In late 2015 I took part in a small anonymous collective. We had no name, so for convenience we borrowed someone else’s. We decided that Banksy had visited Carrara — the city of marble, dust, and industrial extraction. We wanted to point at the open wound of the Apuan Alps. We wanted to hijack and open‑source the Banksy™ myth. And yes, there was also boredom, marble dust, and the vague hope that reality might still glitch occasionally.

We modified a road sign on the way to Carrara: ALL YOU CAN EAT.

Quick, cheap, environmentally concerned, and Banksy-flavoured. The kind of gesture that looks like it’s already been validated by someone more famous.

Within hours the local news reported Banksy in the Apuan Alps. A travel blog warned tourists. Facebook agreed.

At some point a journalist asked the municipality for confirmation. The municipality asked the police. The police asked the internet. The internet said yes. Vice eventually published a piece explaining how we had “trolled everyone by pretending to be Banksy.” We never claimed to be Banksy. We only claimed that Banksy had already claimed to be us, which is technically much harder to disprove.

No one bothered to wonder why Banksy would fly to Tuscany to rebrand traffic signage. Collective hallucination is a renewable resource.

We never claimed responsibility. We never claimed authorship. We didn’t even claim to be Banksy. We simply allowed the world to do the heavy lifting.

After two days the authorities removed the sign. The story remains online forever, because stories age slower than metal. The story, however, stayed online—duplicating itself, mutating, becoming more "true" than the actual piece ever was.

Sometimes you don’t need to make an artwork. You just need to provide the minimum amount of oxygen and let the myth ignite itself.

The piece is gone. The misunderstanding is permanent.