Banksy artwork with built-in shredder - video

**Jon** · Oct 7, 2018, 10:58 AM

It's been interesting to watch the artist Banksy transition from essentially an overblown graffiti dude into a bona-fide conceptual artist who is simultaneously mocking the price of art and profiting handsomely from it. His latest stunt is hiding a shredder inside the frame of his Girl with Balloon piece. At the instant the artwork is sold at auction at Sotheby's in London (for over $1 million USD), the shredder is activated. In a further stroke of irony, it appears that this performance increased the value of the work. My best guess is that Banksy had a confederate inside the auction, who pressed a button at the perfect moment. 1:00 video:

**Frank S** · Oct 7, 2018, 02:10 PM

that's one way to protect intellectual property

**metric_taper** · Oct 13, 2018, 05:21 PM

Here is a link to a guy that has a pretty good analysis of this prank. The exacto blades are a farce.

**bruce.desertrat** · Oct 13, 2018, 10:23 PM

Current estimates of the value of the shredded painting, twice what it sold for.

**Rorschach** · Oct 14, 2018, 01:23 AM

I always kind of liked the anonymity and his style. This turned me though.

**Skun Knuckles** · Oct 14, 2018, 03:52 AM

The appreciation of art is a very individual thing. To put a price of more than a million pounds on glorified graffiti pretty much sums up the general mentality of the current upper echelon.
Stop the world I wanna get off!

**metric_taper** · Oct 21, 2018, 04:59 PM

EEVBLOG posted an update with new video that Banksy released.
This shows the actual shredder.

**Toolmaker51** · Nov 16, 2019, 08:07 PM

Banksy is well-known for his work; but no one seems to know the identity of Banksy. It's interesting how some of us can visualize entirely different than the rest of us. This is his concept, asked to create what is known as a 'couch gag' for the animated Simpson's TV program. It caused not a small controversy. . .