speaker 2: Really.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's on a horse, Duke of Wellington horse four
Speaker 3: feet down and like people scale up. It's a big statue. Huh,
Speaker 3: always has a traffic cone on his head.
Speaker 2: Guy who beat Napoleon.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sometime in the eighties it started and so the
Speaker 3: city has asked people to not keep replacing it every
Speaker 3: time it comes down. But you can't tell them nothing.
Speaker 2: Does it mean anything to that it's fun.
Speaker 3: So twenty thirteen there was a proposal to raise the
Speaker 3: plinth the base of the statue to make people couldn't
Speaker 3: get out here impossible for drunkers to scale it and
Speaker 3: put the cone on the head.
Speaker 2: Oh, they don't heave it up. They actually get time up. Wow.
Speaker 3: And so the city was like, look, it cost us
Speaker 3: one hundred pounds per call out to take it down
Speaker 3: and we're running about ten grand a year entertainment. But
Speaker 3: the people they rallied the plan got ditched. It's now
Speaker 3: it's become a part of the fabric of Glasgow. So
Speaker 3: during the twenty twelve someone took the normal safety orange
Speaker 3: cone and swapped it with a gold one for the
Speaker 3: Olympics to celebrate Scotland's contribution to the record number of
Speaker 3: gold medals won by Team Green Britain. Oh twenty fourteen,
Speaker 3: when the Scots were voting on independence, someone put a
Speaker 3: yes cone on the head It's Glasgow. On Brexit Day
Speaker 3: thirty first of January twenty twenty, pro European supporters again
Speaker 3: It's Glasgow placed a cone painted to represent the EU
Speaker 3: flag on the statue. During COVID nineteen, someone put a
Speaker 3: blue surgical mask around the ears. Shout out to the
Speaker 3: lockdown March of twenty twenty two in support of Ukraine
Speaker 3: and then as a protest against Russia's invasion of it,
Speaker 3: they put a cone with the colors of the Ukrainian flag.
Speaker 3: Cool and then keeping on topic, in June of twenty
Speaker 3: twenty three, to promote his exhibition at the Gallery of
Speaker 3: Modern Art in Glasgow, they put Banks up there, you
Speaker 3: know Banks. He declared that the statue was his favorite
Speaker 3: work of art in the UK really because of the cone.
Speaker 2: I figure that because also the participatory in nature the
Speaker 2: street as it's playful.
Speaker 3: It's playful and it is like you know changing, yeah,
Speaker 3: and it's I've seen so many I've first of all,
Speaker 3: I walked by it a ton of times when I
Speaker 3: live there. But like I've seen people putting it back
Speaker 3: up after like it blows down in a storm like
Speaker 3: I did not, but I've seen them. And then there
Speaker 3: are great pictures of people's scale it to put it back.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, imagine people are like cheering and stuff.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah yeah. So back to March two thousand and
Speaker 3: four the Drinker Ah Yes. A few days after it
Speaker 3: got put up, a group of masked thieves known as
Speaker 3: art Kaida, led by a self professor give you that one,
Speaker 3: thank you, don't give it to me, led by a
Speaker 3: self professed quote art terrorist named Andy Link. He called
Speaker 3: himself AK forty seven. They stole it. So the thing
Speaker 3: is six feet tall, super heavy. They stole it in
Speaker 3: broad daylight. They just loaded it onto a flatbed truck.
Speaker 3: It's not it's not a sanctioned piece of public arts
Speaker 3: like all's fair.
Speaker 2: I suppose, basically trash.
Speaker 3: So he said he quote kidnapped it, and then he
Speaker 3: registered this quote find as he said with the police,
Speaker 3: like look what I found. And so then he reaches
Speaker 3: out to the press. He sent a ransom note to
Speaker 3: a reporter demanding five thousand pounds in exchange for the
Speaker 3: safe return of.
Speaker 2: The sculpture, that's all five thousand.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So this drums up a lot of coverage.
Speaker 2: Banks.
Speaker 3: He speaks up banks, He's like, I hear you. I
Speaker 3: will give you two quid towards a can of petrol
Speaker 3: to set it on fire. Yeah, it's like whatever. So
Speaker 3: Link he just keeps it in his garden. It's got
Speaker 3: in his yard.
Speaker 2: It's like, well he disowns. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So then three years goes by, he's like, do you
Speaker 3: want to get famous off this? Try again? Three years
Speaker 3: goes by. Then someone broke into Link's yard while he
Speaker 3: was away and stole.
Speaker 2: It from him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because all's fair. Of course Link didn't think all
Speaker 3: was fair. He went to the police to report the stuff.
Speaker 2: If he's stolen, good yeah, Art.
Speaker 3: Kaida Ak forty seven went.
Speaker 2: To the police.
Speaker 3: Yeah right. Twelve years goes by my stuff. Yeah, he's
Speaker 3: like a cab until it's.
Speaker 2: Funny, until it's my stolen statue.
Speaker 3: Twelve years goes by, world keeps turning. Twenty nineteen, the
Speaker 3: statue reappeared. Not in someone's yard, No, it showed up
Speaker 3: in the Southeby's auction catalog or the contemporary curative estimated
Speaker 3: sale price of seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds to
Speaker 3: one million pounds.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's why I thought it'd be like a lull
Speaker 2: over one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was like, by far the priceiest item in
Speaker 3: the lot. So when asked about selling stolen goods, Southeby
Speaker 3: said it was totally satisfied that the seller had a
Speaker 3: legal right to put Peace up for auction, and they said,
Speaker 3: we consulted both the Metropolitan Police and the Art Loss Register,
Speaker 3: and so Southeby's sale notes say the work was quote retrieved.
Speaker 3: So this basically means that Banksy stole it back from link. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and according to Southeby's and the seller quote, the work
Speaker 3: was mysteriously retrieved from Art Kaida's lock up in an
Speaker 3: anonymous heist which left AK forty seven with nothing but
Speaker 3: the abandoned traffic cone from atop the drinker's head that's
Speaker 3: in the catalog for the auction.
Speaker 2: That's amazing. Can you imagine that if Banksy, if it
Speaker 2: is one person like I say, it's Robert and actually
Speaker 2: was involved in the heights that I came in another
Speaker 2: person and he got caught trying to steal a bank
Speaker 2: and identity banking because he's trying to steal a banks
Speaker 2: and he doesn't say he's not him.
Speaker 3: Well, how do you prove your banks right? So when
Speaker 3: Banksy items are sold at auction, they're only seen as
Speaker 3: authentic if they carry a certificate of authenticity from quote
Speaker 3: Pest Control. And that's this like shadowy organization that handles
Speaker 3: all of the inquiries for Banksy. And so Banksy and
Speaker 3: or representatives declined to comment on the matter of the drinker.
Speaker 2: If you want to contact Bill Murray have to call
Speaker 2: a payphone.
Speaker 3: Yes, exactly, so link so that according to the law,
Speaker 3: since the statue wasn't legally installed, it was in essence
Speaker 3: abandoned property. And he quote found it and reported that
Speaker 3: to the police, registering it and that banks he never
Speaker 3: filed the police reporter asked for it back. So he's
Speaker 3: the clear owner and he had like documents and case
Speaker 3: numbers to back.
Speaker 2: This all up law precedence.
Speaker 3: Such a nerd and so then he told the Guardian quote,
Speaker 3: I did the right thing and reported it to the police.
Speaker 3: I do not understand how Southeby's can sell this when
Speaker 3: I have such proof.
Speaker 2: Citing Captain Henry Morgan against the State of Jamaica. I'm seventeenth.
Speaker 2: I mean, what are we doing?
Speaker 3: Sutheby's didn't care really bet, But the day before the auction,
Speaker 3: Southeby's legal team sent a letter to Link and they
Speaker 3: were like, we totally we reassert our rejection to your claim,
Speaker 3: and it would quote require a cogent and persuasive case
Speaker 3: with appropriate evidence before after taking instructions from the consigner,
Speaker 3: altering the planned sale process on any legal grounds related
Speaker 3: to purported title claim by you. And so they acknowledge
Speaker 3: quote the interesting story of Link's involvement in this piece
Speaker 3: in two thousand and four. But they also then said
Speaker 3: there was quote no reason why the consigner of the
Speaker 3: work subsequently authenticated by Banksy's authentication process, does not have
Speaker 3: title to sell. But then one hour before the auction
Speaker 3: was supposed to start, it gets pulled. What Yeah. In
Speaker 3: a statement, Sotheby's wouldn't offer details, saying only quote, the
Speaker 3: work has been withdrawn in agreement with the consigner. So
Speaker 3: where it is now I cannot know.
Speaker 2: We're just not selling, we're just selling.
Speaker 3: I think he did it just mess with Link. Maybe so.
Speaker 3: Banksy's work traffics in iconography, and one image that he
Speaker 3: uses as his sort of avatar is a rat. Yes,
Speaker 3: the rat has been Banksy's alter ego for years and something. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3: In his book wall in Piece, he said, quote rats
Speaker 3: exist without permission. They are hated, hunted, and persecuted. They
Speaker 3: live in silent despare amid filth, and yet they're capable
Speaker 3: of bringing entire civilizations to their knees. If you are dirty, insignificant,
Speaker 3: and unloved, then rats are your ultimate model.
Speaker 2: Telling you the Bubonic plague messed up the European imagination
Speaker 2: like the mongol or they just have not gotten over.
Speaker 3: The you know when when you're down trodden and your
Speaker 3: work's worth over a million dollars.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a rat, it is.
Speaker 3: In twenty eighteen, one of his rats was stolen. Really yeah.
Speaker 3: So it was stenciled on the back of a sign
Speaker 3: for the car park outside of the pompad Center impact.
Speaker 2: I was assuming it's like one of like the larger
Speaker 2: plastic type.
Speaker 3: It was on a parking sign on the back of it. Yeah.
Speaker 3: The image it was like a masked rat holding a
Speaker 3: box cutter, like it's going to make a stencil. And
Speaker 3: this wasn't the first time someone tried to take it.
Speaker 3: A year earlier. The heist of it was foiled by
Speaker 3: museum security, and so the museum they put a piece
Speaker 3: of plexiglass around it. They put a case the center,
Speaker 3: but they did that didn't stop these guys. So while
Speaker 3: the Pampa do houses Europe's biggest collection of contemporary art,
Speaker 3: it doesn't own that particular banks you were. Nevertheless, they
Speaker 3: filed a complete point for destruction of property their parking sign,
Speaker 3: you know, after all, Oh good point. So a spokesman
Speaker 3: for the Pompadou Center send quote, we are sad to
Speaker 3: inform you that Banksy's work of art facing our building
Speaker 3: on Rue Bobard was stolen during the night. Although this
Speaker 3: piece was not part of our collection, we were proud
Speaker 3: that the artists had chosen the side of our building
Speaker 3: to create it as an homage to the events of
Speaker 3: May sixty eight. We are filing a legal complaint.
Speaker 2: Whoa May sixty eight, they.
Speaker 3: Say, So let me speak on that for a second, please.
Speaker 3: May nineteen sixty eight, the French May Swazzlweet was a
Speaker 3: period of incredible protests, strikes and unrest in France that
Speaker 3: began May nineteen sixty eight, and it started with student
Speaker 3: demonstrations in March of that year, one hundred and fifty
Speaker 3: students as well as like some well known poets, musicians, artists,
Speaker 3: they occupied an administration building at Paris University at nonterre
Speaker 3: groups whom director Jean Luke Godard had called the children
Speaker 3: of Marx and Cocoa co in Masculino feminol two years.
Speaker 2: Earlier, So way to bring in the gadara like that,
Speaker 2: thank you.
Speaker 3: They were protesting discrimination in French society and the political
Speaker 3: bureaucracy that was impacting the university's funding. Ah so you know,
Speaker 3: cutting funding the universities, which has far reaching and devastating
Speaker 3: effects to the culture and the economy. So this demonstration
Speaker 3: had ended peacefully, but that's seen as like the start
Speaker 3: of the movement. The protests that non ter didn't stop,
Speaker 3: and so when the college cracked down on the students,
Speaker 3: other university students throughout the city, including at Sorbon, they
Speaker 3: joined the protest, and then the faculty joined in and
Speaker 3: the demonstrations they turned violent and people were arrested. But
Speaker 3: then the high school kids joined in and things got crazier,
Speaker 3: and so then the young workers joined in. Oh yeah,
Speaker 3: there was a riot. Eventually more than a million people
Speaker 3: marched in Paris and the students they now had the
Speaker 3: support of the public at large, and pretty soon workers
Speaker 3: of all ages were protesting all over the country because
Speaker 3: they had grievances too, you know, like the minimum wage
Speaker 3: hadn't increased, but prices had. People were living paycheck to paycheck,
Speaker 3: and the working class they were being sacrificed for the
Speaker 3: benefit of the wealthy.
Speaker 2: And it's just spent a ton of their money and
Speaker 2: their future trying to fight Algerian independence. There's a bunch
Speaker 2: of other stuff going on over into China.
Speaker 3: At the time, Vietnam, and so then so there's all
Speaker 3: this momentum. Slowly the unions start to strike and then
Speaker 3: there's a general strike and there were more riots. People died,
Speaker 3: but the fight continued, and so it just came to
Speaker 3: a head, and pretty soon the government collapsed and an
Speaker 3: election was called, and they were a hair away from
Speaker 3: a full revolution. I remember, they know that they've been
Speaker 3: through it before. And the French Revolution itself was inspired
Speaker 3: by the American Revolution back when we said we don't
Speaker 3: want a monarch, especially one who's going to use taxes
Speaker 3: to keep us in line with no representation or return.
Speaker 3: We reject dictators and kings over here things. Yeah, so
Speaker 3: May sixty eight one of the most significant social uprisings
Speaker 3: in modern European history. It had a major impact on
Speaker 3: French politics, labor and workers, art, and like the culture
Speaker 3: writ large and to this day that spirit of radical
Speaker 3: thought and activism is just imbued. Yeah, we totally. Like
Speaker 3: you know, when they the farmers come, they they dump
Speaker 3: manure on the steps and they wheel out barbecuest So
Speaker 3: you got it. You gotta make your voice heard back
Speaker 3: to Banksy, right, mask rat with a knife it was.
Speaker 3: It was never recovered.
Speaker 2: Really.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so here it's in this space like at the beginning,
Speaker 3: like to mark the beginning of this this uprising. It's gone.
Speaker 3: It is now in that liminal space where art stolen
Speaker 3: art goes. It's probably hanging in the home of like
Speaker 3: a billionaire who profits off the squelching of the rights
Speaker 3: students and work, something like that. Anyway, possibly let's take
Speaker 3: a break and when we return more Banksy. Yeah, Banksy, Banksy.
Speaker 3: I've talked about pieces of his that were somewhat mobile, right,
Speaker 3: but the bulk of his stuff is on the side
Speaker 3: of a big building.
Speaker 2: Yes, this is what I'm curious about. This is what
Speaker 2: I want to know. How do you building.
Speaker 3: Stop him from being stolen. There's this piece that he
Speaker 3: did called slave Labor, and it's a stenciled image in
Speaker 3: which a young boy is like hunched over a sewing
Speaker 3: machine making union jack bunting. Okay yeah, And it popped
Speaker 3: up on a wall in wood Green, North London in
Speaker 3: May of twenty twelve, just before the Queen's Diamond Jubilee celebrated.
Speaker 3: So it was created to protest the use of sweatshops
Speaker 3: to make all the merch for the jubilee and the
Speaker 3: twenty twelve Olympics. Little kids so in the butcher's apron
Speaker 3: halfway around the world for pennies, while the Queen lives
Speaker 3: on the dole and the wealthy can afford to buy
Speaker 3: tickets to Olympic events.
Speaker 2: I feel it.
Speaker 3: So what business was in the building where the mural
Speaker 3: was painted?
Speaker 2: What business was in the building that was in the
Speaker 2: mural that was painted? Elizabeth, thank you?
Speaker 3: Pound Land?
Speaker 2: What oh write the store? The UK equivalent of dollar
Speaker 2: trees always sounds so dirty, and I've been in one.
Speaker 3: It started out where everything in there was a pound,
Speaker 3: Like everything in dollar tree was a dollar. Although I
Speaker 3: think that's not quite true any And the only way
Speaker 3: you can get a place where everything only costs a
Speaker 3: dollar or a quid is for those items to have
Speaker 3: been made on the super cheap, generally by people who
Speaker 3: are not making a living wage.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Sometimes we weren't even adults, not even close.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And in some cases these folks are in essence
Speaker 3: slave labor because, like you know, they have absolutely no
Speaker 3: alternative to working for pennies a day in that.
Speaker 2: Factory, financially compelled to.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're locked and they're not like chained to a
Speaker 3: wall or but they're in.
Speaker 2: They're not bought and sold, but their life might as
Speaker 2: well be.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 3: So when that banksy appeared on the wall, the neighborhood
Speaker 3: was stoked. According to the New York Times quote, the work,
Speaker 3: called slave labor and depicting a downtrodden, barefoot boy making
Speaker 3: union jacks on a sewing machine, had become a point
Speaker 3: of pride and harringy, the site of some of the
Speaker 3: nastiest rampages in the twenty eleven London Riots. Stenciled onto
Speaker 3: the wall of the Everything Costs a pound pound land
Speaker 3: Store on Wymark Avenue, it drew visitors from across London
Speaker 3: and abroad. So many people ask for directions that the
Speaker 3: local subway station erected a special this way to our
Speaker 3: banksy sign. There really isn't any other reason people would
Speaker 3: come to wood Greens, said even Damesa, who lives nearby,
Speaker 3: speaking of the neighborhood that housed the work. Isn't it
Speaker 3: zaren closure eyes? Oh yeah, close picture. You are a
Speaker 3: large Bulgarian man. Your name is Dimitar. You work in
Speaker 3: a small coffee shop slash bakery called Sini on High
Speaker 3: Road in North London in wood Green. The sign above
Speaker 3: the door reads in all caps Bulgarian, Albanian, Turkish, English, Spanish,
Speaker 3: European bakery Europeans misspelled by the way. Another sign says
Speaker 3: in Bulgarian and block cyrillic script, Sunny the pastry Maker.
Speaker 3: You live just a few blocks away in the Sandlings
Speaker 3: Estate Council housing projects. It's a large, brutalist brick square
Speaker 3: mass of flats from afar, it almost looks like some
Speaker 3: sort of factory, but it's surrounded by green space and
Speaker 3: parks and trees, and it's right by the high street.
Speaker 3: Great location. So each morning you ride early and you
Speaker 3: head over to the bakery to get things started with
Speaker 3: your coworkers. The place opens at five point thirty each morning.
Speaker 3: People come from all over to get the spinach and
Speaker 3: white cheese boric. Not just Eastern Europeans looking for a
Speaker 3: taste of home, but anyone who tries your food, even
Speaker 3: just once, you will love it.
Speaker 2: Boss.
Speaker 3: You tell them so. On this morning, you're up before
Speaker 3: the light. You put on your coat against the chill
Speaker 3: of a February morning, and you head out toward Wymark Avenue,
Speaker 3: the side street that runs from your place to high
Speaker 3: Road where the bakery is. What's great about this commute
Speaker 3: isn't just the short walk, but the fact that you
Speaker 3: get to walk by a famous painting every day. Banksy
Speaker 3: painted a kid sowing a banner of British flags last year.
Speaker 3: It's low on the wall to make it look like
Speaker 3: the kids sitting on the ground. It's clever, you think,
Speaker 3: but it's also a very big deal, and a lot
Speaker 3: of people come to take pictures, either of just the
Speaker 3: piece itself or of themselves squatting next to it. The
Speaker 3: local council put a large piece of plexiglass over it
Speaker 3: to protect it from the elements and from people. The
Speaker 3: best part is that it drives a lot of foot
Speaker 3: traffic to the bakery. The people who've gotten to take
Speaker 3: pictures feel good about themselves getting quote ethnic food from
Speaker 3: the neighborhood. You know that once they try that borick though,
Speaker 3: they'll be hooked. You walk down the sidewalk, just the
Speaker 3: sound of a garbage struck in the distance and a
Speaker 3: bus going by. As you approach the corner and the
Speaker 3: bank se something seems off. You get closer and see
Speaker 3: that there's rubble all over the ground. Your footfall quickens
Speaker 3: as you jog over to the mural, but there is
Speaker 3: no mural, just a big square in the plaster with
Speaker 3: the underlying brick now exposed. The bank sea is gone.
Speaker 3: You stand there and disbelieve who steals a mural off
Speaker 3: the wall. Just then you hear a few young fellows approaching,
Speaker 3: just coming home after a night out. That's not unusual
Speaker 3: for you to feel the start of your day past
Speaker 3: the debauched clothes of another's day. Like how do they
Speaker 3: say ships in the night. It's like the blood coursing
Speaker 3: back and forth through the city, you think, in this enorming,
Speaker 3: living creature of a city. One of the boys drops
Speaker 3: a bottle and they all laugh, and as they get
Speaker 3: closer they stop OI. One of them yells, what'd you do?
Speaker 3: You look at the guys and then back at the
Speaker 3: hole where the mural used to be. You put your
Speaker 3: hands up. No, no, I just got here. I didn't
Speaker 3: do this. You tell them with great alarm in your voice,
Speaker 3: a level of distress that surprises you as it comes
Speaker 3: out of your mouth. You tell them that someone stole
Speaker 3: the banksy right off the wall. The four of you
Speaker 3: now stand agog in front of the empty space. Can't
Speaker 3: have anything nice? One of the lads says, no, you
Speaker 3: tell them we can't, so saren, Yes, someone cut the
Speaker 3: banksy right off the wall. I think my theory is
Speaker 3: that the plexiglass shield actually made it easier to cut
Speaker 3: around and lift the plaster in one piece.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, I used to be a fummer painter, right,
Speaker 2: So if I was to attempt to cut plaster off,
Speaker 2: there are ways to do it, but to get it
Speaker 2: off of whatever it's attached to, like that, uh, the
Speaker 2: substrate surface. I would rather cut the bricks. When you
Speaker 2: cut the bricks, they can start to come apart. Now
Speaker 2: you would, you would hope that it would all be pretty,
Speaker 2: you know, connected because of the plaster and in time,
Speaker 2: it's kind of like settled into itself, so it wouldn't
Speaker 2: be so brittle where it's because it's gonna come apart
Speaker 2: if you remove the bricks. But if you remove the bricks,
Speaker 2: they would come it like you'd have to follow the
Speaker 2: grout line or else just cut right through stuff. So
Speaker 2: that's weird. And yeah, I'm with you that the plexiglass
Speaker 2: would basically give you a front face you can kind
Speaker 2: of lean it on as you're pulling it off the wall.
Speaker 2: It's not going to come apart in that one. You
Speaker 2: have a lot of dimensions you're working with. You think
Speaker 2: about it a kite width with all that, so you're
Speaker 2: taking out one of those that that helps, But I
Speaker 2: would be a tough one. I would want like you
Speaker 2: know the way the art preservers do it, where you
Speaker 2: basically dremble the whole thing off the walls. So you
Speaker 2: just cut it off and then you dremble the backside too,
Speaker 2: so you're not really ever using chisels.
Speaker 3: Or anything else. Yeah, I think that's probably a very
Speaker 3: clean cut.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I mean that's and then two once again,
Speaker 2: I mean for the backside cut and getting it off
Speaker 2: the bricks. I mean, there are tools, there's ways to
Speaker 2: do this, but like, how do you muffle the noise?
Speaker 3: I don't know, but god, I love a dremal, know
Speaker 3: you do? Anyway? The neighborhood stunned, absolutely stunned. From the
Speaker 3: New York Times quote, it had been ripped out with
Speaker 3: no explanation, along with quite a substantial chunk of the wall,
Speaker 3: said Alan Strickland, a member of the local council, describing
Speaker 3: the bizarre scene that greeted passers by the other weekend.
Speaker 3: All that was left was this hole. So not long
Speaker 3: after the hole appeared, some construction guys showed up.
Speaker 2: So it sounds like they took the bricks too.
Speaker 3: No, you can see the bricks are there?
Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, it's just if you took the bricks.
Speaker 3: No, they didn't that. These construction guys show up, they
Speaker 3: start to patch the wall, and everyone's saying, well, who
Speaker 3: hired you to do this? They won't say, They won't
Speaker 3: discuss anything. And that's like who owns this mural? Right,
Speaker 3: So the legal opinion is generally that banks these murals
Speaker 3: are not his totally. They belong to whomever was the building.
Speaker 3: And so this particular wall was not owned by pound Land,
Speaker 3: but rather the company it leases the space from, wood
Speaker 3: Green Investments, and that company they refused to comment. So
Speaker 3: a lawyer for the company, this guy by the name
Speaker 3: of Matthew Dillon, who did not star in Rumblefish or
Speaker 3: There's something about Mary, he told the Financial Times quote,
Speaker 3: if they deny removing the mural, they will become embroiled
Speaker 3: in an international criminal investigation. And if they admit to
Speaker 3: consenting to it, then they will become the target of abuse.
Speaker 3: The advice to my client has been to say nothing interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's really interesting. So what about the idea that
Speaker 2: they would remove it and secretly sell it because they
Speaker 2: own it.
Speaker 3: That's so. He said that his clients didn't report any
Speaker 3: theft to the police.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: That so it was just weeks later that the mural resurfaced.
Speaker 3: Oh weeks this time in Miami.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, there's a big thing there, a big event.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, Fine Art Auctions. They are prepping to sell
Speaker 3: it at their auction. They figured it out. Yeah, no,
Speaker 3: it showed up in an auction house. They figured it
Speaker 3: would get between five hundred thousand, seven hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 3: And so Frederick Futt I don't know th hut, I'm
Speaker 3: gonna call it fut because you know what, I'm an American.
Speaker 3: He's the owner of Fine Art Auctions Miami. He said
Speaker 3: the piece was being sold by a quote well known
Speaker 3: collector who is not British. But he would say no
Speaker 3: more about that, except for the fact that the painting
Speaker 3: was being stored in Europe, was not in Miami, and
Speaker 3: so back in wood Green Herring Herring, the neighborhood was irate,
Speaker 3: so counselor Alan Strickland. He said that artwork was a
Speaker 3: gift to the community and so he started an email
Speaker 3: writing campaign to the auction house to get the artwork returned,
Speaker 3: and they went bonkers, like they just would not stop
Speaker 3: and to show the power of collective nonviolent action. At
Speaker 3: the very last minute, the auction was dramatically halted. Good
Speaker 3: for and I'm talking moments before it was due to
Speaker 3: go under the hammer. Oh really, Yeah, we know that
Speaker 3: the emails didn't do it though, Yeah, no, those are
Speaker 3: Frank does be real. Those things just annoy the targets
Speaker 3: instead of getting results.
Speaker 2: That's true.
Speaker 3: No, The rumor had it that the auction house pulled
Speaker 3: it on advice from their lawyers. In response to that,
Speaker 3: the auctioneers issued a statement quote, although there are no
Speaker 3: legal issues whatsoever regarding the sale of lots six and
Speaker 3: seven by Banksy, FAAM convinced its consigners to withdraw these
Speaker 3: lots from the auction and take back the power of
Speaker 3: authority of these works. So he mentioned lots six and seven. Yes,
Speaker 3: there was another Banksy at that auction. The second one
Speaker 3: was a two thousand and seven piece called Wet Dog,
Speaker 3: and that was removed from a Bethlehem wall, and this
Speaker 3: estimated to be worth up to eight hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: Not Pennsylvania, Bethlehem, the holy bethl.
Speaker 3: Like birthplace of Jesus Noah. That one was pulled just
Speaker 3: a few hours before slave labor was. And he said
Speaker 3: that the two pieces were brought to auction by separate
Speaker 3: owners and neither of them were British. So he also
Speaker 3: said that he would maintain the privacy of the collector
Speaker 3: who put them up for sale. Quote, we respect our
Speaker 3: clients and their confidentiality. It is not our decision to
Speaker 3: have the banks You returned. We only sell it, We
Speaker 3: do not have control of it.
Speaker 2: I love how like auction houses act like they have
Speaker 2: like attorney client privilege. Clients like we have to understand
Speaker 2: and you're just trying to profit. Don't act like, oh
Speaker 2: on an ethical high horse here.
Speaker 3: Well, in the meantime, new work had popped up where
Speaker 3: slave labor had been. Someone likely Banksy, it was posited,
Speaker 3: had stenciled a little rat next to the hole holding
Speaker 3: a sign saying why, and then that was quickly plexiglass over,
Speaker 3: and then another sencil reading danger thieves showed up, and
Speaker 3: then over the new blank plaster where the whole was
Speaker 3: someone did like a small, hot, pink dinosaur. Those two
Speaker 3: were not in the style of banks There was a
Speaker 3: woman in a nun's habit with no mouth and a
Speaker 3: red star over one eye that covered up the dinosaur stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 3: very much so. Various murals have taken over throughout the years.
Speaker 3: Right now, it's a sewing machine on top of a
Speaker 3: plinth of a statue that had been taken down to protest.
Speaker 3: That one got people all excited, but Artnet burst everyone's
Speaker 3: bubble in twenty twenty two with the headline Womp womp.
Speaker 3: Turns out this mural Lenderner's thought was a Banksy is
Speaker 3: actually just a tribute by a local fan artist. What
Speaker 3: it looks like. This is the current Google street View.
Speaker 3: You know a bunch of stuff around there, and you
Speaker 3: know you've got it's palm oil or me. You choose
Speaker 3: and there's a picture of it or whatever.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Uh. His bubbles back to Slave Labor.
Speaker 2: Do you say your team chocolate? That's all I'm hearing.
Speaker 3: Okay, So just a few months after that Miami auction
Speaker 3: was canceled, it popped up again, Slave Labor.
Speaker 2: I thought the action did, this.
Speaker 3: Time for sale at an auction by the Sincura group
Speaker 3: in Covent Garden in London. Cura, Sincura, Sincura. Who cares.
Speaker 3: They said that I'm getting faster and looser.
Speaker 2: Yes I know.
Speaker 3: They said that mural had quote been sensitively restored under
Speaker 3: a cloak of secrecy, and we go up for sale
Speaker 3: along pieces by Damien Hurst, Andy Warhol, Mario Testino.
Speaker 2: That's how I get my haircut under a cloak of.
Speaker 3: Secrecy by by Mario Tastino. So once again cut his
Speaker 3: hair once again. Neighborhood groups lost their slippers like they
Speaker 3: just Keith Flett, secretary of the local Trades Union Congress,
Speaker 3: he told the Guardian newspaper quote, the slave labor banksy
Speaker 3: belongs to the people of Herringy, not a wealthy private client.
Speaker 3: We want the sale stopped and the banksy back where
Speaker 3: it belongs in London and twenty two.
Speaker 2: I know think that sounds crazy, but you keep saying
Speaker 2: the term slave labor, and as like a black man
Speaker 2: hearing slave labor, slave labor, and it's all these people
Speaker 2: talking about profiting off this stuff. It just it just
Speaker 2: hits the ear difference.
Speaker 3: Well, and when you're typing it out like I was,
Speaker 3: where I'm making a note to myself. So then slave
Speaker 3: labor popped up again.
Speaker 2: Like it's it's it's a little casual.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a little strange. Oh yeah, so Sinkhira. They
Speaker 3: said that they in a statement quote, we are approached
Speaker 3: by building owners to remove the artwork illegally painted on
Speaker 3: their sites. And they said apparently they salvage and uncover
Speaker 3: murals from across London, Liverpool and Berlin. They say that
Speaker 3: they don't own the pieces and they don't make any money,
Speaker 3: but they're just like fixers who were hired to reclaim them.
Speaker 2: In the hood. They have these places that we'll buy
Speaker 2: your house and they'll still signs all the place. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it feels like this, but like we'll take that.
Speaker 3: We'll take that.
Speaker 2: Take your art, well, this is what they sell it somewhere.
Speaker 2: We'll put the profits with you.
Speaker 3: They said. Quote The building owners have not asked for
Speaker 3: the art to be placed on their premises or for
Speaker 3: the ongoing attention received from it. What is more, they
Speaker 3: run the very real risk of having a Grade two
Speaker 3: listing apply to their premises, which seriously affects their business
Speaker 3: operations and resale value. Though loved by the public, these
Speaker 3: are often a hindrance to the building owners. And then,
Speaker 3: according to the Guardian quote, the company said they then
Speaker 3: work to restore the iconic graffiti works which had often
Speaker 3: been the subject of vandalism or theft, and would, they
Speaker 3: claim otherwise be doomed to a fate of unceremonious decay
Speaker 3: and erosions.
Speaker 2: It's kind of a point of graffiti. Yeah, why it's
Speaker 2: not on a canvas.
Speaker 3: The auction actually went through. Meant to be for the people,
Speaker 3: and to be for the people, and.
Speaker 2: In those places transitory permanent. Part of like you.
Speaker 3: Change, here's a fun sentence for you. Slave labor sold
Speaker 3: it into an unidentified.
Speaker 2: Buyer you hear it now, right?
Speaker 3: Hear it? Oh, I've been I've been hearing. Slave Labor
Speaker 3: sold to an unidentified buyer seven hundred and fifty pounds.
Speaker 3: It was like one point one million at the time.
Speaker 3: But it's not over Zeron, No, but not. Fast forward
Speaker 3: to twenty eight.
Speaker 2: Flave Labory sticks around Elizabeth.
Speaker 3: Slave Labor was sold again, this time keep coming back,
Speaker 3: this time at Julian's Auctions in Los Angeles. Anyway, American
Speaker 3: artist Ron English bought it for seven hundred and thirty
Speaker 3: thousand dollars, so we had some depreciation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sound.
Speaker 3: He said he had plans for it. He vowed to
Speaker 3: whitewash it in protest of the market in street art.
Speaker 2: He's going to paint over the banks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he told the press. Quote, this is a blow
Speaker 3: for street art. It shouldn't be bought and sold.
Speaker 2: Was he going to film himself doing this and then sell.
Speaker 3: That, Well, he himself is a street art into some
Speaker 3: kind of like thousands hanging around, plus you get the fees.
Speaker 3: I don't know he's reaching up on nine hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: I've mentioned her a few times on the show, but
Speaker 2: the artist Pipolodi Wrist she took a sledgehammer and destroyed
Speaker 2: a car one time. It was like a whole performance
Speaker 2: art piece. It sounds like this guy should do that
Speaker 2: kind of stuff. I bet he doesn't have the eggs
Speaker 2: over to do that.
Speaker 3: He listened because that was one of the things. There
Speaker 3: were so many stolen Banksies that like, I could do
Speaker 3: two more episodes, but then it's you know, I bet,
Speaker 3: I bet it's just too much.
Speaker 2: Some of the stories.
Speaker 3: I may not is the balloon girl. That's what I
Speaker 3: was thinking of through the shredder as part of like
Speaker 3: the process statement. And so I think that this guy's
Speaker 3: kind of you know, riding that high anyway. He so,
Speaker 3: this guy, he's had any of tangles with the law
Speaker 3: for using public billboards that sort of stuff, public spaces
Speaker 3: for his paintings, sculptures. He said, quote, I'm going to
Speaker 3: paint over it and just include it on one of
Speaker 3: the walls in my house. We're tired of people stealing
Speaker 3: our stuff off the streets and reselling it. So I'm
Speaker 3: just going to buy everything and get my hands on
Speaker 3: and whitewash it.
Speaker 2: But then the Wii and there was done a lot
Speaker 2: of work, I mean, like putting himself and Banksy into
Speaker 2: one collective like that.
Speaker 3: He says it my buddy Banksy, but you're like my buddy.
Speaker 2: He sounds like a mister brainwashed where it's like my
Speaker 2: buddy Banksy, the guy from the exited the gift shops exactly.
Speaker 3: Then he said that he does plan to sell it,
Speaker 3: maybe for like a million dollars.
Speaker 2: Look at that.
Speaker 3: And then he said, quote, I'm crazy, but I'm not stupid.
Speaker 2: Sir, You're a lot of things.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so there's no word on how that's going. And
Speaker 3: what does Banksy think of all this?
Speaker 2: What does banks you think?
Speaker 3: A great questions?
Speaker 2: Eric, Thank you.
Speaker 3: He released the statement, quoting ay Matisse quote I was
Speaker 3: very embarrassed when my canvases began to fetch high prices.
Speaker 3: I saw myself condemned to a future of painting nothing
Speaker 3: but masterpieces.
Speaker 2: Interesting.
Speaker 3: So he's Banksy has said in the past that quote.
Speaker 3: For the sake of keeping all street art where it belongs,
Speaker 3: I'd encourage people not to buy anything by anybody unless
Speaker 3: it was created for sale in the first place.
Speaker 2: There you go, there it is boom.
Speaker 3: That's great advice for everything. Yeah, Zaren, what's your ridiculous takeaway?
Speaker 2: Okay, this will probably blow your mind. But maybe this
Speaker 2: is the time to tell you, or just to tell
Speaker 2: everybody at the same time. I'm Banksy. What I know
Speaker 2: you didn't see that coming?
Speaker 3: So did not I did not have that on my
Speaker 3: list of theories.
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm sorry, I read my note wrong. I'm Batman.
Speaker 3: Oh that makes even more sense.
Speaker 2: No, sorry, I still read that wrong. Sorry, I'm Bartman.
Speaker 2: Oh that's that's lined through. I don't know what my
Speaker 2: notes are.
Speaker 3: Yours every woman?
Speaker 2: Yes, I'm a multitude. It starts with me. What about you?
Speaker 2: What's your ridiculous takeaway?
Speaker 3: Ridiculous takeaway is that you know that like you pointed
Speaker 3: out that this, oh, my good friend Banksy like this,
Speaker 3: everyone in one way or another wants to hitch a
Speaker 3: ride on this stuff. You know, whether it's like, you know,
Speaker 3: bringing people to the neighborhood. And now it's only one
Speaker 3: passing reference in all of the press. Did I read
Speaker 3: did people point out that this is on the side
Speaker 3: of a of a dollar store basically.
Speaker 2: And where there was unrest in twenty eleven it protest
Speaker 2: but like.
Speaker 3: Here's we're talking about slave labor like the inside and
Speaker 3: buy some like but the neighborhood, they just thought of
Speaker 3: it as like this is a huge thing, which it is.
Speaker 3: And like some of the pictures when you when you
Speaker 3: search slave labor Banksy, you see like that, you know
Speaker 3: people sitting on the ground next to it, smiling, and
Speaker 3: it's like, you know, a lot in much of this
Speaker 3: the point is missed.
Speaker 2: I hope he gets a laugh at a lot.
Speaker 3: I hope so too. You know what I need though,
Speaker 3: in addition to many laughs, I need to talk back David,
Speaker 3: Oh my god, I want cheat.
Speaker 2: Hey, guys in fat can kind of smile on my
Speaker 2: face when everything seems to be going wrong have for you? Well,
Speaker 2: you know, we got your back because we feel you.
Speaker 3: We got to keep a smile on our faces.
Speaker 2: I've had learned that a long time ago, that humor
Speaker 2: is one way to defeat anger, evil, small mindedness, hate.
Speaker 3: And here's the thing, though important. We can't beat ourselves
Speaker 3: up when we feel overwhelmed and in any time during
Speaker 3: our lives, now, before, in the future, whatever it is. Like,
Speaker 3: if if it's a lot for you, know that it's okay.
Speaker 3: It's a lot for you, it's a lot for all
Speaker 3: of us, So don't feel bad about it. But yeah,
Speaker 3: you got to keep a smile on your face with
Speaker 3: the close proximity thereof.
Speaker 2: Totally we're also we're here, you know, to be both
Speaker 2: a distraction, some entertainment and also a community and also
Speaker 2: to let you know we are right there with you
Speaker 2: with that. Don't let the bastards get you done.
Speaker 3: That's the truth and that's it. That's that's a good
Speaker 3: sign off for today. You can find us online at
Speaker 3: ridiculous Crime dot com award winning website. Did you know
Speaker 3: that every three hours we win a Webby award.
Speaker 2: WHOA.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a new record, it's a new thing they
Speaker 3: created just for us.
Speaker 2: I hope they've got a good tally machine they do.
Speaker 3: There's a guy with a clicker on him. Yeah. We're
Speaker 3: also a Ridiculous Crime on Blue Sky and Instagram and
Speaker 3: you can email us at ridiculous Crime at gmail dot
Speaker 3: com and then leave us talk back on the iheartapp
Speaker 3: reach out. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and
Speaker 3: Zara Burnette, produced and edited by the Real Banksy True
Speaker 3: Identity Finally Revealed Dave Cousten, starring Amalie Rutger as Judith.
Speaker 3: Research is by balloon Girl Marissa Brown. The theme song
Speaker 3: is by parachuting rat Thomas Lee and flower thrower Travis Dunn.
Speaker 3: Post wardrobe is provided by Botany five hundred. Guest hair
Speaker 3: and makeup by Sparkleshot and mister Andre. Executive producers are
Speaker 3: Flying Copper, Ben Bollen and Gorilla in a pink mass
Speaker 3: of Noel Brown. Dis Crime Say It One More Times.
Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio four more podcasts
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