The British street artist Banksy is apparently among the millions watching Syria’s war from afar, through glimpses of the fighting recorded on video and posted on YouTube. His latest video work is a brief parody of one of those clips released on Sunday as part of a series of works produced during a monthlong residency in New York that started last week.
As my colleague Daniel McDermon reported, the artist’s works “are usually authenticated only when they appear on his Web site,†but images of the New York works have been appearing on the Instagram account banksyny.
An excerpt from the video, showing actors dressed like Syrian rebels aiming a shoulder-fired missile at the sky, was uploaded to that Instagram account on Sunday, with a note reading: “I’m not posting any pictures today. Not after this shocking footage has emerged. Go to banksy.co.uk for the full video.†The YouTube clip, uploaded to a new channel registered in the name Banksy NY under the title “Rebel rocket attack,†was listed on the artist’s Web site as the sixth work in the New York series. (Some viewers interpreted images of the cartoon elephant Dumbo in the video as a reference to the rapidly gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhood of the same name, once popular with artists.)
Many close observers of the conflict in Syria were either confused or unimpressed by the artist’s gnomic commentary.
One online satirist, the Lebanese-British architect Karl Sharro, who frequently mocks jihadists himself on his @KarlreMarks Twitter feed, was in the later camp.
One of Mr. Sharro’s readers, a supporter of the Syrian uprising, suggested that the difference between his writing and Banksy’s work was that “Karl knows what he’s talking about and isn’t indifferent about what happens to Syrians.â€
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