27. Wisam Salsaa of Banksy’s Walled​-​Off Hotel

Humble Mumbles

In this episode our Humble Mumbles representative speaks with Wisam Salsaa, owner and manager of The Walled-Off Hotel (a play on Waldorf Hotel), the creation of renowned political art cipher Banksy.

Is this hotel effective political satire? Disrespectful Western meddling? A comfortable abode for the traveler to Bethlehem?

Salsaa fields all these criticisms and more (is the hotel antizionist enough? is it responsive to the local community; what IS Palestinian community), speaks about the hotel’s clientele (Westerners, Palestinians and… Israelis), the hotel’s future, and the responsibility of art. Enjoy.

Music provided by a few recorded seconds in the hotel’s museum and Philadelphian musicmakers Blown Away

Thanks to Wisam Salsaa and The Walled Off Hotel, Never Forget Radio,The Pollination Project & the Puffin Foundation

The Walled Off Hotel
walledoffhotel.com

A plethora of opinions:
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2017/03/walled-hotel-struggle-decolonisation-170312143224959.html
http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=775854
http://www.buzzfeed.com/gabrielsanchez/21-politically-subversive-views-from-inside-bankys-new-hotel?utm_term=.dgDkP3qZb#.wnVLAbXYq
http://www.merip.org/mero/mero032217
972mag.com/banksys-new-project-tells-the-story-of-palestine/126395/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KGgDZcHJmw

For our non-Arabic speakers, you may notice that Salsaa often peppers his speech with the word ‘yianni’ which is essentially slang for ‘you know’ or ‘so to speak’ so now you know, yianni.

[audio http://archive.org/download/wisam_at_banksy/Wisam_at_Banksy.mp3]