Banksy’s Tactics
Street Art Break in VR
In November, 2018, protestors blockaded five bridges over the Thames in London. Six months later they occupied Piccadilly Circus, Oxford Circus, Parliament Square, Waterloo Bridge, and the location of this piece by Banksy — Marble Arch.
The organizers of these actions were part of a larger international environmental movement called, Extinction Rebellion. Large-scale non-violent disruptive civil disobedience was their plan for getting the government to act on climate promises.
The Marble Arch occupation lasted ten days and ended on April 25, 2019.
Near the end, Banksy candidate Robert Del Naja, known as 3D in the Bristol band, Massive Attack, DJed a surprise set at Marble Arch.
When the protestors left, a stenciled painting remained where the organizer’s base camp had been.
It shows a young girl planting a seedling and labelling it with the Extinction Rebellion logo.
The logo goes back to at least 2012 and is attributed to a London street artist who uses the handle Goldfrog ESP. The design represents the planet as the enclosing circle with an hour glass inside showing time running out.
The Victoria and Albert Museum now has a digital copy in it permanent collecition.
The text on the wall beside her has become the name by which this piece is known
From this moment despair ends and tactics begin
The phrase is from the book, “Revolution in Everyday Life,” written in 1967 by the Belgian author Raoul Vaneigem. He was a member of Situationist International, a movement of artists and social activists from the late 1950s to the early 1970s focusing on deliberate ‘Spectacles’ that cause people to rethink how things are and feel freer.
The occupation of significant parts of Paris in 1968 was a product of many forces and a high point of Situationist activity.
Large-scale non-violent civil disobedience didn’t end with the 1960s, but its frequency diminished for a few decades. Police shootings and Climate change helped bring protests into the 21st century.
Like the Extinction Rebellion, Greta Thunberg’s, Fridays for Future (also known as School Strike for Climate), and the Sunrise Movement were all founded in 2017 or 2018. They all emphasized spectacle and were effective at drawing media attention.
Banksy’s 2019 piece makes an unusual promise — an end to despair and a start of actually doing something, which is what ‘tactics’ means. Tactics is where strategic plans meet reality and something happens.
Something did happen. A worldwide pandemic.
“From This Moment … ” was painted less than four years ago and it already feels a little quaint.
Extinction Rebellion blocked streets or bridges in a few cities in Europe in 2021 and 2022.
The idea that there is a UK government paying attention to anything other than Disaster Management feels a little quaint.
Banksy has never taken credit for the work, but the Extinction Rebellion has attributed it to him and he has also never denied it.
His whole career has been Situationism, without the traffic jams.
Tom’s work has not appeared in The New York Times, New Yorker Magazine, The New Republic, the New England Journal of Medicine, or anything New at all.
He only publishes in obscure journals and, once upon a time, PBS Program Guides. Otherwise he just gives his work a URL and sends it packing on the web at places like Medium and Sub-Stack, where he enjoys a modest following.
