The 2009 Venice Biennale opened this week with an unexpected and quite beautiful piece of performance art. Artist Mike Bouchet had built a one-to-one scale replica of a typical American surburban home that he planned to install on floating pontoons in the Venice Arsenale basin. He called the project Watershed.
David Birnbaum, the Biennale's curator, told camera crews filming the installation that he thought the project "sounded a bit megalomaniac," but the sight of the oversized house, clad in beige vinyl, flimsily bobbing up and down against a backdrop of palazzi and piazzi as it was towed through Venice's canals, was breathtaking. It was an architectural icon of the American Dream revealed in all its formulaic absurdity.
Amazingly, then, one of the pontoons capsized, and the entire house sank to the bottom of the canal—an unintentional yet utterly perfect coda to the house's own built-in commentary. Now, a fake generic American suburban home will add its ruins to the underwater archaeology of Venice.
[citite cu maxima incantare la BLDGBLOG]
4 comments:
tare, e ca si cum ai vorbi de funie in casa spanzuratului :D.
of, si sa mai zici ca nu'i frumoasa viata :)
si daca nu e, o fac artistii.
eu personal cred ca scufundarea a fost voita, ceea ce nu ii scade din valoare. se naste un nou curent, disaster simulacra, distrugere nepericuloasa deci doar spectaculoasa, ceea ce ne dorim cu totii.
dar zicea laurie anderson ca teroristii sunt ultimii artisti adevarati pt ca doar ei mai reusesc sa surprinda cu adevarat publicul.
panseuri, panseuri...
scufundare intentionata = 2 x WIN
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