Comment by TehCorwiz
16 hours ago
"Blinded by nationalism" I don't know, seems like a clear concise message that has relevance in today's world.
16 hours ago
"Blinded by nationalism" I don't know, seems like a clear concise message that has relevance in today's world.
Why nationalism? A flag can represent more than a nation. Can be blinded by any "flag" / ideology.
Since last summer a lot of flags appeared all over the UK.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Raise_the_Colours https://manchestermill.co.uk/the-men-who-raised-the-flags/
I went back to England last year and couldn't believe how many flags there were, I was shocked and not in a good way
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The ambiguity is part of the charm. Something that reveals more about the beholders than the artist makes for stimulating conversation and discovery.
Even the new positioning of the art on a plinth in some open space is enigmatic. If it were a critique of the powers that be, why would officialdom collaborate in propping it up?
why indeed
Because officialdom is largely populated by wokists who fancy themselves as rebels.
Interpretations, in my art?
Seriously, this is part of the fun of art. Neither of you are wrong for reading different messages into it.
Exactly.
Communists are blinded by the flag with the hammer and sickle.
Teachers and doctors are blinded by trans ideology and its flag.
Examples abound, but wanna transgressor blanksy knows who butters his bread.
> Teachers and doctors are blinded by trans ideology and its flag.
Interesting fact: the creator of the trans flag, Robert Hogge (later known as Monica Helms), used to steal his mother's underwear, then moved on to stealing random women's underwear for sexual reasons, and wrote fantasy fiction about a man marrying a child who doesn't age.
> Teachers and doctors are blinded by trans ideology and its flag
You're going to get a bunch of downvotes, but I'm also going to take the time to personally tell you how stupid this is as well.
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Flags overwhelmingly represent nations, groups considering themselves nations, that were nations or have some kind of individual governmental status.
Nations != governments.
“Nations” as synonym for country started appearing only recently, in last two/three hundred years.
Flags have thousands of years of history.
Flags also represent causes, or groups that don’t aspire to becoming a nation.
They don't at all. Consider for example that every single city, county and local council in the UK has a flag. There are flags for the United Nations, the European Union, Esperanto, every major football team and most political movements including the CND and anarchism.
How do you know it's "blinded by nationalism"? There are plenty of non-national flags which are just as blinding
In the UK there's been a recent spate of nationalist flag flying. Given the artist and location, "blinded by nationalism" is the most likely intended meaning.
> there's been a recent spate of nationalist flag flying
Which spate and which nation? The one the local flags were in response to, or the local flags?
Well, at least he didnt blindly support islamosupremacism..
Is it though? This can mean anything. Is waving a Palestinian flag the same as waving an Israeli flag? Where do we draw the line between harmful and productive nationalism? Who exactly is blinded by nationalism?
It is vague enough to appear deep to those trying to find something deep but not concrete enough to appear as anything that will stick in people's minds for more than a week. Unfortunately a lot of modern art is like this.
> Is waving a Palestinian flag the same as waving an Israeli flag?
Waving a flag is not a problem in itself. You can be proud of being part of whatever group you like and not hurt anyone. The problem is when the flag becomes the prism through which you see the world. Or, as the statue puts it, when you’re blinded by it.
> Is it though? This can mean anything. Is waving a Palestinian flag the same as waving an Israeli flag? Where do we draw the line between harmful and productive nationalism? Who exactly is blinded by nationalism?
Clearly it depends on your actual object-level position on the Israel/Palestine conflict. Or in general, what specific nationalisms you mean when you talk about being "blinded by nationalism".
And that's the main reason why I think this is a mediocre piece of art. Very few people actually are genuinely anti-nationalist for all possible human groups that have some sense of themselves as a nation. All anti-nationalist rhetoric is implicitly aimed at a specific nationalism that someone has a problem with - and also everyone knows this. So everyone wants to use the blank slate of bansky's featureless flag as a canvas upon which to paint a nationalism they don't like in order to discredit it. And I personally think that's boring. Maybe engendering that reaction was itself part of Bansky's artistic vision, but I still don't think that makes for good art.
It was an extremely funny aspect of the Scottish Independence referendum to see people denouncing "nationalism" from in front of a Union Jack background.
Both Israel and Palestine are blinded by ideology. It is a very common failure mode for people.
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When one is a colony of the other the flag of the colonized has added symbol of decolonization. The flag of the colonizers has no such symbol, quite the contrary in fact. These two flags are clearly distinct.
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waving any flag and thinking its us or them is equally blinding. the world is not vacuum and to coexist we need to put flags behind and work together.