Wednesday 23 March 2011

Student Riots 2010 and '68/Banksy


This is a link to the official BBC report on the Millbank riots 10th Nov 2010

I'm not sure if we're allowed to use images from facebook but I can get hold of the original image from a friend of mine if necessary.

Theres a whole album of these in this style and I'm sure with my friends permission he'd be totally cool with it

(From the Link)

"This siege of Millbank Tower was a violent break-away from what had been a noisy but good-natured march.

As demonstrators crowded around the building, some masked and hooded, the mood began to turn ugly. Missiles began flying towards the large plate glass windows, with only a thin line of police, with metal truncheons raised, guarding the building's entrance.

Outnumbered and overwhelmed, they were slowly but relentlessly hemmed against the front of the building."

Sean Coughlan, BBC Education Correspondent

I think this is a really powerful little extract and we should use this for part of the slides, I was flicking through the images tab on the link and saw one of the fire extinguisher being dropped of the top of Millbank, but I couldn't get the correct source so we'll work on that. But having that in as well would be good because I happen to know that our Campus Officer Lee Gavin was in the vicinity when it was dropped and apparently he was not very far away from where it dropped so I had the idea of maybe getting a quote from him during the coming week about the whole thing at Millbank and the march and we could throw that on the slides as well (show a little UCA interaction, could be a nice touch).

I think we should start of the riots section with a comparison to the 1968 riots and to the more recent rioting of 2010. Maybe have a comparison of slogans and signs of past and present? I still have my cardboard one from the march that I brought back and I think we should bring it to the presentation for sure, really drive the realism home.

There's a bunch of slogans on this wiki page (I know, shoot me now) of what was supposedly written during the rioting of 1968

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_1968

Its all looking pretty good with the punk movement, political anarchy, urban street art, and so on although I would comment of one particular thing I've noticed with Banksy. The man (if he truly is a man) is completely anonymous, He is only identified as Robert Banks and no one is definitely sure what he looks like. This seems to be a bit out of key compared to our punky riot background. I think we need to highlight this transition from a loud and proud, aggressive and dangerous set of movements to a more quiet CCTV, big brother and stealthily obsessed culture that we have become today and how Banksy's iconic work has reflected that; in some of the most controversial yet quiet ways imaginable.

I think We should also open the whole thing with a quote from Banksy in the middle of the screen and I think this one would be a good one

"Mindless vandalism can take a bit of thought"- Quoted from Banksy, Wall and piece.

I think that more or less will sum up our whole presentation in one.

Now, I'm still collating a lot of information on which particular images from Banksy we should use and I'll bring the book to the next meeting but I have a few good ones in mind but I thought I'd run them all by you guys first instead of just spamming our blog with images.

I also need a little help on the riots of 1968 as my history on this is non-exsistant and I've read up on some of it, but according to my sources so far, the rioting of 1968 had a million and one triggers all connected to things to do with post-war, communism etc. and I need some help siphoning off the useless stuff and focusing on what we need.

I'd also like to volunteer for the designing the slideshow for the presentation, I've found a pretty nice template and would be happy to make everything look professional for the deadline.

1 comment:

  1. Stuart I have not read into the riots yet as you were going to do this so I will be no help. Just post everything you have found out and then we can cherry pick it later this morning. The specific influences we are looking at is the influence of sloganeering ie graffiti, our whole theme surely is subversive art used to change the way people think.

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