Joseph Gibbons, former professor at MIT and “visual artist,” has been charged with robbery after he allegedly stole $1,000 from a Capital One bank in Manhattan.
Gibbons has been linked to another bank robbery in Rhode Island where he allegedly stole $3,000 in cash. Kaylan Sherrard, a fellow in-mate, claims that his robberies are “research for a film” and that what he did is “not a crime”:
“It’s not a crime; it’s artwork… He’s an intellectual,” Sherrard gushed.
As outlandish as it sounds, these claims are not entirely out of the realm of possibility for Gibbons. He has admitted before in interviews that he used illegal drugs and explored the world of voyeurism as inspiration for his work:
“I just worried if I had enough problems within me that I could exploit. So when I ran [out] of my own—I started creating them—I made one or two films based on drug addiction.
“Before that it was voyeurism,” Gibbons once told the art journal [“Big, Red & Shiny”].
Actors will often go method when preparing for a role, but I’ve never heard of a filmmaker creating a drug addiction or other “problems” they could “exploit” for art. If Gibbons wants to put himself inside the mind of a drug addict or a bank robber, maybe he could try interviewing drug addicts and bank robbers, or use a little imagination.
Considering that Gibbons has been out of work for over four years, however, this might be Gibbons’ high-minded way of saying he is broke and really needs the money.
(Source: New York Post)