“Art is not a mirror, its a hammer” Bertold Brecht.

This image enhances the original, with the symbolic figure of the man in black with a hard hat, almost like the rear view of a CRS riot policeman in the Days of May. The authorities have become part of the performance Art and have confirmed and amplified their role in the mural.

Scrubbing the Banksy mural off the Royal Courts of Justice shows that this is Art that matters. They couldn’t commodify it, market it, sell it, or accept it.

Erasing it from the wall, like the way the “Intelligence Services” destroyed the Guardian hard drive with the Wikileaks documents on it, is self defeating though.

Now we see the image online all over the world, and we see the erasure, and in erasing it, they expose themselves for what they are.

So, the hammer that shapes understanding is in our hands, not theirs.

The only war that matters is the war against the imagination/ all other wars are subsumed in it. Diane Di Prima.