Bristol City Council artwatch update

It looks like The Blogger’s lonely campaign to get the Philip Street graffiti accepted by the city council as “art” just like Banksy – mainly to irritate the fuck out them – might be about to catch fire.

Over on the mysterious Doppleganger’s blog there’s a decent review of the Home Sweet Home Banksy book launch on Thursday night that includes a rather elegant analysis of how subversive culture plays into the hands of late capitalism. His basic argument is that no matter what you throw at the old capitalist beast it will simply manufacture it, package it, price it and sell it back to you for a nice little profit.

However Doppleganger suggests a way out of this bind:

I been reading a lot lately about atavism, the idea that bits of old code and evolutionary dead ends can suddenly spring to life vital and new. Dolphins with legs, chickens with teeth, kids with tails.

Culturally, this would mean streetart exhibiting qualities long thought smothered under the influence of the hiphop spray can and artful acetate. A return to days when spraycans were sniffed by the simple before carving WHUFC or NF or ICF in the deep gloss paint of a park bench. When the tools of the trade where to be found in an tin maths set – clogged tippex, a compass needle, the flint-like edge of a shattered protractor…..

Now it’s official. That Philip Street grafitti is at the cutting edge. How do we get a preservation order on it?

The Bristol Blogger’s Sunday Review of Books Banksy Special is now scheduled to appear around Tuesday/Wednesday. We can confirm that our reviewer has indeed now read the book although they also consumed two bottles of wine at the same time and “can’t remember much of it to be honest but I liked the pictures”.