Move over, Cool Britannia, the Olympics have taken London by storm. And when something this crazy happens, everybody's got some thoughts. Including Banksy. Especially Banksy, the world's most famous graffiti artist. Here's the latest swiped from his site (just in case the IOC scrubs away his graffiti), and annotated by the Black Balloon commentariat:

1. [Javelin Thrower with Fully Functional Rocket]

Note the poor form, likely inspired by Hellenistic Greek sculptures rather than contemporary photography of javelin throwers, which wouldn't get the rocket (or javelin) very far. Consider the jersey number, which likely may refer to the gold medalist for the 2004 Olympics women's javelin competition, Osleidys Menendez from Cuba. What can we make of the fact that this winner has been depicted as a white male? Is this an incitement to the athletes to make war, not peace? Or is this a reference to the militarization of Britain, and the sudden arrival of military troops to provide overly thorough security for this event?

2. [Pole Vaulter Over Barbed-Wire fence, with Old Mattress]

Again, the form is terrible: the body should go straight as it lets go of the pole, as this video shows. Even more unnervingly, the vaulter seems to have dramatically overshot the height of the barbed-wire fence, instead of barely surpassing it. Is this England trying too hard to make a spectacle of itself? Is this the organizers grossly overstepping their bounds? The mattress, at least, makes sense: once the Olympics are over, what will remain? Plenty of trash, that's for sure. But hey, I like the creative use of found materials. Nothing says austerity measures like using a dirty mattress.

3. [Sweatshop Worker Making British Flags]

If this is an allegory, we had better pay close attention: who are the sweatshop workers here? Are they as young, and as naive, as the child here? One of my friends sent me this video of Olympic diver Tom Daleybeing doused in glycerin for a photo shoot—and he's barely eighteen. Does the United Kingdom depend entirely on the young, the fresh, and the novel to establish itself? What's happened to history, to everything that makes London different from any other city that has hosted the Olympics?

I'm sure this isn't the last of it. I'll be watching the Olympic competitions all this week, and I'll keep my eyes peeled for more of Banksy's biting commentary. May the best man win.

On July 27, the Olympics will start in London. My friends there are actually going elsewhere for the full three weeks of tourist and media frenzy. They just want to enjoy their summers, and watch the occasional swimming match on TV.

They’re also escaping the most Orwellian set of circumstances I’ve heard about in ages. Kosmograd, whose handle recalls a formerly totalitarian country, describes the rise of the “Brand Exclusion Zone,” which stringently enforces brand purity for the Olympics’ official sponsors. The goal is to prevent ambushes by other brands and to restrict brand exposure solely to companies that have paid millions of dollars and pounds and euros for advertising rights.

As a result, visitors wearing clothing or carrying items with the logos of rival brands will be barred from entering the games. Athletes and spectators are not allowed to upload videos of their own, which would compete with television broadcasts. These restrictions exist in both space and time, “up to 1km beyond [the Olympic Park’s] perimeter, for up to 35 days.”

Freedom of speech is a popular right, and one of the most easily contested. The issue becomes even more complicated when companies and individuals clash. But in this case, I feel uncomfortable at how rigidly the IOC is suppressing other voices. And when I think of the tyranny of brands, I think of Banksy:

“Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head. You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.”

(Viz the graffito by Criminal Chalkist, above, of a vigilante running off with one of the Olympic rings. I presume the IOC ordered all graffiti removed shortly thereafter.)

It’s true that London competed with many other cities to host the Olympics in 2012. They’ll benefit from the extraordinary influx of money, from the massive public works projects and increased media visibility. But at what cost? What will be lost by accepting the IOC's draconion rules?

When I read George Orwell’s 1984 in high school, I was fascinated by its ironies: the Ministry of Peace keeps Oceania at war, even the Ministry of Truth perpetually lies to maintain a consistent history. I took heart in how the very final page, an essay about that regime’s language, was written in the past tense. But here we are in 2012: now the Brand Exclusion Zone maintains brand purity by constantly fighting off other brands, and polices the Olympic athletes’ own Twitter accounts for brand infringement. What role have we played (and should play) in this fulfillment of Orwell's prophecy? How is it that London, the fictional capital of Airstrip One in1984, has let itself be seized in real life by Big Brother?

image source: kosmograd.com

A Tyrannosaurus Rex [Tyrannosaurs baatar] skeleton ostensibly excavated in Mongolia, and allegedly illegally transported therefrom, was sold at auction on Sunday for just over a million dollars by Heritage Auctions of Dallas, Texas to an unnamed phone bidder. On June 19th and 20th, London will host the International Colloquy on the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles, also known as the Elgin Marbles, even as Greece teeters on the brink of withdrawing from the Euro-zone. Lord Byron graffitied his thoughts on national patrimony and plunder on a plaster wall at the Parthenon. 

1.

“Before bidding on the skeleton began, the auctioneer announced that the sale would be ‘contingent upon a court proceeding dealing with this matter.’ Almost immediately, Robert Painter, a lawyer representing Elbegdorj Tsakhia, the president of Mongolia, stood up with a cell phone held to his ear and yelled, ‘I’m sorry, I need to interrupt this auction. I have a judge on the phone’ … Despite the ruckus, the auction continued, and the considerable artifact sold for $1,052,500, to an unidentified phone bidder. The small audience, slightly confused, applauded.”

—Laura L. Griffin, “T-Rex Wreck: Mongolian Representative Disrupts Skeleton Auction,” The New York Observer, 21 May, 2012.

2.

“The neo-fascists are hunting down immigrants in the middle of downtown Athens, in the streets north of the central Omonia Square. They call it cleansing. They hunt people like Massoud, a 25-year-old Afghan from Kabul. He has been living in Athens for five years without a residency permit, even though he speaks fluent Greek…The gangs also hunt the dark-skinned man pushing a shopping cart filled with garbage and scrap metal through the streets. Or the woman with Asian features, who now grabs her child and the paper cup with which she has just been begging in the streets…The Greeks may have come to terms with the fact that the luster of antiquity is long gone. But the notion that Athens, a once-proud city, has now become synonymous with political failure and mismanagement is difficult to take.”

—Julia Amalia Heyer “Amid Debt Crisis, Athens Falls Apart,” Der Spiegel, 28 March, 2012.

3.

“Quod non fecerunt Goti Hoc fecerunt Scoti. [What the Goths left undone has been done by the Scots].”

—Graffiti on the west side of the plundered Athenian Parthenon, source of the so-called “Elgin Marbles,” attributed to George Gordon, Lord Byron, circa 1810. 

Let Me Recite What History Teaches (LMRWHT) is a weekly column that flashes the gaslight, candlelight, torch, or starlight of the past on something that is happening now. The citational constellations work to recover what might be best about the “wide-eyed presentation of mere facts.” They are offered with astonishment and largely without comment. The title is taken from the last line of Stein’s poem “If I Told Him (A Completed Portrait of Picasso)."

Image: Wikipedia Commons