The Battle of SHARKS!

:_SHARK:

A bunch of artsy anarchists continuously trolling the the authorities over their nonsensical and exploitative zoning policy using urban pop up art wasn't the story I was expecting from Grey but I am here for it.

Police breaking into a ballerina performance because of people complaining about fake sharks is just so… so British.

Me: those sharks look terrible. The council: they cant be here, they'll have to go. Me: don't you dare touch those Sharks!

This very silly yet very real event in London really explains how something like Monty Python comes out of Britain.

I like that Sharks! has the “!” because in theater if a show title includes an “!” at the end it means it’s a musical. So the singing sharks makes so much sense when you see it’s title. Love it.

Could see this as a Monty Python skit. "You can't have those there." "Yes I can" "No you can't!" "Fine I'll just move them over here."

The thousands of public servant manhours, the bureaucratic spiderweb of litigation, and the sheer pettiness of it all. Something about this is so incredibly British. The confrontation as a whole was the art all along!

okay but seriously. put the Sharks! on the barge, give them pirate hats, let them illegally sail the canals as shark pirates. they're basically 90% there already

The best part of this is remembering walking past the "air duct", and trying to speculate to my wife why a building that size would need one that big...

"Antepavilion's structures ... adversely affect the surrounding character, appearance, and architectural integrity of the surrounding conservation area" The architectural integrity of ... bland brick warehouses? From the pictures in this video, the historical district of Florence this area is not.

Update for those who care: On 25th June, police took angle grinders and crowbars to the warehouse's doors, handcuffed everyone on site and arrested two staff members working there, as well as the owner of the warehouse. Their phones were taken until the next day, when they were released, and police only left by night that same day. This is because of an art piece called "All Along The Watch Tower", made by Project Bunny Rabbit, which sprung out of Extinction Rebellion, which police wanted to "pre-emptively crack down on". Apparently, this justifies attacking a building in a supposed conservation area with angle grinders and crowbars. Antepavilion is currently disputing the legality of the raid and has requested body-cam footage of the raid on 25th July. No response of note from the police thus far. As for Sharks!, Antepavilion's appeal will be decided by a 4-day public inquiry starting 6th September. Yeah, this isn't a particularly nice continuation. Sorry.

I love the fact that a global audience of millions will now know way too much about a local legal dispute in north central London.

You can just HEAR Grey’s absolute joy while reading this entire script and how hilarious he finds this entire scenario.

First, even Antepavilion likes this video as it is embedded on their page. Nice job Grey! Second, last news on the Sharks! is from February of 2023, where one lone shark is on a river barge next to the warehouse to test the waters. Seems someone at the Antevilion office liked Grey's idea ; )

I love the doublespeak here. “Playful subversion of planning legislation” is basically the same as “breaking the law is fun”, except just formal enough to justify hundreds of hours of lawyer-hours and books worth of legal letters. It’s beautiful.

"They have to be removed by the end of this month" Finally CGP Grey has found a reason to hurry up his production scedule!

My feelings as a resident in Hackney: "In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake."

So as a quick update, since this recently re-emerged on my front page, the Hackney litigation is ongoing, but the 2021 competition appeared to be the most lively yet. The winning entry, titled Antechamber, is meant to fold up quickly and be transported around if necessary. What probably put Antechamber over the top is that it used repurposed materials from the dismantled Potemkin Theatre, the 2019 winner. The shortlisted runner-ups included a piece titled "Hackney Injunction," "False Negative," a screen which created an optical illusion of a missing chunk of the warehouse, and "Scaffolding Hackney," which is a scaffold against the bridge that allows pedestrians to climb up to the Antepavilion roof.

The part I fail to understand is why is an old, shabby brick warehouse part of a conservation area. While nothing else around the canal is. That almost seems like an intended attempt to shut down this one particular community just because they are weird anarchist artists...