UK graffiti artist Banksy announced the opening of a dystopian theme park in a British seaside town on Thursday, featuring boats filled with migrants and an anarchist training camp.
The “Dismaland” theme park is located in a derelict outdoor swimming pool center in Weston-super-Mare, a coastal town near Bristol in the west of England.
Visitors are to be greeted by a burned-out version of the famous Disneyland castle and a dead Cinderella hanging out of her crashed pumpkin carriage surrounded by paparazzi.
Photo: AP
It features a riot van built to patrol the streets of Northern Ireland, altered to boast a brightly-colored slide alongside its water cannon.
In one fairground game, visitors can steer miniature boats full of asylum seekers around a pond.
“I guess you’d say it’s a theme park whose big theme is theme parks should have bigger themes,” Banksy said in a statement, describing the show as “a festival of art, amusements and entry-level anarchism.”
Photo: AP
Spray paint, marker pens, knives and “legal representatives of the Walt Disney Corporation” are banned from the site.
The park also features works from artists from Israel, Palestine and Syria hand-picked by the elusive Banksy, who keeps his face and identity a secret and made his name with subversive graffiti, including some left in the ruins of homes in Gaza earlier this year.
Fellow artists in the exhibition include the UK’s Damien Hirst; the first woman to represent the US at the Venice Biennale, Jenny Holzer; and pensioner Ed Hall, who has made trade union banners in his shed for four decades.
The local town council is hopeful that the theme park might draw visitors back to Weston-super-Mare, which like many British seaside resort towns has suffered with the growing popularity of overseas travel.
“It’s a fantastic show,” North Somerset Council leader Nigel Ashton said.
“It’s very, very thought-provoking. Some of the messages are hard to accept, but true nevertheless. We’re extremely lucky that it’s come here,” he said.
“We hope that people will visit the show and then come to see the town,” Ashton said.
The development of the show was kept a strict secret before its official announcement, with local people told a cover story that the abandoned swimming area was being used in a film.
The exhibition opens today until Sept. 27 and is to feature performances from musicians including Russian feminist punk rockers Pussy Riot and England’s Massive Attack.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
‘DELUSIONAL’: Targeting the families of Hamas’ leaders would not push the group to change its position or to give up its demands for Palestinians, Ismail Haniyeh said Israeli aircraft on Wednesday killed three sons of Hamas’ top political leader in the Gaza Strip, striking high-stakes targets at a time when Israel is holding delicate ceasefire negotiations with the militant group. Hamas said four of the leader’s grandchildren were also killed. Ismail Haniyeh’s sons are among the highest-profile figures to be killed in the war so far. Israel said they were Hamas operatives, and Haniyeh accused Israel of acting in “the spirit of revenge and murder.” The deaths threatened to strain the internationally mediated ceasefire talks, which appeared to gain steam in recent days even as the sides remain far
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The