Bow & Arrow Balloon 2010

What does it take to become Banksy Banksy? Google

Exit Through the Gift Shop , incorrectly translated the wall Make , creation of street artist Banksy film is not only the movie you'd better go see instead of lazing in front of your PC, it is also a masterful lesson in art and, perhaps, sociology.

summarize briefly the film (here, those who have not seen stop reading and go see the beast because all I could say will in any case less than the cinematic experience itself, is as necessary as this summary for my purposes).


MAKE THE WALL! - Trailer VOSTFR
sent faiteslemur . - Short film, documentary and trailer.

Thierry Guetta is a French expatriate in New York obviously a bit deluded: clothes salesman Used cars unaffordable for the leisure class in Los Angeles, he spends his time filming everything all the time - a short sequence traces this obsession to the untimely death of his mother, explaining that smells good reviews from critics psychologizing Art piecemeal. Uncovering cousin to Space Invaders, a street artist best known for its mosaics that brighten our cities (see photo below, taken by me because Bubble Bobble rocked my childhood), he begins to film the street artists at work These nocturnal graffiti tagger and navigating between contemporary art and degradation of public property. He is particularly obsessed by the most famous of them, Banksy, best known for his paintings on the "wall of shame" between Israel and Palestine, its rats, its generic Simpsons (which is enough to earn him my total and unconditional sympathy) and some other stuff.

He finally meet him and follow him in his productions, including the installation of an inflatable doll in the shape of Guantanmo prisoner in Disneyland that serves as its baptism of fire after he refused to spill the beans served at the park's security, Banksy recognizes him as a friend. Having accumulated an impressive amount of tape, it attempts to mount a documentary Art on the Street. When Banksy viewed the thing, he sees how it's a shit. He therefore asked to leave the band to rework something drinkable, and Thierry Guetta returns to LA in advising him to mount a small exhibition - inspired by his models, he began to do some street art. The latter takes the word, and throws all his money and his talent for sales in a crazy dream to become overnight an artist that counts. And, under the name of Mr. Brainwash, it's going to happen.

My resume certainly does not do justice to the density and depth of the film, which speaks in the final analysis, art, and its commodification loss of meaning. Street Art is first presented by the voiceover as the largest protest movement since punk. What is in a sense: the works of Banksy, as slogan "One Nation Under CCTV" or even the recent pre-generic city, are indeed a critically important power. On the Simpsons (video below), not only the artist has understood the spirit of the series, but he manages to deliver a message more subtle in appearance: the commodification of the series kills her wonderful spirit (the unicorn chained ...). At a time when some complained that the venerable cartoon loses its strength is a formidable exercise of criticism and self-criticism that the show has dared to do (yes, I am a fan, it surprises you that much?).



But this emphasis critical problem. When Banksy is becoming a recognized artist, he is in power. Briefly see an image leaves a tag on the front window of a gallery where his works are on display: "Banksy sold" I've had time to read the subtitles. By becoming an institution, a reference, a name in the art world, Banksy loses marginality that gave meaning to his work.

My assumption is that he then realized that the critical capacity of his work is weakened, or worse, has never been as strong as he thought. Indeed, what does it take to become Banksy Banksy? That is to say what should be an individual to become an "institution", a name whose only reference is attached to a value? Here he is good - as usual - to read a little of Howard Becker:

Imagine you're Curator of sculpture in a museum and you have invited a prominent sculptor to exhibit a recent work. Sometimes driving a tractor-trailer transports a gigantic construction combining several elements of large industrial machines arranged in a volume all to do interesting and attractive. You're excited. You ask the sculptor to drive the truck to the loading platform of the museum. And then you realize both that the door is too small. It measures four feet high, and the work is much greater [...]. Finally, the sculptor, very upset, goes with his work ( The worlds of art , p. 51-52)

To enter a museum, and thus be recognized and have a chance become an institution, a work must pass the door. In more general terms, it must comply with existing agreements in the art world considered, it must be consistent with other institutions, or at least, with a number of them: if we can enlarge the door, it is still necessary that the museum floor supports the weight of the sculpture, the ceiling height is sufficient, that the public can move around, etc..

The lesson is terrible for artists to be revolutionary and rebellious, like Banksy, we must not undermine all the institutions of art. We must pass the door. In other words, to become an institution such as Banksy, should provide a little bit concerned, in order to enjoy the prestige and charismatic revolutionary who own artists, but not too much, or at least not all. It must produce works that fold to enough rules to make them presentable and appreciable by existing public. In the same way as the punks playing music on stage for three minutes. In the same way that Robert Parker awards high marks to most wines have a reputation and which subverts traditional hierarchy to a minority of raw ... Banksy's works have passed the door, they are also protesting that he would have wanted? The

second part of the film is about that. We doubt the real existence of Mr. Brainwash and Thierry Guetta: various commentators have suggested that it was a creation of Banksy . The fact is that his works have a serious deja vu, taking tics of Street Art unoriginal, and we never see the artist perform himself (he says all the technical realization that Becker call the "personal backing"). And he seems more interested in advertising (through use of the name of Banksy himself) and communication to reflect on his work. In fact, it was a hoax or a real Banksy lit, the film's criticism is quite clearly against it. Managing to become an artist based on nothing (except the capital accumulated from artists and journalists), emptying it of its meaning Street Art, the advent of Mr. Brainwash appears as a biting criticism of the commodification of art, the transformation of urban form fleurtant with the boundaries of art and the law to a mass reproduction of poster (Mr. Brainwash wondered how to make posters of unique identifiers as Banksy n has never placed any copyright on his works). Exit througt The Gift Shop "or how all art end in memory merchant.

It seems to me that this scene, whether or not a hoax, is primarily a way for Banksy to reduce the conflict that he himself can speak with the commodification of his art. And the film reveals, even in its construction in two parts and go back and constant between the commentary of the "real" artists and Odyssey slapstick of Mr. Brainwash, the habitus of contemporary artists (and perhaps even artists in general). Habitus made here in the sense of Norbert Elias, as a tension between the impulses and self. The artists seem the prism of this film, worked by a desire for radical - Drives - and the need to adhere to certain conventions - the self stress. And this first voltage it adds a second between the desire for success and ethics of refusal of commodification. Two voltages themselves in tension that make the complexity of the position. Thus, hiding his face, Banksy refuses although the commodification of his art, but bends at the same time former artistic conventions ... and makes it more audible with institutions that are taking the risk of commodification.

For artists, the situation is intractable. There they are forced to deal with these tensions, contradictions and all their attendant misunderstanding and misinterpretation of their actions and their works. The Street Artists works are ephemeral ... but they are happy in the film, someone films them and gives them a permanent ... but this is always the risk of commodification they despise ... but gives them the recognition they aspire ... There is no solution. And that's pretty good. This probably can give impetus to art worlds.

Sample Owns Of Totoy Madriaga

fight. Reloaded.

Google has launched Google Ngram View , a database of 500 billion words in several languages, and on which we can launch small research - you can also download files for further exploitation. Interesting for research, it also allows to resolve certain problems.

For example, the quarrel between Bourdieu and Boudon can be answered fairly definitively when doing a search on "gang of four" of French sociology, which is a bridge-to-asses many textbooks (success Continuous Touraine is probably due to some disambiguation) (click on images to view larger):

The "decline of class social "can also be put into perspective: it would actually be a decline in working class

The debate between globalization and globalization, painful development of vocabulary, could be settled once and and for all: in France, globalization stands out as translation.

By cons, debate on educational achievement are more confrontational than I would have spontaneously thought the curves follow each other, except for two periods: the mid-40s to the 50s, and since the 1970, where there is a sharp decline in the "level up". E

Emergence, recently in France, Simmel's relation to the two other founders of the discipline, Durkheim and Weber is relatively clear , as the domination of the German on the French from the 1980s:

But they are all crushed when one adds Marx, even if one sees an undeniable decline of the latter on last two decades of the twentieth century:

can do the same two graphs for English:

No big change from the French situation, although I would have expected that Simmel is more prominent, given its influence on tradition Chicago.

Finally, we can see that I exercised already an influence in the past, with an interesting peak between 1940 and 1960:

Tarak Mehta Ka Ulta Chasma'shoting

The eternal return of individual responsibility

It with pump and some sympathetic media that INPE, an institute National prevention and health education, is launching yet another advertising campaign cons drug . The theme of the year? "Against Drugs, everyone can act." Understood: if you do nothing, it's your fault. Understood as: one takes drugs because we are weak or that others are weak.

The campaign has become the zero degree of political activity, thus a look at clips from the new campaign: we meet Michael, a young man who, we are told, took cocaine.


Against Drugs, everyone can act - Cocaine
sent Inpes . - Current time on video.

But why Michael is there cocaine if we stick to that video? We do not know. In fact, it seems from the perspective of the designers of this campaign fairly irrelevant. What matters is that if "those who love him" had told him not to do so, he would not have done. Motivations of Michael when he took the drug for the first time, his motivation to continue, because a young schoolboy be able to procure or its economic, psychological or social, we will not know because it does not seem so effective. "When we want, we can" not to take drugs, it is an effort of will, if not his, at least that of his parents or his girlfriend.

In fact, it would not count if Michael was the only teen to take cocaine. We could then see this as a mere "personal ordeal." But when this practice is much more widespread in the population of young and old alike, it is difficult to keep thinking that there is a gap personnel: the drug becomes, this level, a "collective issue of social structure" in the words of Charles Wright Mills in this classic of classics what The sociological imagination :

Think unemployed. That, in a city of 100,000 inhabitants, one man is unemployed, he crosses a personal trial; to relieve him, he must consider his character, he does do and opportunities which may arise . But when, in a nation of 50 million employees, 15 million men are unemployed, we are dealing with an issue, and it is not coincidence that await a solution. The random structure is known destroyed. The correct statement the problem requires, as well as possible solutions, the screening of economic and political institutions of society, not only of situations and characters specific to a diaspora of people.

The sociological imagination is precisely to be careful how biographies, individual histories, that of Michael which led to the drug, part of the collective issues in a broader history . This is the link constant, and various ways, what happens at an individual level, or microphone, and what happens at a collective level, or macro. In this tension constant lies precisely sociology. It is "the idea that the individual can think his own experience and take the measure of his destiny that lies in its period."

Some will probably try to think that there is only one way cheap to make excuses to people claiming to be the most liberal, they will say that this imagination denies the rationality of actors making them mere toys of social forces. They are wrong. If you look at the advertising above, we realize that the ethics that it proposes, this ethic of individual responsibility, the "when we want, we can", is also Economic rationality and the logic of individuals. Michael was there no "good reasons" to take drugs? His use of cocaine did not she something rational? Obviously, it is also irrelevant. We do not go to people's intelligence, but they are supposed weak-willed: the addict is necessarily lacking is not a strong individual. It's a shame because Michael is why drugs might help to understand why the recurrence of this type of campaign has never been acted on real ...

But this ethic of individual responsibility, which places the collective problems on a simple lack of will on the part of individuals, is powerful: its simplicity that it fits everywhere. It is found in the British advertising (reported at the time by Sociological Images , but I can not find the note) to fight against childhood obesity, where the responsibility of mothers just delete the whole social structure and provides requires children of fat and sugar:



Again, it says nothing about the motivation of parents (also brought by the mother alone, because as presumably, feed the kids, it's a trick chick ...), whose concern may be simply to please a child who calls what she be for him. Parents who coltinent between the contradictions inherent in the exercise of parental authority nonauthoritarian where we should love our children while denying them.

It reminds me of this conversation repeatedly in numerous theaters Teacher: How is it that students known that parents do not roll on gold are equipped with shiny cellphones and designer clothes at prices sometimes exorbitant? And each challenge the mismanagement of parents. What comes up most often, if we push the argument to end, to say that the poor are poor because they can not manage their money: an explanation explicitly in vogue in the United States, as evidenced by the debates recent the Montclair Socioblog. Who will say that when its economic situation is not brilliant, accept some sacrifices to give her child what he dreams - because as everyone is part of a society where the possession of these things is somehow enhanced. .. - Not so irrational? That's a way to show his children that we love them or prevent them from feeling too strong a stigma associated with poverty ... In short it's more because parents care about their children and meet the dominant standards because they can not manage their homes.

But the ethics of individual responsibility we cover it all. It makes us prefer the "when you want you can." The problem lies entirely in the famous remark of Maslow: If the only tool you have is a hammer, then all the problems seem to be nails. Similarly, if the only explanation you have is individual responsibility, then everything can be solved by the single sanction. And it drops all other forms of action, such as improving the situation of young people to have less temptation to take drugs. The sociological imagination could come to the aid of political imagination. It is not won.