Olafur Eliasson's four "Waterfalls" in New York's East River (from the Manhattan Bridge to Governor's Island) started cascading yesterday and will continue till October 13.
Roberta Smith, in the New York Times, waxed all Whitmanian over them in her review (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/27/arts/design/27wate.html) and perhaps there's no reason not to.
I have liked Eliasson's previous large-scale meditations on weather and light, the meteorological and the artificial, and his use of water in all its states; and the mechanical and ephemeral Waterfalls are a perfect confounding of all of those preoccupations. My only disappointment is in finding them positioned so far away from the public that their force, roar and spray are intuited rather than experienced. (People are encouraged to take boat rides to see them from the river; the idea being that their power will echo through the rocking hull... More than a passing ferry? Doubtful.) And in a humid New York summer, I'd be willing to abandon a degree of safety to have recycled river water douse my clothes.
Having people focus on the East River between Manhattan and Brooklyn (straddling the Naval Yards, Downtown and the Lower East Side) is also to remember the historic heart of the shipping, unloading, merchandising,transporting city... a city and a riverfront that are disappearing before our eyes. The Domino Sugar plant is closed and preservationists are fighting to save its sign. The Fulton Fish Market is closed and being converted to swanky lofts. Red Hook is undergoing a loft and Ikea boom. When the water is turned off, what will be left?
No comments:
Post a Comment