Banksy, Andy Warhol and Damien Hirst: The Art Collection of Peter Hvidberg

the valuart podcast what's up everybody welcome back to the valuart podcast i'm your host eddie contento with my lovely co-host izzy godina is that you say your last name you actually have to pronounce it yes it means new year it's like kind of like croatia slovenian means near are you croatian i mean i have some mixed blood um i from my dad's part he's from thriesta in northern italian so i do sort of have like slovenian creation blood and then from my mom's side in the u.s i actually have um some indian blood so from the mohawk tribe whoa cool that's a really cool mix yeah so like the hair you can see i'm i'm pretty light here but my mom she was like super super dark i think it's funny that we're both uh well i i am yeah what are your exactly i'm technically american i guess from the united states but um italian-american but i'm i'd hesitate to say that i'm italian it's italian especially being surrounded by like our whole team is actually italian it seems like my housemate is italian from puglia from milano um but my grandmother's from sicily she moved to the states when she was 11. and my grandfather is also italian hence the last name contento um but yeah it's it's weird like italian-american culture is such a weird thing do you actually do you experience any of it like you you lived in the states right yes i lived in the states until i was around 11 years old um so i actually grew in my household there was my dad speaking italian i would just answer back in american um american english and then at a certain point i also had a nanny that would speak in spanish so at a certain point i was mixing up spanish and italian oh so at a certain way it always fascinates me like kids that are raised with multiple languages in the household like which one like how they differentiate the different languages i was sitting at breakfast the other day with a friend of mine who's whose kid speaks dutch english and french but like all at the same time they were like moving between languages all at the same time and i'm like how's that kid gonna understand which is which exactly and i i go from italian but then i switch to some words in english i really mix them up um but yeah i guess like coming to italy really forced me to learn italian and then i ended up studying spanish too but in the right way so not like mixing it up with italian even if it does still happen sometimes but you never really got to truly experience the absurdity that is italian american culture right i haven't no have you ever i mean i grew up in it and i grew up in new jersey which is like sort of the epicenter like new york new jersey is like really that's that's where a lot of that i guess radicalizes is the best word but yeah it's a strange thing like i have friends and not to like i don't want to seem like such like so negative about it because i'm i am actually proud of my heritage but it is strange for people like that i grew up with to have this italian pride but like have never been to italy don't speak a word of italian don't even really know anything about the culture or the not like the nationality like i think that's a strange thing i think patriotism is a strange thing to be honest with you but that's the is it really is like we could go down uh a tunnel talking about that yeah maybe we shouldn't maybe we should we should send this back to the value of our conversation so let's just talk about the biggest news this week the valuart option yeah the bank secretary oh my gosh it was insane i was editing last week's episode we were talking about we're like oh we're not really sure what to expect right now it's currently sitting at like five ethereum and as i'm editing this that the auction is ending and things are just going up and i was like oh whoa and i was like i can't wait to talk about this with izzy later 60 65 8th i didn't know what to expect because it was sort of like at that stage a few days after um and then it was just like the last 24 hours that it was going wild insane and i was like checking you know i was like refreshing and i was like what wait i love the giorgio's messages in our app group where he was talking he was like i'm shaking like i remember he called me at some point and he was like man like his voice was trembling and i was like i love that i love how how like nobody knew what to expect and then yeah i'm happy with how things went and it means good things for us going forward in terms of like new doors opening new partnerships and new exciting artworks there's that threshold right there's that barrier that you really have to get past in the beginning where people are like people are sitting back like i don't know and then then you have your first drop and it goes well and then all of a sudden they're like yeah i was i knew the whole time now i want to let's let's let's talk about collaboration it's like okay okay we see you exactly no it was a rush and it's potentially good news for us because this maybe means we have a longer runway to to learn and to do this podcast so that's cool absolutely so newsletter what's in the newsletter this week what's going on that's uh noteworthy yes so olympics have you been watching them eddie i have not i it's weird like i almost never watch the olympics like every every time it happens i get my i just watch highlights i just like catch up with friends and they give me the details i remember one winter olympics i watched with my mom and i was like so bored oh it's okay i haven't watched it that much either i mean except for the last races so and some swimming yeah i don't know if i was watching the swimming or swimmers but you know yeah to be honest but yes great news for the nft the international olympics committee sealed a deal with nwa which is a platform that wanted to distribute some nfts the olympics have this tradition you know they have these pins these pins 150 years ago used to be used in order to identify the athletes the judges so the key players of um you know the games but after that they actually started exchanging them also among the crowd so among the fans so it became a really important thing for the thing for the fan base and that's why the ioc was looking for a way to continue to keep their fan base keep them in entertain and that's when they went towards nfts and sealed a deal with anyway so what's cool about this is that you know the fan base can still have their marketplace exchange pins and then the cool thing is that they're actually gonna do um a game out of it where you can earn so like play to earn model and this will be released exactly which is going to be interesting especially you know with this trend like we talked um in my newsletter last week actually that we talked about my newsletter about axiomfinity um he's a play to earn game so that's going to be awesome and i'm interested to see how that would turn out and it will be released towards december more or less for the winter games it's pretty cool what are your what is your opinion well i want to know if if it's something that like a traditional pin collector is no longer going to be able to get this year because or it's going to be harder to get because they've decided to go digital and this sort of harkens back to our conversation last week with the damian hurst thing about physical versus digital but i can't find on the website if you can still buy or how did you get like i think the pins would you get them at the games or were they were purchased through the olympics website like what is the normal way of of obtaining one of these oh yes so i haven't been at the limits from what i read i understood that like you would exchange them like like physically because it would exchange like from athlete to like fan from fan to judge you know like so okay let me i'm gonna do a quick quick duckduckgo search because i'm on duckduckgo uh where to buy olympic pins let's just see what doctor yeah and i keep coming back to classicpins.com like apparently this is the de facto source on obtaining these pins uh yeah yeah it looks like they're not being sold through any primary channel but they're all secondary like so if what you're saying is true that they're handed from athlete and team member to family member and so on that's pretty cool that would mean that there still are physical pins because i assume the athletes are still using physical pins yeah exactly so this is another way for people to get their hands on a pin that they maybe wouldn't have otherwise can you picture this being applied in any other sort of um social event or gathering or something that you do take part of like do you go to festivals do you go to in the music industry i would like to see it i see the music industry being especially like live events for music being the place where nfts provide the most disruption i use that term lightly because i don't like i'm in the image and he uh uh ideology where it's like not doesn't have to be a disruption it can be an augmentation of the existing infrastructure i have tickets to a jacob collier concert this february i would love if there was like uh additional perks that came with the ticket that were on the blockchain but i think jacob's a little bit behind in that sense yeah you never know let's maybe we can text him i i'll just text jacob i'll just we're bros it's exactly i'm sure yeah i realized that last week's episode we didn't get a book recommendation from you at least it didn't make it into the edit there was quite a bit of a mess finishing that so what happened at the end of last week's episode can you explain what why there was such an awkward sign off oh that's true my headphones died and of course i couldn't change the system you just left me hanging you were just like going ahead i couldn't hear you you can hear me so i said you know after a minute he'll realize but after a minute you just like went on so i was like okay like i'll just keep on not you know like when somebody says something and you don't understand but you just like nod in and smile and laugh um yeah i won't do that again to you eddie sorry so what is your what's your book recommendation this week so this week's book recommendation is a book by camila russo the infinite machine how an army of crypto hackers is building the next internet with ethereum it starts from the beginning of the foundation and it's simply mind blowing and really twisted i would all say almost kind of dramatic at certain points like when i when i read this book like the recap for me is like success is a marathon just because you can see how many things they've been through to build the ethereum network i guess the hack really um that was the point that really got me uh just because if i you know i was like how did you not give up after that you know it was like devastating for them and they they just had this vision um and pursued and like a genius that guy is a is that yeah i don't even understand how old is he 22 23 or something like that yes and what does his mind run on i don't understand like he's insane he started writing articles at the very beginning on bitcoin when he was like 16 17 yeah and getting paid in crypto like he's a genius this yeah i know that's because he's on another wavelength you know and i think for him it wasn't it was probably never an option to stop or to to like turn back or to give up it was probably like no this is the future why would i why would i not pursue it exactly and um i i love this book and it's a really easy read um but who is who's camilla in relation to this story like does she have history in the beginning like did she like house vitalik in her garage for the foundation of it or like is she just a fan of of the technology so she was a journalist for bloomberg for around seven years and then she became really passionate about crypto and she started font she founded the defiant which is an awesome blog that i love reading for all the crypto and nft news um also their podcast is really nice and yeah like she's super inspirational also because there's not a lot of women at the moment in the crypto space why do you think there there isn't a lot of women in this space i know that's a loaded question but i'm i'm really trying to figure it out um also among my friends i don't have any friends that are women like that invest in crypto are also interested i've tried many times to also get my um yeah my friends involved right um but they're just like uh you uh i don't really trust it don't know uh i'll i'll get like i'll inform myself but then they don't end up doing it um it's kind of sad for me and i'm still that's a very good question you asked me because i'm still trying to like find the right way to like get them on on board i i definitely think we need more more women like camilla in the crypto space but they're coming i mean you can see on twitter especially producer mark has a link for us uh world of women dot art uh a collection of unique cool and diverse women ready to leave a mark in the nft space this is something we should check out for sure on maybe another episode um yeah cool i wouldn't i would love to explore this further and with more preparation but that's it i i like how i like how each episode we we have a conversation that leads to a question that could lead to an episode so that's that's a good thing to jot down on the big idea list that we were starting to i love that too yeah like definitely crypto nfts women uh we need more of that so i want to talk stoner cats but i kind of want to save yeah save it for yeah i think we should but do you think it'll be do you think it'll be too late by the time we get that conversation around to finalized and then the whole thing like it would be next week i think and you could just say the cat was so stoned it took him a while to get there like i don't know true true all right well we'll see we may have a special guest on the on the podcast uh not next week but the following week or maybe it'll be some sort of intermediary uh interview that i do um with uh somebody related associated indirectly with stoner cats which is the mila kunis ashton kutcher vitalik uh voiced animated series all right so i think that's a good time to move on to our guest this week uh i'm very excited to have a conversation with uh peter who is a collector from just outside of copenhagen he has a company called multiples inc and he specializes in collecting banks he's like he's really good at getting his hands on bank season he's got a few he's going to talk to us today about the story of spike and how he came into contact with it and a little bit about the artist and the artist's work uh and yeah should be a fun conversation so i'd like to welcome peter veedberg onto the value our podcast peter thanks for uh for joining us today oh you're welcome cool so um peter tell us quickly who you are and uh what you do well again i'm peter i'm i collect art and i deal not i collected for 30 years almost and then about 10 years ago i started dealing as well mostly with banksy andy warhol and damien hurst what was the draw for you into collecting versus uh i don't know making art or or criticism or or whatever the true story is money yeah yeah i i found out that i was good at collecting in my terms the right works so i could profit on them and i used to be a businessman in in the clothing industry and um we had a thriving business and then came the big uh money breakdown uh like was it 13 years ago or something like that and i yeah around that and we kept it going a few years and um i kept all my art and i lost everything else and uh that's it it's it's it's back on the shelves now everything but but anyway and then i thought i would i would um not continue in the same business so i i took into art business i thought that was a walk in the park and uh what surprised you most of what was the if you thought it was easy getting into it what surprised you the most yeah yeah yeah i i thought it was a very intellectual you know world people people speaking a lot about art and emotions and stuff like that and politics and i found out it's not it's about money and at the end of the day and um not not all dealers will say it uh gallerists might do in the museum people will continue saying that but it's a money game yeah so less art speak and more business lingo yeah yeah i like the combination of both what drew you to banksy what was your first encounter with banksy that you you knew like okay i need to collect that um i think uh i think the first work i saw actually it was a print i think it was the kate moss print he did some magician at some point with with kitten cadence instead of uh marilyn monroe and of course so of course marion i knew from from from andy warhol and then i thought okay it's funny but it's it's not like it's not like a masterpiece it's funny but um and and i i checked the name and i found out he was a street artist or or rather first i thought he was a graffiti artist but then i learned there's a big difference um yeah and then then i started finding um his works interesting was the having collected warhol uh what appealed to you when you saw the kate moss and did that did it like aggravate you at all to see that somebody was sort of ripping off warhol style or was that because they're both appropriation artists was that like okay no no it's not it's not really both because andy and the wall was the most was the biggest rip-off of all people yeah um but but they are kind of [Music] in they go alongside in some ways and in others they they totally depart because wall was into fame i don't think banksy is because we don't really know who he is and warhol was you know rubbing his shoulder with famous people uh the chelsea hotel yeah yeah yeah everybody celebrities and he almost invented you know instagram with all his polaroids and stuff like that yeah and we don't see any of that from from banksy yeah at all but still i think they have a lot of in in in common what are some of the characteristics that banksy exhibits that make him different from other artists that that you think are stand out unique to banksy only banksy it depends on one what you mean uh by exhibit because if you mean the original street work that was done yeah in the streets or the studio works there's a big difference in my opinion because the question is if you exhibit art in the street or if you showcase it and you know people take it away and stuff like that and that's different from from from showing in a gallery so it depends on if if you're thinking about street works or street related works or or in my opinion the more the more boring studio works did you did the anonymity really appeal to you yeah i thought and i still think it's funny yeah i like it i like it you know he's the most well-known unknown person exactly yeah i think it's a brilliant i think it's brilliant that he is maintained tell us about your organization about uh multiples inc and how that came to be you guys are based in copenhagen uh yeah outside copenhagen 50 kilometers outside of copenhagen it's a collective it's it's three of you guys right nope nope it's just me it's just you okay i don't know where i read i thought there was two other people involved i thought that was you know at some point um i purchased the work called by banksy called donkey documents uh okay an italian filmmaker made them marco proseppu i think he his name is he stayed here with me for a few days um and he made a movie about donkey documents the man who stole banksy i think they called it uh and and um that work i bought with with the two other dealers from from sweden so that's probably where you go that's definitely yeah where did that fall in your is that earlier in in the in your collection of banksy works that was quite early i think i purchased that work in late 2013 um and that that was uh the second banksy work uh i bought and of course it was a street work did you pick that up before spike yes i did so that that would have been the first piece that you had from that region then that was the first work from from palestine yes that was a very big rock it was like two times the 350 or something like that meters it was a nightmare because the the weight was five tons so we have some experience in taking rocks out of palestine yeah not only like you you might must be one of like a handful of people that have ever had to do that in the world right like what what is that like having to to navigate the logistics of that terrible absolutely terrible yeah yeah i had to call the the foreign service in denmark to to to be sure that i didn't put money somewhere where i shouldn't put money i i've had my part of conflict in the world uh you know and i don't need any more conflict and people have so many opinions normally i don't give a i don't give a damn about that but the kind of opinions i got when i when i bought the uh donkey documents they were pretty massive uh then i can handle that but uh the press wrote that that uh i had people to cut the wall which was totally untrue because it was caught in uh you know when the painting was still on almost fresh uh so yes i would i would buy a piece um that has been off the wall for for for some time but i will never buy a mural again that weighs five ton never again okay but so do you think it's the it's the right of the neighborhood or the person who owns that building to say like i'm gonna remove this and sell it or it should remain there for the public that that passes by there yeah it of course it should it should remain there but buddy but it's not going to and certainly not going going to do so now because the value is so high so if banksy ran around now and put a little rats out and and we knew it was him they would be gone before the paint was uh dry and the people that didn't get a street work in their hands they will say they should stay there the people who who got one in hand they love it especially if they made money from it and you can turn back you can turn back to to keith haring and some of the most important works from him in my opinion is the subway drawings that he did and he left in the subway and then people liked him and they took them down and the people who did that uh in the 80s uh they are kind of like our heroes now most of them sold them but they but they rescued some of the best work he did yeah and i'm not saying i'm a savior but um and that's not why i'm in the business i'm there because i like banksy and i i like money yeah but but actually all the money i can mention all the money from from buying the wall went to refurbishing at a christian church in beijala i think it's called in bethlehem that's awesome that's really cool that you you were conscious uh in in pursuing that piece because i imagine there's already a million things going on that you're trying to validate and keep track of but yeah that's really cool so tell me a little bit about the backstory of spike because we don't have a lot of information about it online we don't have a lot of information like that's like you're you are the source for us like so tell me how that tell me about the backstory of the piece itself if you can and then tell me about how you first learned about it and then how it sort of came into your possession banksy banksy in the old days around 2004 and five maybe before he made an annual treasure hunt where people couldn't could follow him on his website and we'd put he would put out some hint somewhere and then you can win a prize and i think it was 2005. uh when he was in palestine he put out spike and as i recall he placed it near the wall a separation wall or security wall depends on how you see it he placed it under a sprayed red with a shovel i think and then you had to to to find the rat with the shovel and what was like be below it and that was spike and then you had to report the name spike to banksy in 2005 via his website and i as i recall the guy who found it i don't know his name but he received an email or rather he emailed banksy at that time and he received a return email which i believe is was directly from banksy because it was quite personal you know in the wordings you're a winner and stuff like that um his assistants they would they wouldn't write like that so i i think that was from from the man himself wow imagine imagine getting a personal email from banksy yeah that's so that's super cool so then what was the next phase of its chain of ownership after that um the guys you mentioned before the swedish art dealers they had a small show going on in i think it was 2006 or seven or eight i can't remember oh that no no that's what that was later that was around when we bought the wall so 13 or something like that anyway they had it exhibited um i had a look at it and i found out that i found it interesting and i bought it and then later i found out because i didn't know at the time that that it was featured in in a catalog from 2007 from the nina holosec gallery in new york city uh and i got the catalog and there it was on page something full page and of course when you're going to sell a work especially by banksy who refuses to authenticate anything that is street or street related um then it's good to have it in a in an early catalog and there it was and i think i sold it way too cheap but uh that's life everything i have sold by banksy i could have you know tripled or fourth that tripled the um many times but that's life later i think the work was uh now before that the work was probably part of um [Music] pollock fine art i can't remember his first name from pollock fine art then it went to artificial gallery in london and then exhibit this as i said before with the vanilla holosight gallery and then then in sweden and then me when you first saw it what was your impression um that it was banksy uh that it was probably not the best piece of uh of art in the world but but you know anything that relates to banksy and and especially the early years it's banksy history and it's part of it's part of our history um and of course it's it's political because it it's got to do with with the palestine and and that's why i found it that's why i found it interesting because nobody no no no other artist that was known at the time and that is known now uh really um gets into conflicts like banksy does so i found it interesting but you know uh my wife certainly did not want a piece of rock in in her living rooms it had to go not even a banksy we i have many banks you should see my walls here okay wow street art really is the only type of art that you can make this the statements that he's making especially related to conflict you know being there putting the work at the heart of everything it's really the only type of of art that you can make that kind of impact it's really really crazy really wonderful yeah you think so i think everybody i think every officers can do it but they don't but but but of course it's easier for for banksy because he or at least in the old days he he put it in the street without asking for permission uh if you ask permission now as an artist in many galleries they will say no don't get don't go there don't touch it we'll just get you know in conflict and we have them rich american buyers they don't like that that that so true he can do what he wants he's free in that context yeah do you think his anonymity uh if it were to if he were to be revealed would impact the value of his work no i don't i don't think it would matter and he would never he will never get a reveal he will never come out himself and uh all the stories you know you you can find on the internet it's it's a very clever setup from the early days um we all have some names and we have some photos and you know every toddler can google it but yeah but it's not it's not like that i found out after 10 years it's it's uh it's not like that at all are you aware following um up on the nft news in the digital art world and that and that new those new developments absolutely not no not interesting to you no not at all the reason i ask is because i have i am i'm curious about uh your opinion of uh and i'm sure you can still speak on this uh fandom fandom versus connoisseurship because i feel like nfts and are allowing fans to sort of decide what what the value of the of the work is and um and it's it's becoming less about uh sort of a gatekeeper like connoisseur deciding of the value of a piece because the fans can really buy it directly from artists now and and kind of cut out the middle man and i'm curious if you've encountered that or if you've seen that impact the way you invest or or some of the pieces you're interested in i notice you you have some some cause stuff right yeah but no no no i sold it but but i used to have some calls yes yeah and i feel like cause is a good example of uh of a really accessible commercial more of a merchandiser than an artist in my opinion but um it allows fandom to really dictate demand yeah yes i think you're right i think it's a question of making multiples uh the way calls to it and and i think it was uh joseph boyce saying that the idea of multiples is the distribution of ideas and of course you do it like that but do you distribute an idea if you make an nft i saw that uh damien hurst made like i think it was four thousand small spot paintings uh it was probably made by a machine and they were all they were all i think they were all unique or at least by assistance he's not going to make 4000 himself um but what is unclear to me is that if people get the physical artwork or if they just get a i don't know the word crypto line uh on their iphone what what do people get do you know yeah i mean it's it's a certificate essentially it's a it's a hash of a string of characters that verifies that you are the unique owner of this and uh i i think it sort of parallels us as coa in the art world i mean in the same way that you can have millions of prints of of the girl with pearl earring but you know there's only one of those right you can't hang it on the wall that's very true and i think that's uh i think that's unsexy but then again i'm 55. it's it's probably new the new way of dealing i understand that but i think i'm too old to getting into it right i don't know i don't think i honestly don't think that's an age thing and that's why i love that damian hurst piece because it is a question of like do you value the physical thing or just the idea of the physical thing and that that's a conversation we're going to keep having yeah yeah i think it's really cool and but her husband actually made four thousand pieces yeah and you and i think you could choose if you want i think you paid four thousand dollars for for one and you could choose if you wanted uh it's probably called the token or if you wanted uh the actual piece yeah and and one you can only have one of the other and the other is destroyed based on your choice ah okay yeah yeah so it's it's quite a statement to make around this conversation i thought i thought it was brilliant yeah izzy mark did you have anything you wanted to to ask uh hi peter it's mark co-producer i'm intrigued about how you think about the progression of banksy's work over the years how has his art evolved do you think he's got better or worse or do you think banksy is unique in that his work has largely remained the same over the years it's a very good question i think i think banksy is is brilliant but i think he was more brilliant maybe five or ten years ago 15 years ago um the guy is you know like 50 years old now he can't run around you know spraying on people's walls anymore when he does i believe he does sit uh with permission from from people he did a prison not so long ago i can't remember the name and of course it's it's uh it's commissioned um um i can't hear you i don't know you're talking about the the prison where the guys repelling down into the typewriter yeah yeah yeah yeah when he does stuff like that now of course it's it's kind of street work but i i he has permission to do it i know that uh and he didn't have permission in the old days so of course he has changed um and and and the money is also a big game changer because there's a lot of the street art community and especially the graffiti community they dislike banksy actually they did 15 or 20 years ago already um but but but it doesn't mean that that uh that the new stuff he's making is is not as it's not as good but it but it it's it's not the same in my opinion when you take this when you take the studio works now let me start with something somewhere else uh what i did with my own inventory in banksy i used to have works um that was from pest control you know uh not prints they never interrupted me but but originals um and i sold those work and i spent the money on on streetworks and street related works because i could get them cheaper much cheaper even and they are better much better in my opinion and i think in the long run the legacy of banksy will be the works that was done on the street uh done in his early studio and we even had we even have that from the artist himself i found some letters not so long ago when i was doing some research where banksy was saying the works i make in the studio they are just souvenirs souvenirs for rich people the real works they are done in the street um so that's that's the artist's opinion do you think that those works that he's been getting permission to do now you feel like they're cheap in now yeah i think they i think they their works uh that are good to promote banksy and promote their message uh and you know the newspapers they love it um when you google banksy they're much more hit than any other artists i think he has 10 or 100 times more hits than damien hirst who's the highest profiting of of the artist uh for this time being anyway but um i think in my opinion the best banksy works they are they are from from 2010 and backwards not saying that the last 10 years uh are bad works they are not just the same because um because he has to leave the street he has to to be more commercial uh and it's and then and he has his website you know with pest control saying uh you can't buy anything nothing nothing is available um so so many of the works they are hard they are hot the accessibility to them is difficult because you can't buy the stuff in the gallery right um so i think it's it's a it's a typical banksy game see see my stuff see my name see what i do and it's brilliant and you can't buy anything so you have to turn to the secondary market to get to get the stuff and and on the secondary market we have streetworks and we have prints and we have originals i'm curious what the type of clientele on the secondary market for banksy is like like what kind of people are you and are you running into uh rich americans rich italians rich people from switzerland even had a guy from from germany whose wife wanted as a small summer house or something like that he didn't want that he wanted the street work and he bought it and he paid a lot of money for it it was an early one fully documented and stuff like that um and then i know now that it's at least five times worth of what he paid like in 2015 so he's a happy guy so he's like to his wife like i told you so he made it right exactly but what are those interactions like for you are they like do you share do you share a comment like is the conversation rich or is it like a really brief exchange like how does that how does that work for you that very often it's just uh it's just via email i try to to source out works where whether the providence is solid and from people i know i was happy to be with with some of banksy's old friends early on uh i won't mention names here but you can find someone on on my website who worked with banksy uh in in the early days and some of them still see him and there's some of them you you're not going to believe what they have it's yeah it's wonderful but but they are scared of selling it because banksy refuses to to authenticate the works right uh which is not necessarily or it's it's actually not a question of of authenticity it's more a question of not wanting to add value to the works because either work is authentic or it's not have you found yourself sort of in the position like people reaching out to you to be like hey do you think this is authentic guys yeah yeah yeah and yeah have you have you embraced that posit that that like expert uh uh the the decider i don't i don't sell anything i don't trust uh 100 but still i know i'm not going to get the accept from from from the artist or his uh affiliates right and then i know there is and everybody knows there's so much crap out there you're not going to believe it uh but it's if if you're a seasoned collector you know how to you know what to look for and what's the backstory can you prove it what's the provenance do you have any early photos stuff like that yeah documentation becomes a really important part yes it does and that's that's also what i said what i told you about spike it was in in the early catalog 2007 and when the work is from 2005 and nobody nobody put the names on rocks uh two years after in 2007 i called it a banksy right yeah that makes sense cool um i'm i do have one question that's kind of unrelated to any of that and it's a more just a fun thing that i thought i'd ask you about i i watched um exit through the gift shop again recently like i think a year ago um and it it occurred to me that maybe the whole thing and i'm sure maybe this is obvious but that the whole thing was coordinated by banks in that mr brainwash and terry are just the character he designed but the duration or the amount of footage they had is the reason that i'm like oh maybe not because i think shepard ferry looks really young in the beginning of that documentary and then much older i'm curious what your what your uh thoughts on that are that mr brain was of course it's art and that's all that's okay i think graphically it looks funny on the wall but it is crap and he knows it himself um some galleries are not not liking me now i don't care but um i think it i think it was all a banksy prank uh and you made that with the what's the guy called chief uh yeah yeah and i yeah and when and when you look behind the scenes uh who produced the movie you will find out that it was uh banksy's business manager i can't remember her name right now holly holly's holly something holly cushing and cushing or something like that he was the producer uh so so of course it's um it was meant to be at work by uh right it's just it's so layered and nuanced that you you could believe that derry was making the statement by being the artist that he is you know it it's plausible i think it's i think it's brilliant and because if it is a banksy like uh elaborate hoax then that's even more brilliant i think the the film itself is one of a kind i really really enjoy i think i think i think banks is testing the art market what can we actually sell to people what are they willing to pay for yeah yeah yeah and i guess also with the shredding the the the painting that shredded itself it was it christie's or sotheby's oh celebrities yes yeah yeah you should then you should also look for the provenance of the work but you can do that yourself yeah well uh peter i think that's everything i wanted to to talk about and i'm thank you for stopping by the podcast and talking to us and um you're welcome i'm gonna be continuing to follow along with your uh your collecting endeavors yes do that thank you thank you for calling thank you later bye-bye take care bye okay so that was a i keep i say i say so so often so so often that was a nice uh nice little conversation it was quick i really appreciate how like direct and to the point he is and his answers i i'm not gonna have to do too much editing on that interview so that's great um i i can't imagine because he he was hinting a little bit in that conversation about like the people the friends of banksy and the stuff they have of banksy's work and i can only imagine what those things are and i'll probably never know or never i think we're never gonna know yeah it's just not in my it's not in the cards for me yeah yeah but that was fun i'm glad we did that and um how are things going in the on the the forums on the you know on reddit and on uh twitter and i don't know what this is this doesn't represent anything oh it's what's how he's going yeah we got a very nice comment let me get it oh okay let me hear it yes wait i have to find it this will be good we can make this a regular thing we can make the uh the segment at the end of the show where you read embarrassing cringeworthy and surprise him exactly so to last week's podcast we had space alien say great podcast virtual real estate is one of the thousands of things nfts and blockchain mesh will bring to the global economy in the next few years true that and i'm definitely looking forward to making that episode if we get mark to be on here with proper audio at some point uh to talk about virtual real estate to central land possibly uh realm realm is happening i think next week so more on that at a later time all right um let's let's wrap it up there yeah okay yeah good cool all right guys thanks for joining us and we'll see you again next week ciao see you ciao for now proper sign up glad we did it we finally did it all right goodbye yes