New monument lists celebrities who say Winnipeg on camera

Jessie Avenue, staff

The City of Winnipeg greenlit the first piece in what it calls its “Winnipeg cultural existence showcase.” The piece entitled “Say My Name” will be a six-metre-tall obsidian oblate spheroid with the names of every celebrity who has ever mentioned Winnipeg on camera hand-carved into its surface.

A masked local called River Bansky has been running around the carving site claiming to be the artist contracted with chiseling the first round of names into the monument, including Michael B. Jordan, probably two of former members of S Club 7, Cher, Fergie, A$AP Ferg, A$AP Rocky, Jimin, Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson, John Stamos, Idris Elba, Florence Pugh, Shigeru Miyamoto, Queen Elizabeth II, all 48 pigs that played Babe, Al Pacino, Charli D’Amelio, Lassie, Julie Delpy, Janelle Monae, Mark Zuckerberg, Toni Morrison, Taylor Swift, Orson Welles, Paris Hilton, Cindy Lauper, Shirley Temple, Ice-T, Ice Cube, Trixie Mattel and someone who owns a popular tea shop in Arizona.

An intern from the city is currently scratching Venetian Snares off the spheroid. The city was unaware one of the artist’s album titles, which has Winnipeg in it, was calling the city an expletive.

“We thought it said ‘short hole’ rather than a cuss word,” the intern explained, balancing on River Banksy’s shoulders to get at the top of the spheroid.

The scratching comes at graphic / Michelangelo / staff a convenient time. The second round of names that were meant to be carved into the big roundish block thing were from on a list that one city employee who asked to remain anonymous had based on a YouTube compilation of char- acters in movies saying “Winnipeg.” ivorybuffalo@themanitoban.com

“I thought it was a documentary,” they bellowed into our voice distorting machine.

The Ivory Buffalo unfortunately cannot release the audio record from this interview because the microphone peaked a bunch of times from the interviewee’s yelling. Bummer!

The new “tourist attraction” is extremely ugly, which is why the city plans to move it to important intersections around town to teach Winnipeggers how to navigate roundabouts.

“Art and education go hand-in-hand,” said someone we found walking on the Pembina Highway overpass.