THE ONE THAT MADE THE WORLD TAKE STOCK

The day the Banksy shredded itself at auction

I saw this and thought: wow! And then, hmph. But it turned out that was the story: totally indicative of 2018, this work by Banksy showed the minuscule feedback loop between shareability, reaction, and seemingly authorless memes. For those who slept through these two weeks on Twitter: At the moment the hammer fell at $1.4 million (Dh5.1m) at Sotheby’s on Banksy’s Girl with Balloon, a device in the frame activated a shredding machine, turning the work into ribbons. The prank initiated a tidal storm of tweets, with sentiment pro and con flowing back and forth across the pool of social media. First up were the tweets of delight: Banksy sticking it to the luxury end of the market, confirming his street credibility by refusing to let his work be collected by the select few. Then came the tweets of incredulity: surely Sotheby’s was in on the game? How else would they have allowed for the work to auction in its own frame, and how did no one notice its weight? Next were the angry tweets: now the work is worth two times as much! And finally, bounding in like stragglers from an all-nighter, were the memes: the iconic red-and-yellow McDonald’s fries holder being shredded into yellow chips; a Christmas tree shredded into green boughs; an iceberg shredded into rushing water, in a note on the state of the environment. As if we didn’t realise it in 2018, no one can agree on anything.