Crazy Horses Riding Through the Lower East Side to a WikiLeaks Soundtrack
Crazy Horses Riding Through the Lower East Side to a WikiLeaks Soundtrack
Date: October 2013
Location: New York
This works is part of Banksy’s one month residency in the streets of New-York,
This installation is most probably the most political and innovative piece created by Banksy during his New-York residency. It presents a complex visual dynamic with armed men in gun sights, horses wearing night vision goggles, together with a free phone number to hear the audio of an air strike…
A distinguishing feature of this new piece is that no part of it is actually on a wall: it is rendered on the sides of an abandoned car and of truck, adding impressive visual depth.
But the real strength of this work resides in the accompanying audio…
The 1-800 number takes the caller to a 39-minute recording of a 2007 airstrike in Baghdad.
The listener can clearly hear the racket of gun turrets and radio communications between soldiers killing civilians.
The cut comes from the infamous Collateral Murder video released to WikiLeaks by Chelsea Manning in 2010. The 17-minute horror show depicts the killing of children and civilians by U.S. soldiers in Iraq trying to rescue wounded Iraqi combatants. The sound taken for the Banksy piece starts comes around the 12-minute mark.
