Banksy Has Unveiled His New Theme Park, Dismaland: The Unhappiest Place On Earth
It features all your favourite things: the Grim Reaper, car crashes, and really heavy-handed art.
“Are you looking for an alternative to the soulless sugar-coated banality of the average family day out?” Are you a teenager who likes to listen to The Cure and get high in cemeteries? Are you a first-year arts student who has some serious things to say about capitalism? Are you literally Orin from Parks and Rec?
If so, you’ll love Dismaland. Launching overnight in the UK, we now have our first look at the “bemusement park”/installation that street artist Banksy’s been secretly working on for the past few months. Announced just a few days ago, the project is a deliberate inversion of a certain US theme park and features works from 58 well-known artists including Damien Hirst, Jenny Holzer, David Shrigley and Australia’s Lush. Also, it’s completely ridiculous.
“This event contains adult themes, distressing imagery, extended use of strobe lighting, smoke effects and swearing,” the website reads. “The following items are strictly prohibited: knives, spraycans, illegal drugs, and lawyers from the Walt Disney corporation … [We’re a] theme park who’s big theme is: theme parks should have bigger themes.”
The first reports from confused UK journalists have just come in and here’s a little run-down of what you can expect: a whole lot of concrete and old people looking sad, the Grim Reaper slowly drifting around in a dodgem car, a crash scene of Cinderella’s carriage, a pond with model boats and dead bodies, a Punch and Judy show about Jimmy Saville’s alleged sex abuse, a fire pit fuelled by Jeffrey Archer novels, a puppet show made of rubbish, a pocket money loan store with an interest rate of 5,000 percent, and balloons which simply read ‘I am an imbecile’.
Speaking to The Guardian, contributing artist Darren Cullen expressed how happy he was with the end result: “It is just amazing having this much sarcasm in one place.”
If you happen to know someone in the area (or are committed enough to catch a flight around the world to hang out with an old man in Mickey Mouse ears blankly yelling “end joy”) the park will be open every day from now until September 27. On Friday nights they have musical guests including Run The Jewels, Pussy Riot and Massive Attack.
If that all seems pretty unlikely, here’s the next best thing: