air bear

I love Joshua Allen Harris' New York subway grate ephemeral inflatable bear, although it looks a lot more like a dog to me (thanks to YouTube's Rocketboom for featuring the piece in their broadcast today).  It makes me so freaking happy to see that apparent trash slowly rise up and take form as the subway air comes rushing from the grate, and then wag, shake its head (the mouth half-open in anticipation), shiver with excitement...

... then sink down to the grate -- commuters on their way -- and disappear once again as a heap of discarded plastic on the city street.

(New York's fifth season, as everyone knows, is when the plastic bags bud in all the trees, thrust there by winter/spring winds rushing through the steel and glass canyons... Ian Frazier has a nice piece about his own personal obsessive attempt to tackle the problem one tree at a time -- (see http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2001/01/treebags.html) : "Bag snagging was our exercise, our companionship, our hobby, our impromptu community action program")

Harris' second inflatable piece is more kooky, a kind of alien sideshow assemblage of critters waving arms, but it reminds me a bit of those inflatables outside of car dealerships and it doesn't have the fragile -- and ultimately lonely -- impact of the lost dog... er, bear.

You can find out a little more on Harris' work at the Wooster Collective ("dedicated to showcasing and celebrating ephemeral art placed on streets in cities around the world"): http://www.woostercollective.com/