“Authentic Geneologist” addendum

See my May 22nd post about an artwork I discovered on the 23rd St. 8th Ave. subway station. The artist has been revealed as “Poster Boy.” See the writeup by New York magazine and discussion on Edward Winkleman’s October 8 post. Poster Boy’s flickr page shows the same image I took with my own camera here.

I concluded in my first post that the continuity of the self from one piece to another was indeterminate, and this is in fact what is most interesting, and most at stake in this project. Now that we have a flickr page and a New York magazine article, it looks like evidence of a single continuous self is emerging.

There are two known possible tactics to maintain the fragmented self on geneological terms. One possibility is that a self named “Poster Boy” is a mask to be worn and discarded as needed by anybody at anytime. This could be part of the decentralized movement mentioned in the New York Magazine article. Several different human beings could claim participation in the project and this may or may not be happening. Another is denial or forgetfulness. At the end of the article Poster Boy denies ownership of the work when confronted by Law Enforcement Officers. One should expect a fragmented self to deny or forget what is in the past.

To see where these tactics may fail we have to look at Poster Boy’s fans and supporters. To the author of the New York Magazine article, a apparently sympathetic observer, it appears that Poster Boy does not deny authorship. When Banksy refused to authenticate work experts are convinced are by him, he was being true to a fragmented self. My question is this: how can a fragmented self maintain a coherent project extended over time without drawing upon resources the project aims to subvert?