A Statement by the Artists Collectively Known as Barksy

I’ve come to consider what Duke and I do as performance art. Duke produces the initial piece; I handle installation. Duke is singular of purpose; I’m the one who thinks outside the bin. Our typical work (Panel 1) is conventional, though its street placement is controversial. Panel 2 showcases some of Duke’s solo work. Panel 3 is one of my favourites; I call it “Why knot?“ (And why indeed, when there’s so much open space in the neighbourhood?) Sometimes (Panel 4) we’re just two artists trying to collaborate, and the end result doesn’t come together. Allow us our artistic freedom. 

Libertarian pooformance art images captured by Ron Thompson. Inspired by Steamed Buns and stuff on my shoe.

Lost Causes

In the first church Brother Andre built, we look through Plexiglas at his humble 1920s bedroom. Visitors have pushed notes through the barrier. Multicoloured papers are strewn on the floor. They are in every language and by different hands, both childish and the elegant penmanship of people born before the computer age. Pray for me, Holy Brother . . . Je vous en prie, Mon Seigneur . . . I’m sick, my mother’s dying, my child’s crippled, my dog’s lost, my father’s gone, my wife is leaving me. Help me. We crouch to read the notes through the glass. They are like museum pieces  – Egyptian hieroglyphs.

The Falls

At the age of four, Sarabeth Harcourt let her best toy, a squeaky dog named Benji, slip over the railing to Niagara Falls. The experience transformed her. She became so listless, her mother sometimes turned the lights off in a room, not realizing Sarabeth was there. At 16, Sarabeth continued to sit in the dark, indifferent even to a toothache. Her mother took her to the dentist nonetheless. There, Sarabeth saw a pale, freckly boy emerge from the dentist’s room. “The nitrous will wear off soon, Benji,” the dentist reassured him. “Okay,” the boy squeaked. Sarabeth fell tumultuously in love.

Image: OLX.

Bubble Man

“Sonofabitch.” Bill greeted the prospect of a working holiday with a dread usually reserved for colorectal screening and destination weddings. Sure he got through British Customs via the fast lane with his wife and kid, who both held EU passports but this was cold comfort for a fortnight away from cat and castle. He hated leaving; home was so pleasant. Except for the never-ending winter, he really couldn’t complain about much. Here he achieved a balance, shutting off CBC whenever the news became too depressing or after Matt Galloway had mewed out “community” one too many times for his liking.
Photo: Sari Garden by L. Leclair

When Pussy Takes a Stroll

She takes pleasure in her grooming, spends hours on her shiny black hair. Does she practice that walk, one foot just so in front of the other, those feline hindquarters swaying? Ooh la la, the way she swishes that tail. It doesn’t just move: it swings like a treacherous pendulum. She is sultry, sleek, confident – and despite the gloss, a vicious predator, a feral tramp, a howler who prowls at night. Oh, yes: she has known many cool Toms – she loves her jazz. Bad luck for you, she scratches. But on the positive side, she is very fond of cats.

Image: Ralph Crane, Time-Life Pictures

I am a poem, but I’m not gonna hurt you

I am a poem, but I’m not gonna hurt you.
(See how I'm not beginning with any weird fogs
On little cat feet
Or Tyger-Tygers, burning bright
But a promise like some simple dog?)

We could be simple together.

No rhymes, no schemes
None of those, like, metaphors
No being read stupid aloud by Mr. Fergusson the
    year you’re doing Romeo and Juliet and his wife
    leaves him and his default sweater and he stops and
    tells the class: Poetry can hurt you
(and cries).
No next day, when they say he’s on leave.

No strange quiet months after that.


Image based on The Tyger, by William Blake.

Ernest Hemingway on Drinking in Pregnancy

Our mothers drank and smoked their way through pregnancy and we came out fine. Nice and small too, 7 pounds, 2 ounces, none of today’s turkey-weights. Why, in A Farewell to Arms, Catherine’s even told to drink beer to keep her baby small. So, okay, she loses the baby, but arguably that’s because Ernest Hemingway lacked afición for babies. Their sentences are too long. He must’ve liked kittens, though; his Key West estate houses Charlie Chaplin, Ragamuffin, a pocket-sized Audrey Hepburn, and many another cat with extra toes. Nowadays they’d be saying he gave their great-grandmothers little dishes of whiskey.

Image: Almost Famous Cats

αlphas

Once, the firm held an offsite “retreat”, and six of us junior associates got to go along. It entailed a great deal of Laphroaig and Barolo as well as a few token workshops to make the booze deductible as a business expense. In one session, a consultant administered a personality test. Five of us scored as extreme Alphas. We found that hilarious and yapped and argued over who was whose bitch. The sixth associate did not join in. He was not an Alpha but a laidback Delta; he was laid off before Christmas. Dog eat dog, that was our ethos.

Fault

He’d had a drink before driving home, but he wasn’t over the limit, and she was wearing a bike helmet (and ear buds too). Technically, the dog should have been on a leash, but it was friendly, and its owner saw no harm in it running free. But when the canine cocked its leg at a hydrant, its head jutted into the street, and the girl (who was reading a text message) swerved, hit the pothole and sprawled into traffic. The driver couldn’t stop in time. If there was any fault it was the city’s. That pothole should’ve been filled.

Zarathustra et. al.

“I will never work with that jerk again!” Nietzsche threw his editor’s proofs down onto the glass table, the sheaves of foolscap spilling onto the rug. “Shit!” He stomped to the mantle and back.
     “So it says Ovenman, big deal it’s just a typo.” For a nihilist she could be a real bitch. “Besides,” she added, to get his goat, “the perfect man should cook, anyways."
     “Oh very frickin’ funny, Anna.” He picked at the pile on the rug, tentatively, as if it were poised to bite him. “And read this one!”
     “Dog is Dead? Oh now, that is funny, Fred.”

Cruel Mother Nature

At first I thought it was a grey, dead leaf blowing along the sidewalk. Then it righted itself and I realized it was a baby bird, struggling to stay on its feet against the wind. It offered no resistance when I picked it up; it actually snuggled into my cupped, gloved hands. It was still covered in fuzz, feathers not fully formed. I put it in a box nestled in paper towel and drove it across town to the Humane Society. There they told me it was a fledgling and needed to be returned to the place it was found.

As I neared my destination an adult starling buzzed back and forth above me. Just as the vet had assured me, the baby bird’s parents would be watching over it. All the same, I was not convinced of the little thing’s safety. How could the parents possibly protect it against a prowling cat or a speeding car? It yanked at my heart when the baby did not seem to want to leave the warmth of my hands, as I tried to put it down in a sheltered spot. It was the right thing to do, the Humane Society told me.

Wabi-Slobby

Andrew my summer student always gave me grief about my preaching edgy design yet practicing a bland urban aesthetic. Day after day he’d sit in his ersatz office in our kitchen and point out the Pottery-Barneyness of Caesarstone and KitchenAid appliances. It’s not as schizophrenic as it sounds. Mixing slick with schlump is my take on the Japanese notion of the impermanence of beauty. My sink full of dirty hand-thrown pottery, black Comrags clothes loaded with cat hair. A fridge full of organic fruit and a drawer teeming with ho-hos. It’s not really me being slovenly. It is artistic. Really.

Fabric Hound

The fabric piles up. Irresistible pieces from bargain bins and lawn sales; many from an interior design company where I once worked – tail ends left over winnowing their fabric store room. They are crammed from floor to ceiling into a closet in my workroom. I have no idea what I will eventually do with them. Every once in awhile I come up with a project to use a piece, but not enough to keep ahead of the incoming flow. Sometimes I cannot bear to cut into that piece once I have devised a use for it. I just love fabric.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that…

In the short time we were together, Alison never seemed entirely comfortable the fact that there were men out there with cats, and that she happened to be going out with one. I don’t know where she had found her previous boyfriends—perhaps in the personals section of Field and Stream—but most of my friends, if they had any pets at all, owned a cat; or even more likely, were still living at home with their childhood pets, which surely would’ve been a bigger deal breaker than choosing to live with an animal that doesn’t care where it shits.

She’d have been the first to deny it, but I suspect deep down she thought that owning a cat somehow made me effeminate. Which would’ve certainly been a strange complaint considering she otherwise appeared to be entirely enthralled by the homosexual lifestyle and often lamented the fact that I wasn’t nearly as fun to be around as her homosexual friends. She even made fun of my choice of the word—“homo-sets-choo-all”—as if it was the prissiest adjective I could possibly choose. She wanted a boyfriend who owned a dog, and she wanted a boyfriend who used the word “gay.”

Man’s Best Friend

For their twenty-fifth anniversary, my parents got a silver dog. Well, a dog with silver fur; a toy Schnauzer to be exact. Dad named him Brillo because of his wiry coat. He was a very sweet dog and very friendly. But the poor thing was never neutered and had developed the singular habit of self-fellation, especially after it rained. Our house backed onto a playground and Brillo’s foul-weather exhibitions delighted all the local urchins. Some people might train their pet to lie down or fetch but we, without ever trying, had the most popular dog show in the trailer park.

The Lion King

Like Roy and Mary, Rich and I bought our house as a power of sale. We couldn’t believe our luck - under $200 thousand for a three storey semi in a beautiful neighbourhood. The house was empty and freshly painted. It was only after we moved in that we realized why the place was so cheap: the previous owner had kept a panther and a leopard in the basement and once the paint fumes dissipated the smell of big cat was overwhelming. Our own two felines crawled around on their bellies for a month fearful of being snatched and eaten.

Happy to have normal neighbours again locals came out from everywhere to tell us tales about the previous owner and the menagerie he kept in his house. Stories varied in scale and veracity and involved any range of animals from boa constrictors to lion cubs. The best ones were from tradesmen who had actually ventured down to the basement. “Aw geese, how could I fix the guy’s furnace with that panther staring at me?” One recalled. I have never cleaned a house so thoroughly in my life. Had the stories stopped with the monkey, I’d have been a lot cooler.

Fashion Bitch

I could never be a label whore because those tiny demons are like little ribbons of torture, itchy little hair shirts. I can feel them regardless of the material they are made from or their location on the garment and immediately have to cut them out. In fact, if I’ve forgotten to remove a label prior to wearing the item I’ll try to tear it out or bite it off. I’ve ruined many outfits this way. I’m like a dog with a piece of tape stuck to its rear, turning in circles to get that damn thing off my back.

The Court Date of Eddie’s Father

Back before I fully understood what adults were all about, I suppose I just figured that Eddie simply had no father.
     He lived with his mother in Westfield, near the tracks, with his two brothers in a big old house that they rented. I knew they hadn’t much money, and I thought maybe his father had died; but then he was back, and suddenly everyone was happy again. And what’s more, from wherever he’d been, he had brought back a puppy for the boys.
     I have no idea what Eddie’s mother got, but I’m pretty sure she didn’t like it.

Dirty Work

Once every morning and again after work I used to walk around the block and back to that big ugly reno up the street. There I’d take out a small jar of urine and carefully pour it onto their lawn, splash some into the bushes; then dump a single, solid turd from a sealed plastic bag and onto their grass, wait a moment and use the same bag to pick it back up. And, really, the only reason they’re not in this cell with me now is they got that damned dog of theirs to their dirty work for them.

The Dog People

It’s not as if we didn’t try to be friendly, but our neighbours were dog people and we favoured cats. They were territorial animals who, because they were too lazy to walk to the park, filled their backyard with shit, while we filled our boxes with the fanciest litter we could find and deposited the waste, carefully wrapped, in our green bin. They would challenge us whenever we dared venture out, and so we became indoor cats, looking through the window at the brutes next door, barking and biting . . . and besides, who really wants a friend that can kill you?

Painting by Balthus.