Banksy and Dismaland
Weston-super-Mare, navel of the world? Before having the slightest idea of the event that had been going on in the greatest secrecy for months, the eyes of curious people from all over the world had been focused for a few days on this sleepy little seaside town in Somerset, in the south-west of England, about thirty kilometers from Bristol. Clues suggested that Banksy had elected it as the theater of a new project. The hypothesis electrified social networks. On the morning of Thursday, August 20, the veil was officially lifted: the most famous and mysterious urban artist announced on the Internet that Dismaland (a mixture of Disneyland and gloomy), his "Bemusement Park" (a play on words between amusement park and perplexity) would open the next day. And the modest Weston-super-Mare became, to the great surprise of its inhabitants, the place to be. A coveted destination that nevertheless presents itself as "the most disappointing new amusement park in Great Britain! "and "a festival of art, fairground attractions and low-level anarchism," as the site plan states, with this deliciously provocative turn of mind that has become the artist's trademark.
"A memory of childhood
The choice of this city to imagine its disenchanted park was not entirely by chance. On this same site, a large stone promontory on the beach, there was a swimming pool, the Tropicana, closed about fifteen years ago. As a child, when Weston-super-Mare was still a popular weekend destination for Bristol residents, young Banksy frequented it. "He's here to revive a childhood memory that he shares with many people here," explains his friend Inkie, a Bristol graffiti artist.
In an interview with the urban art magazine Juxtapoz, Banksy explains that this local audience, which does not mostly visit museums, is also, for him, "the perfect audience" to discover the works of the fifty or so artists he has chosen to present. "Banksy didn't go to art school, he's a grassroots person, and he continues to address everyone in his work. Art is a platform for him to comment on our society," says Rob Dean, who runs Where The Wall, a Bristol-based street art culture organization.
The inauguration on Friday, August 21 was a perfect illustration of the immense spectrum of its audience, with the day session reserved for the premises and the evening session reserved for hand-picked guests from all over the world, gallery owners, artists, collectors. The former attracted people of all ages, some of whom camped on site to make sure they got one of the thousand preview entries, like Terry Hatt, a seminal octogenarian in a Union Jack suit. "It's fantastic for us to have an exhibition that talks about contemporary society, rather than ancient paintings. It speaks to us about today, about the globalized world," says James, 31, who faced the night with a chapka, "What I like about Banksy's is that it's always thought-provoking. It shows the dark side of things, what you don't want to see is courageous," says Shane, a 40-year-old social worker.
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