@banksyny Takes the City by Storm

The article, “Racing to See Banksy Graffiti, While It Can Still Be Seen,” opens introducing a lawyer named Ilyssa Fuchs. She is one who, just as several others based within the city, are racing to see the latest works of Banksy. Banksy is an anonymous British street artist taking up a month-long residency in New York City, posting his work throughout the city’s boroughs. He also set up a table in Central Park where he sold original canvases for only $60 apiece, earning only $420 in total as most that passed were unaware it was the work of Banksy. Despite his anonymity and vagueness in description of the location of his works, Banksy was able to garner his fame via social networking sites such as Instagram and Twitter. Here he posts images of his art with relatively unspecific locations as captions. Fans of his work then work to pinpoint the locations of his creations and snap personal pictures before his work gets tagged over. There have been instances in which locals covered Banksy art, requiring visitors to pay in order to view it.

This article garnered my interest as I had just recently heard of Banksy, and was intrigued by how he promoted his work. Furthermore, I became more intrigued as I found out these events were taking place in the area I lived, leaving the possibility of me viewing his works at some point. I thought this would be the perfect article to relate back to social media as his story shows the power of it. By promoting on a world wide network that is able to send information instantaneously, it allowed him to reach his status of fame. It alerted his fans of where and when his work is posted. It also helped keep his anonymity, as everything via social networking does not need to involve any direct person-to-person contact.