Banksy Does DOC NYC

Written by Jenna Belhumeur

In Friday night’s showing of Banksy Does New York, filmmaker Chris Moukarbel explores the month-long New York City residency of famed anonymous street artist Banksy. While Banksy may not have been in attendance (or perhaps he was…), many of the New Yorkers who appear throughout the film were.  At the request of the director, close to 20 contributors to the film stood up amid applause following the film’s screening.

The film was made independently of Banksy – unlike the Academy-Award nominated documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop that helped propel the artist’s name to international recognition – and takes viewers through the 31-day hunt for each of Banksy’s politically-charged artistic experiments in October 2013.

The filmmaking process of Banksy Does New York presents an interesting question: How do you represent something that happened in the past? During the Q&A session, Moukarbel explained that he has a passion for “using user-generated content to create films” and utilized the massive online archives that existed thanks to “Banksy hunters,” as they are referred to within the documentary.  As stated by producer Jack Turner, these New Yorkers, who obsessively sought out each work of art that Banksy left throughout the city, provided a rich narrative of YouTube videos, Instagrams and tweets that served to properly capture the public’s reaction to the Banksy craze. Indeed multiple shots throughout the film clearly highlight the thousands of iPhones capturing each and every mark Banksy left on New York streets.

“The real show he’s running is on the Internet,” said one of the documentary’s commentators.

The film underscores the kind of social media triggered scavenger hunt that ensued. Not only die-hard fans, but high-brow art collectors also rushed to capitalize off Banky’s public art. This was particularly highlighted in the case of the cement sphinx that Banksy left outside a construction site. The sphinx was hijacked by local mechanics, who then sold it to a pompous art dealer based in glamorous South Hampton.

Banksy Does New York drills down yet again on a point that those familiar with the artist already know: that Banksy’s “art” is often better termed as a social experiment. The political and social connotations of his work in New York were varied. They ranged from a video piece utilizing real terrorist audio footage where the cartoon-character Dumbo was shot out of the sky, to a slaughterhouse truck filled with stuffed animals that parked at major meat suppliers throughout the city.  Another “experiment” that went viral online depicted an old man selling authentic Banksy canvasses near Central Park for 60 dollars each. Only a handful were sold. The typical price for a Banksy original averages about 250,000 dollars.

While the prospect of tying one’s art to larger issues is nothing new, especially for Banksy, the film underlines how the British artist seemed to perfectly summarize the New York City state-of-mind through his craft. As the perfect exit from a city whose former mayor once focused on small-scale criminal activity like vandalism, his last piece – a giant balloon spelling out his name – is appropriately taken away in a police car at the documentary’s end.

For more about Banksy Does New York, visit the film page on the DOC NYC website.

Jenna Belhumeur is a current student at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism. After graduating from UCLA in 2013, she moved to Thailand for 8 months to teach English and backpack around other countries in Southeast Asia. After Columbia, Jenna hopes to become an internationally based reporter for a major broadcast network or pursue long-form documentary production. Follow her on Twitter @jenna_bel and on Instagram @jennabel