Um. 

Theodore Dalrymple on the cult and conformism of the graffiti artist Banksy, an avowed “anti-capitalist,” albeit with means: 

The most famous of the street artists represented, Banksy… has painted a museum attendant in an old-fashioned uniform sitting near a single framed “picture” consisting only of the word PRICK (or, in another version, ARSE). The first of these versions was sold — though admittedly not by Banksy himself — for about $300,000. He has also produced a print of an auctioneer taking bids for a “picture” that consists of the words I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU MORONS ACTUALLY BUY THIS SHIT. Banksy sold about 1,000 of these prints for $180,000 in total, but they were soon selling at auction for $5,000 apiece. This reminds me of the curious fact that a placebo pill has a placebo effect even if you tell the person taking it that it is only a placebo.

Banksy has guarded his incognito so that it has become, paradoxically, an important part of his identity as well as of his commercial appeal. But according to those who have investigated his life, he seems to have been born in Bristol in 1974. He was privately educated, which suggests family prosperity. From an early age, however, he appears to have suffered not from nostalgie de la boue, for he had never hitherto known la boue, but from envie de la boue, a longing for the depths. This common desire results from two ideological assumptions: that somehow the poor are authentic in a way that other social strata are not; and that prosperity, at least in our society, is something to be ashamed of, the product of social injustice or exploitation. The vulgar language in which Banksy expresses himself, which is probably not native to his original social stratum, is thus a form of expiation for the original sin of having been born to the prosperous and inauthentic.

There’s too much worth quoting so do read in full. Okay, one more:

Banksy painted the words DESIGNATED GRAFFITI AREA in an official-looking way on three whitewashed walls in elegant areas of London, and they were shortly covered with the horrible and idiotic graffiti that usually targets only concrete walls and tunnels. Banksy argues that all public space should be available for self-expression by the people, forgetting that the majority of the people may want to express themselves by leaving elegant blank walls elegantly blank. But then, they are only people, not the people, a crucial distinction in Banksy’s mind.

For more on the subject of graffiti and the thinking of its apologists, see also this.

And a mischievous Zombie ponders where Marxism meets the Tea Party:  

The formula to determine how much each employee gets to keep for living expenses is called “the tax code,” and those who contribute to the national product are called “taxpayers.” The managers deciding how the pile is spent are “politicians,” who are chosen every two years in a shareholders’ meeting called an “election.” This system worked pretty well for quite a long time — until recently. It is only within the last few years that something remarkable happened: The number of contributing “taxpayers” in the country for the first time has fallen to approximately 50% of the population. Meanwhile, the number of unemployed, retired, disabled or indigent citizens grew, as did the number of citizens who earned so little in part-time or low-paying jobs that they paid no taxes, as did the number of people labouring in the untaxed underground economy, as did the number of bureaucrats.

The end result of this epochal demographic and economic shift is that for the first time in American history, the people who actually work for a living and contribute to the common good — the “proletariat” in Marx’s version, and the “taxpayers” in ours — no longer control the company. Vote-wise, the scales have tipped in favour on the non-contributors and the bureaucrats, and suddenly they are the ones making the decisions about what to do with our collective gigantic pile of money — while those who actually created the pile through their work and tax contributions have become powerless. It is outrage over this very power shift that spawned the Tea Party, which is essentially a movement of taxpayers angry that they no longer get to determine how their taxes are spent. Historically speaking, the Tea Party movement can be accurately defined as a workers’ revolution.

As usual, feel free to add your own links and snippets in the comments. 

Home-made giant Kinder Surprise goes horribly, horribly wrong. (h/t, Mr Eugenides) // Made of pipe-cleaners. (h/t, Julia) // Polar bear, Singapore. // Pacific Rim. Embrace your inner seven-year-old. // “Recursive circulated phone photo loop.” // Sweden: An Apology. // At last, Sharknado. // Beetle sphere. // Correlation is not causation. // Duet for leaves and turntable. // Things inside old televisions. // Ultrasounding a Giant African Land Snail. // A gallery of quality literature. // When artists aren’t original. // Reading underground, New York City. (h/t, Coudal) // Hong Kong high-rise living. // Metropolis mayhem. // Dogs at warp speed.

After that unpleasantness, let’s elevate the tone with some art, shall we? Cleanse the palate, as it were. A reader, Don Frese, has found just the thing: 

Difficult territory is a cornerstone of the visual arts – so artist Mikala Dwyer knew it would be confronting last night when she invited Balletlab dancers to empty their bowels as part of a performance at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art.

There we go. 

The two-hour act saw the six dancers, masked but naked beneath sheer garments, move around a room in the gallery before sitting on transparent stools and performing – only if they were moved to do so – what is usually one of our most private and rarely discussed daily acts.

Now take a deep breath and steady yourself because it’s all very daring, what with all the transparency and nakedness and bodily functions. We’ve never seen anything like that before. Never. Not ever. And you can tell how daring Ms Dwyer’s art is because the venue director says so:  

ACCA director Juliana Engberg said the centre exists to support each exhibiting artist’s vision. “Of course, contemporary art is sometimes very challenging, but ACCA’s role is to work with challenging ideas,” she said. 

Yes, it’s challenging, very challenging. After all, it must be challenging – otherwise it would just be, erm, fatuous and juvenile. And that can’t be the case. Heavens, no. Being, as she is, so enlightened and so much better than the herd, Ms Dwyer’s excremental transgression will no doubt rattle the bourgeois rube and blow his tiny mind. Though in an age when just about anyone, even a bourgeois rube, can watch Two Girls One Cup on their smartphone while at work, eating lunch, inducing those fits of pearl-clutching ain’t as easy as it was. What’s a challenging artist to do? Well, she must tunnel even deeper into the aesthetic fundament: 

“When Mikala brought this idea of a performance and film dealing with material transformation and ritual to us, we evaluated it as a key and bold move in her practice, one that links to a long artistic legacy looking at alchemical transformation and magical performance. The work, while challenging taboos, never becomes sensational or gratuitous. It’s wonderful, powerful work.”

Of course it’s not just about being bold and challenging, or those “alchemical transformations.” It’s about politics too:

Dwyer said the one-off performance was not designed as a mere shock tactic. Rather, she hoped ACCA visitors would think and talk about something we have been socialised to consider dirty and shameful, and have historically hidden from view, even though it is perfectly natural. In turn, they might transform other institutionalised ideas about the world.

Yes, transforming the world. By watching people shit.

Ms Dwyer’s mighty work can be savoured in full at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, until July 28. 

It has long since past the time when aggressive redistribution of wealth were government policy.

So writes Guardian reader StevenMD, fuming on cue to a tale of sin and woe told by the paper’s Michele Hanson. Ms Hanson is upset because,

Manchester’s stunningly beautiful Victoria Baths… built in 1906 for thousands of ordinary people… [has been] closed since 1993. Manchester couldn’t afford to keep it open.

Oh cruel, unfeeling world. Where will all those ordinary Mancunians swim? Oh wait. It turns out that Manchester is hardly short of public swimming pools, having over twenty in fact, half of which offer free sessions for children and OAPs. Among them, the world-class Manchester Aquatics Centre, built for the 2002 Commonwealth Games.

Ah yes, but – but – Ms Hanson is also upset – and more upset – that someone who lives 200 miles away from Manchester has nicer things than she does:

On the edge of Hampstead Heath, north London, is one new, almost completed steel and glass house, costing squillions. Enormous silver chutes twirl down its outside, into this one family’s very own private basement pool.

Of all the things one might conceivably find scandalous and indecent, a house with an indoor pool is, I think it’s fair to say, not the most obvious. Ms Hanson is, however, determined to be outraged anyway:

Shove your ostentatious wealth up our noses, why don’t you? The owners could probably save the Victoria Baths with their pocket money. Were I Empress of England, I would order them, and their show-off neighbours, to do so. Sadly, it won’t happen.

Despite the fact that confiscating other people’s earnings is the highest possible goal of all good-hearted people.

We aren’t told anything at all about the homeowners whose wealth so offends Ms Hanson and so animates her rage, though one doesn’t have to reach far to find the implication. Being no less pious than Ms Hanson herself, Guardian readers should assume that these ungodly types with their big house and heathen indoor swimming pool can’t have done anything, anything at all, to earn, deserve or justify their personal comforts, and they can’t have employed dozens of people, perhaps less wealthy people, to build the home that so infuriates our columnist. Indeed, there must be something wrong with the owners even to want such things. Unlike the loftier, more moral beings who seethe indignantly in the pages of the Guardian:

Last week, in a foaming temper, I was moaning on about it to another dog-walker, hoping, at least, that the super-rich were stuck at Freud’s anal stage and secretly miserable as sin. “Wrong,” says she. “I have a very wealthy friend. She lives in another world, which you can barely imagine. And she’s very happy indeed.”

Yes, Ms Hanson is hoping that all those awful people who earn more than she does are at least miserable. Piety, you see. The taste is a little bitter, I grant you, but you’ll soon get used to it. Judging by her closing comment, Ms Hanson certainly has:

You surely can’t trample people into the dirt forever. Eventually, they blow. Then the very wealthy friend will be not so happy. Can’t wait.

Ms Hanson is a socialist and therefore, like all socialists, is possessed of a big benevolent heart. That’s why she’s looking forward to misery being inflicted on people she knows nothing about, beyond the amenities of their home.

Via Julia.