gizblog

Urban Guerillas at Disneyland

  Banksy at Disneyland 
  Originally uploaded by ileone.

You may not agree with his artistic statements or taste, but you've got to admit Banksy's got style and nerve.

A couple of weeks ago he pulled off a great stunt in spiking Paris Hilton's new CD's in UK record stores. The only downside was the extra publicity it brought her.

And then today he smuggled a life size model of a Guantanmo inmate into Disneyland, complete with orange jumpsuit and manacles.

His site opens with an interesting idea: if you want to get an audience, start a fight. It's got lots more of his stuff, notably his British museum cave painting with a shopping trolley. But what particularly caught my attention was the diary entry from a British soldier who helped liberate Belsen, and while there oversaw a delivery of lipstick. I'd never heard this story, but it's extraordinary.

And there are lots more Banksy's in the world at the wooster collective, particularly (today) some 9/11 stories.  And Flickr has lots of photos of his other projects, including the Bristol nude man that's just been saved by public demand.

There's something great about the spontaneity, furtiveness, and iconoclastic imagination of people like this.

And for a different twist on urban guerrillas, sign up to become a guerrilla gardener to meet, and garden, with strangers, in neglected urban plots, in the middle of the night......This is a movement which could only have started in England, the home of Monty Python and Monty Don

Samothracian belly buttons

  Photo_071906_009 
  Originally uploaded by giz..

I was on a late Easyjet flight from Paris again tonight, so was able to nip into the Louvre for late night opening.

I wandered around, but soon found myself back at the statue of Winged Victory. It's still the most stunning piece.

This mobile phone photo doesn't do it justice. But this is sculpture from 200 BC. The movement captured in the flow of material on her legs is brilliant. And if you can see it, her belly button is superb: perfectly shaped and set in a tummy that has just the right balance of curvy-ness and atheleticism. And it looks as though it's got gauzy material flowing over it, but it's carved out of stone. I hadn't noticed it before, but it's astonishing.

If the belly button had this much attention, what would the face have been like. Perhaps it's good we'll probably never know, so that it remains enigmatic.

And finally, it's a fascinating fragment from a culture we know so little about. It's believed to be a statue from a temple dedicated to protecting sailors. Maybe it was a huge investment, the equivalent of a major infrastructure project today. Or maybe it was unremarkable in a civilisation rich in such stuff. Either way, it's an intriguing way of filling in a few minutes between a hurried steak-frites and a taxi to Charles de Gaulle.

Ashes and Snow

  Ashes and Snow (and Joseph) 
  Originally uploaded by devpd.

Gregory Colbert has spent the last 13 years capturing some astonishing photos and films of animals interacting with humans. The resulting exhibition is travelling the world, and I managed to see it in a spare couple of hours in Santa Monica before a flight home.

It's astonishing. The 'museum' is built out of stacked containers, and inside it is reverential, dark, and pebbled. Very atmospheric. I'd already seen Colbert talk about the project, and had seen some of the video. But seeing it on giant screens, at times frustratingly slow and long, hauntingly beautiful, and shared with dozens of others standing in silence was very moving. Not everything struck a chord, and some sequences seemed a little too 'arty'. But overall it was extraordinary, and yet again I particularly enjoyed its uncompromsing production values and integrity.

You can get some idea of it at Ashes and Snow and when it arrives near you, make the effort to go and see it.